Yankee Mason Woodcut
Image c. Sheffield Local Studies Library, all rights reserved. Further reproduction is prohibited.
Click on various aspects of the image to see more information.

This is a woodcut from a Sheffield Saloon bill made in the mid-1840s. The craftsmanship is unsophisticated, and as a woodcut it most likely would have 'traveled' with the performer and been inserted into the local press for each venue's advertisement. Strangely, this lack of sophistication may allow for a more accurate and individually specific illustration of the 'look' of a working-class minstrel.

-- The Head --

Although the head can hardly be described as an 'accurate depiction' of anything, the distinct colour variation of the lips would appear to refer to the large red lips painted on a minstrel, and the curly hair to the 'wooly' wig that was standard costuming.
-- The Jawbone --


The jawbone with a bow is a strange juxtaposition, a conflation of two kinds of sound that the minstrel might make, using fiddle and percussion. The jawbone was unlikely to have been present in fact, but in the 'culture' of minstrelsy it reinforced the primitive nature of the music.
-- The Leg --


The legs, nearly tied in a knot and flattened to the point of abstraction, show a body out of control, about to topple over. Just as the jawbone, fiddle and banjo conflate all the sounds that this entertainer might have made, this 'knot' expresses the nature of the movement far better than a more sophisticated illustration could. This was a whole-body performer, whose movements compared with the grotesquerie of the clown and, apparently, the contortionist.
-- The Shoes & Feet --

The shoes are in fact slippers or clogs, without a heel. This is quite different from the footwear of the more middle-class-oriented minstrels, who wore proper shoes or boots - if they were dancers, with wooden soles. This footwear is in fact an accurate representation of the footwear of the plantation slave of the time. It is interesting that, in this odd representation of the working-class minstrel, there may have been a more 'authentic' depiction of southern plantation life than anything we can see in the documents of minstrelsy as it expanded in popularity.