Clerk of the Fur Trade: Recreating an 18th Century Punch show

Clerk, Trader, and Merchant

The term "clerk", like "merchant", covers a wide range of endeavor. Indeed, qualifications needed for success as a clerk were much like that of the merchant as detailed by Postlethwayt in The Merchant's Public Counting House (1750): some acquaintance with the commodities of trade, command of foreign languages, knowledge of bookkeeping, shipping, foreign weights and measures, tariffs, foreign exchange, and the stock and produce markets.

No one clerk, as no one merchant, could have complete command of all these particulars and so specialization in trade and commerce took place. For one aspiring to the merchant or trader class, or one of the specialized commercial adjuncts, a term, usually as apprentice, as a clerk in the countinghouse was to be expected.

Thus, the clerk was no lowly scrivner, though some there might be. From the ranks of the clerk came literary notables such as Charles Lamb, the insurance brokers of England, and many of the trading partners of North America's North West Company, the largest fur company in the world during it's time in the late 18th and early 19th century.

The Clerk is available for presentations regarding the life of the clerk, the fur trade of the North West Company, accounting and paperwork of the era as it relates to the fur trade. The Clerk's skills are also demonstrated by way of the cutting of quills and the manufacture of ink using the correct recipe of the 18th century.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Recreating an 18th Century Punch show

One of the projects crowding my "to-do" list is creating new heads for the characters in my Punch show.

Currently, made of non-period materials, I want wooden heads to match the period puppets for my show. The heads are patterned after Cruikshank drawings and I want to reproduce the same look in wood.

This is the start of the process and I'll update progress on this project from time to time here as well as on the Woodland Puppets News blog. I hope the heads will be done sometime this summer so that all future shows will be totally period correct to the 18th century.

I will also post about the process of building the show, stage, and other aspects, too. I am writing a longer article for publication in the Journal of Early America and possibly the Puppeteers of America's Journal.

1 comment:

KeithJanuary 10, 2012 at 8:00 PM
Good Post.
http://woodsrunnersdiary.blogspot.com/2012/01/recreating-18th-century-punch-judy-show.html
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Clerk, Trader, and Merchant

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Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Recreating an 18th Century Punch show

1 comment: