CONSIDER THE LOBSTER...
Victorian Lobster Claw Talisman
We picked up this oddity at a little Sunday morning antique fair 10-mins from home, along with a handful of other bits; it’s amazing. And what you can find if you know where to look... Someone on the Atlantic coast around 120 years ago made this weird lobster claw amulet-in-the-style-of shark-tooth pendant, but why?
It evokes opulence and extravagance, but the claw is quite plainly mounted (in silver, sure but still), nothing too fancy. A contradiction. So who would have made this… worn this… and why?
Lobsters enjoy a rich and ancient symbolism, variously representing wealth, gluttony, unpredictability, and even resurrection. They frequently appear in the visual arts, from Roman mosaics to 17th century Dutch still-lifes, and ultimately becoming associated with the 20th century Surrealist movement (think Dali’s lobster phone, below) lobsters have been used to symbolise power and status, erotic pleasure and pain, and occasionally more complex meanings like violence or toxic hierarchies.
Amongst more contemporary discourse we find Jordan B Peterson’s inane and quite thoroughly debunked ‘paternalistic philosophy’ centred around a machismo-fuelled ‘return’ to some sort of lobster-based traditional, heteronormative society as an answer to our modern-day ills. It's pop psychology at its nadir. But let’s not forget David Foster Wallace’s musings for Gourmet Magazine, Consider The Lobster (be warned, it’s quite a read).
Now what of our mysterious Victorian pendant? At the beginning of the 1800s, lobster was a garbage meat thought only fit for cats, prisoners, and fertiliser on farmers fields. Providing a meat known as "poor man's chicken", lobsters were so abundant on the Eastern seaboard of the USA that they’re said to have washed up in piles two feet high on Massachusetts beaches. But. As the railroads began to develop towards the end of the century, it was an enterprising railroad tycoon who artificially inflated their value when, fed up of shelling out for expensive beef to serve in his ‘fancy dining cars’, he thought up Surf & Turf* to serve on his lavish tables. It was more than a way to cut costs, the exotic seafood element raised his dining game and the enthusiastic railway goers - not aware of the stigma associated with these king crustaceans - began demanding lobster when they weren't aboard the trains, leading to the popularity of "show restaurants known as lobster palaces," frequented by nouveau riche "arrivistes". This became unfashionable by the 1920s and only regained popularity in the early 1960s.
So was this pendant commissioned by a crate fisherman in Maine or Massachusetts, or as a souvenir memento of an expensive lobster meal, or by a ridealong passenger on a first class ticket? Or by someone otherwise involved in the lobster industry, perhaps; someone who made their fortune - modest, though it may have been - off the back of these prized malacostracans decapod crustaceans?
