Sequences HERMES Carre

Added 2/1/2017

She’s done it again… 🙂

A dear friend, an avid collector herself, pointed out something very interesting to me after reading this article, which she was instrumental in writing and researching for me. The nice little touch I had missed that Madama Latham added to her carre in honor of her Muse…(see below)

Sequences is a very interesting scarf in that Caty Latham (1984) so clearly took her inspiration for this scarf from Eadweard Muybridge (1820-1904), the famous British/American photographer whose pioneering work in stop motion photography was an important foundation stone in our ‘moving pictures’.

Born in Surrey, England, Muybridge came to America at the age of twenty first to New York but ended up in San Francisco when the town was just formed and was known as the “Capital of the Gold Rush”.  He became a successful bookseller and was scheduled to journey back to England to purchase antiquarian books when he was involved in a terrible stagecoach accident, that left him with severe head injuries.  It took over a year to recuperate and it was after the accident that Muybridge took up photography, which ultimately became his livelihood and passion.

Six years later, he returned from England to San Francisco as a professional photographer. His photographs were mainly of the West and quickly earned him both a reputation and a following. He met Leland Stanford, a railroad baron who later became the founder of Stanford University in the 1870’s.  Stanford had a bet going and he employed Muybridge to prove his contention that in a trot or gallop a running horse has all four of his legs off the ground at the same time. The human eye is not fast enough to see that fraction of a second of movement. To prove Stanford’s theory, Muybridge used 12 cameras and trip wires and was able to capture in his photographs that Stanford’s assertions were in fact correct.

The techniques he employed to accomplish this sequential stop action photography, became the basis for moving pictures.  His photographic studies were also an enormous help to painters and artists, who until then depicted running horses incorrectly. Muybridge with his multiple cameras made it possible to truly see a horse in motion.

In 1884 Muybridge published his studies of the horse in a book called The Horse in Motion. In 1984, precisely 100 years later, Hermes introduced the Sequences scarf by Caty Latham, no doubt to celebrate and honor the great advancements of this pioneering photographer.

In honor of Muybridge, Madama Latham cleverly incorporated four lenses in the four corners of her carre.

Thank you, my friend for this fabulous information, that eluded me and perhaps most of us until now.