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Art From the Lodge Hall
Webb Gallery
209-211 W. Franklin Waxahachie, TX 75165
Phone: 972-938-8085
Email: webbart@sbcglobal.net
Website: www.webbartgallery.com
Click here to see the on-line gallery of “Art from the Lodge Hall”
Click here for additional Lodge Art images from Webb Gallery site
Click here for the Webb gallery bio
See Webb Gallery's Current Exhibition: MIXER, featuring works by
Norbert Kox and William Thomas Thompson, and others.
~ ART FROM THE LODGE HALL ~
AN AMERICAN CULTURAL TRADITION
The art and artifacts related to fraternal orders have long been a part of American Art History, from George Washington’s Masonic apron (Hand painted with Masonic symbolism by Madame Lafayette) to fraternal tattoos.
Fraternalism in America has bridged gaps in many ways: economically—as the rich and poor were members of the same lodge; geographically—as fraternalism was a great healing force after the Civil War, where Northerners and Southerners met on a common level in the lodge room; racially—as African-American-Prince Hall Freemasonry and Underground Railroad secret societies like the Knights and Daughters of Tabor helped ferry those escaping the fetters of slavery, on to freedom; and immigrant lodges, which helped to give support and a sense of family to foreigners in a strange land.
After the Civil War, military uniform manufacturers began convert their production to lodge goods. M.C. Lilley of Kalamazoo, Michigan, C. E. Ward of New London, Ohio, Ward-Stilson Co. of Anderson, Indiana, Petitioner Brothers of Greenville, Illinois and numerous others employed artists and craftsmen to paint, carve, sew and build furniture, in prop departments, and banner painting lofts, turning out a vast array of lodge items, The manufactures of Red Men costumes employed Seneca and Iroquois Indians to sew elaborate beaded clothing.
Often rural lodges made their own banners, accouterments, and initiation devices, employing the most artistic member or his wife with the task of painting the symbols on the banners and making the regalia.
The Modern Woodmen of America, organized at Lyons, Iowa in1883, and its offshoot Woodmen of The World Organized in 1890 had some of the wildest initiations. Emblems of the Woodmen are the axe, with which the pioneers cleared the forest, and the wedge, which opened up the secret resources of nature. In the Woodmen’s initiation ceremony, an initiate symbolically experiences the perils of life in the world at large. “After being led through a ritual as a blind pauper, he [the initiate] was placed on a mechanical goat, which hung from the ceiling or moved on wheels. The goat and rider were lurched about, disoriented and completely out of control, an experience that was surely frightening and humbling.” Such ceremonies stemmed from the broader Masonic traditions, and goats used by Woodmen, Odd Fellows and other fraternities have been documented.
Some of the fraternal iconography that is still in use today is…
-The “all-seeing eye”—emblematic of deity is one of the most common symbols, and has been put to use by almost every lodge.
-The” hands joined” or “handshake” was depicted on the Numa altar to Fides under which name the goddess of oaths and honesty was worshiped.
-The beehive, emblematic of the lodge itself, as only the bees in the hive are aware of the activities inside, where under the guidance of the queen bee, the worker bees cheerfully and industriously perform their duties.
-The “heart in hand” is symbolic of charity, given from the heart. Whatever the hand may find to do, may the heart go forth in union.
-The skeleton or “skull and cross bones” is emblematic of mortality.
-The scythe is emblematic of the moment of death and signifies the cord of life being cut.
-The axe is an emblem of a clear conscious. That as the woodsman’s axe fells the trees of the forest, so should we clear our minds of that which impedes our progress.
Bruce Webb, 2003
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