Cell phone depicted in 1937 mural?

[suckadmin]

This story has started going viral the past couple of days and the first link I received to it was this one which had some speculations as to what the object that appears to be a cellphone actually is.

https://postalmuseum.si.edu/indiansatth ... ural9.html

However I found the actual explanation in the article by Vice of all places.

Adding a layer of intrigue to it all is the fact that Romano's mural is focused on one William Pynchon—that's him at center, wearing pink—who wrote The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption, the first book ever to be banned (and subsequently burned) on American soil, and who just happens to be the earliest colonial ancestor of elusive living novelist Thomas Pynchon.

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/arti ... 7-painting

I've never heard of this book but despite having been banned and burned here's a scan of it!

https://archive.org/details/meritoriousprice00pync

and more background on it and the mural

The Meritorious Price, of course, reads today harmlessly enough. Truth be told, a modern reader need only fear boredom from Pynchon’s exegesis on the origins of Grace. To leading officials in the government of Massachusetts Bay, however, this was an insidious text, an exercise in heresy—one the Puritan clergy believed capable of throwing their young and vulnerable colony into irreversible chaos.

https://publicdomainreview.org/2015/11/ ... edemption/

[ericbarbour]

Heh, I would go with a small mirror. Plus this is typical 1930s "social awareness pseudo-cubism", which was never intended to be "photographically accurate" anyway. One would think a witch riding a broom would give people some clue.

[suckadmin]

Heh, I would go with a small mirror. Plus this is typical 1930s "social awareness pseudo-cubism", which was never intended to be "photographically accurate" anyway. One would think a witch riding a broom would give people some clue.

Yeah I considered whether it was a mirror too.. although I can't say the shape of it really looks like a mirror.. it's just that he appears to be reflecting upon it.. which could also be a book.. maybe the double meanings are intentional?

[Flip Flopped]

Heh, I would go with a small mirror. Plus this is typical 1930s "social awareness pseudo-cubism", which was never intended to be "photographically accurate" anyway. One would think a witch riding a broom would give people some clue.

Yeah I considered whether it was a mirror too.. although I can't say the shape of it really looks like a mirror.. it's just that he appears to be reflecting upon it.. which could also be a book.. maybe the double meanings are intentional?

I'm not sure what kind of mirrors the explorers would have carried for trade or use. I don'g think it's a book because that painter would not have left off the front cover of a book. The shine on the front of the object makes me think it likely was to depict a mirror.

[Strelnikov]

Heh, I would go with a small mirror. Plus this is typical 1930s "social awareness pseudo-cubism", which was never intended to be "photographically accurate" anyway. One would think a witch riding a broom would give people some clue.

Yeah I considered whether it was a mirror too.. although I can't say the shape of it really looks like a mirror.. it's just that he appears to be reflecting upon it.. which could also be a book.. maybe the double meanings are intentional?

It's a chunk of reflective rock being used as a mirror; it's black, so I'm guessing it's obsidian. Native Americans would use reflective rocks as mirrors, along with placid lake water. Silvered glass mirrors are possible to make with Greco-Roman technology, but it means working with toxic chemicals (the silvering agents on the back of the chunk of glass.)