The Emblematic Cabinet

Black Forest Library is a series for dilettante artistic research that wanders between the disciplines: from em-dashes to emblems, palm trees to peeing, Ulysses to Virginia Woolf, and basketball to furniture.

“In 1924, the Philadelphia architect Horace Trumbauer was commissioned by tobacco millionaire and plantation owner, James Buchanan Duke, to develop and expand the existing Trinity College campus of Duke University Durham, North Carolina. The resulting design, produced by Trumbauer’ office in collegiate Gothic style, were ultimately the work of Afro-American architect Julian F. Abele – at a time when segregation laws prohibited him from even setting foot on the campus. 
The neo-Gothic style of the Duke campus is extensive stylistically eclectic. There are seals of renowned European and North American universities; ecclesial heraldry is mixed with apparently contemporary stonemasonry. Mixed in with this, early 20th-century artefacts (also for instance, the symbol of a film camera) can be seen on heraldic shields. Duke student Nicholas Chrapliwy and art-history professor Paul B. Jaskot have improvised image analyses of these enigmatic emblems and heraldic features. They will, however remain hidden to you, the reader.