By Louise Irvine

With Halloween approaching, it is a good time to learn more about Mark Marshall’s bizarre portrayal of The Oracle, featured in the 1889 Humorous & Grotesque Art Exhibition introduced in the last newsletter. The strange Doulton stoneware piece stands 24 inches tall and was sold two years ago at the Lion & Unicorn auction house in Hollywood. It was snapped up by avid collector Jeff Spellens, one of the great supporters of WMODA.

Oracles were the fortunetellers of the ancient world who delivered revelations from the gods. According to Greek mythology, two black doves flew from Thebes in Egypt and founded the first oracular sanctuaries dedicated to Zeus when they settled in an oak tree at Dodona in Greece and the Siwa oasis in Egypt. At Siwa, the supreme deity of the Greek pantheon was combined with the Egyptian sun god to become Zeus-Ammon. The divine wisdom and prophecies of Zeus were conveyed by priests who interpreted his messages to mortals through the rustling of tree leaves or sounds of doves.

The Oracle of Apollo at Delphi later became the most important oracular sanctuary in the classical world as it was believed to be the sacred center of the universe. Holy women, the Pythia, were famed for their frenzied prophetic trances as they spoke on behalf of Apollo, the Greek god of the arts, music, light, knowledge, harmony, healing and prophecy.

Mark Marshall’s outlandish piece is inscribed “The Oracle,” but so far, it has been impossible to pinpoint a precise source for his unusual image. It is reminiscent of the classical sculptures of Zeus-Ammon with his curled hair and ram’s horns, but Marshall has allowed his vivid imagination to run riot in this extraordinary vision. Even the four-legged creatures that writhe around the foliate decoration are hard to identify.

Another exciting development in our exploration of Victorian humor was finding a copy of the 1889 catalog for the Humorous & Grotesque Art Exhibition held at the Victoria Gallery in London. It includes a list of the “Curious Doulton Ware Pottery” offered for sale at this event. In addition to the pieces illustrated in Doulton’s archive photograph from 1889, we now know that Marshall’s googly-eyed fish was sold as a tobacco jar and modeled after a sunfish, one of the weirdest looking fish in the ocean.

We also discovered that George Tinworth exhibited several more of his mice and frog humoresques, including the Steeplechase, Tug of War, Mouse Bicyclist, Punch and Judy and Jack in the Green. This last peculiar piece depicts frogs cavorting in a traditional May Day parade in London. One frog peeks out of an elaborate costume consisting of a large framework of foliage and flowers, topped with an intricalte floral crown. By the 19th century, the Jack in the Green costume was mainly associated with May Day processions of chimney sweeps. We would love to find one for WMODA to add to our humorous collection!