Name/Title
PaperweightEntry/Object ID
2009.19.16Description
Circular, clear glass paperweight with a color sketch of a street encased inside. There is a caption at the bottom of the sketch reading "Souvenir of Columbia, S.C." The letter "H" is imprinted on the edge of the paperweight, and there is a paper cushion on the underside.Use
Souvenirs like this paperweight would have been purchased by visitors to Columbia and transported home as a memento of their stay in South Carolina's capital city.Context
This souvenir paperweight depicts a view of Main Street looking north from the State House. Its primary subject is the South Carolina Monument to the Confederate Dead. Long a symbol of Columbia and its role in the Civil War, the monument was often featured on postcards and souvenirs from the late nineteenth through mid-20th centuries depicting the capital city. Installed north of the east wing of the State House on May 13, 1879, it was topped with a soldier figure sculpted from Italian marble by Muldoon, Walton & Company. After a lightning strike decapitated the marble soldier in 1882, a slightly different soldier figure was sculpted from marble by Italian artist Carlo Nicoli (1843-1915) as a replacement. Upon the new figure's completion in 1884, the monument was moved to its prominent location in front of the State House.
Commissioned during the Reconstruction era by the female-led South Carolina Monument Association, the monument idealized the sacrifice, self-restraint, and morality of the common soldier and became emblematic of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy and the reestablishment of white political control upon the end of Reconstruction.Made/Created
Place
City
Columbia, South CarolinaDimensions
Height
1 inCircumference
9-1/2 inRelationships
Related Places
Place
City
Columbia, South Carolina