Kitsch

Kitsch (pronounced kich)

(1) Something though tawdry in design or appearance; an object created to appeal to popular sentiment or undiscriminating tastes, especially if cheap (and thus thought a vulgarity).

(2) Art, decorative objects and other forms of representation of dubious artistic or aesthetic value (many consider this definition too wide).

1926: From the German kitsch (literally “gaudy, trash”), from the dialectal kitschen (to coat; to smear) which in the nineteenth century was used (as a German word) in English in art criticism describe a work as “something thrown together”.  Among “progressive” critics, there was a revival in the 1930s to contrast anything thought conservative or derivative with the avant garde.  The adjective kitchy was first noted in 1965 though it may earlier have been in oral use; the noun kitchiness soon followed. Camp is sometimes used as a synonym and the two can be interchangeable but the core point of camp is that it attributes seriousness to the trivial and trivializes the serious.  Technically, the comparative is kitscher and the superlative kitschest but the more general kitschy is much more common.  The alternative spelling kitch is simply a mistake and was originally 1920s slang for “kitchen” the colloquial shortening dating from 1919.  Kitsch & kitchiness are nouns, kitschify, kitschifying & kitschified are verbs and kitschy & kitchlike are adjectives; the noun plural is kitsch (especially collectively) or kitsches.  Kitschesque is non-standard.

Kitsch can become ironic: a lava lamp in "hot dog stand" red & mustard.  Lava lamps were in the 1970s briefly fashionable as symbols of the modern but were soon re-classified kitsch.  In the twenty-first century, such was the demand that re-creations of the originals became available, bought because they were so kitsch; iconic can thus be ironic.

For something that lacks an exact definition, the concept of kitsch seems well-understood  although not all would agree on what objects are kitsch and what are not.  Nor is there always a sense about it of a self-imposed exclusionary rule; there are many who cherish objects they happily acknowledge are kitsch.  As a general principle, kitsch is used to describe art, objects or designs thought to be in poor taste or overly sentimental.  Objects condemned as kitsch are often mass-produced, clichéd, gaudy (the term “bling” might have been invented for the kitsch) or cheap imitations of something.  It can take some skill to adopt the approach but other items which can be part of the motif include rotary dial phones ("retro" can be a thing which transcends kitsch) and three ceramic ducks "flying" up the wall (although when lava lamps were in vogue, lava lamp buyers probably already thought them kitsch).  An application of physics of thermodynamics and fluid mechanics, the lava lamps once so admired by stoned hippies work by exploiting differences in density, thermal expansion, and buoyancy within two immiscible fluids (ie they do not mix), the dynamics driven by a localized heat source and the construction is simple; in a variously shaped glass vessel, there is a wax-based compound (the “lava”, which typically is paraffin wax mixed with additives to adjust density and melting point), floating in a liquid (usually water or a water-based solution with salts or alcohols to achieve the desired density).  At the base of the vessel there is a source of light and heat which traditionally was an incandescent bulb, the heat a product of the inefficiency with which the energy was converted into light; when the bulb is switched on, the liquid becomes heated and as the wax absorbs some of this heat, it melts and thermally expands, density thereby decreasing to the point it’s slightly less dense than the surrounding liquid.  Buoyant force then causes the wax to rise through the liquid in blobs, randomness meaning tiny variations in surface tension and viscosity create infinitely different shapes of the rounded forms which cool as they move away from the heat source, meaning the wax contracts, increasing its density beyond that of the liquid, causing it to sink back toward the bottom.  Because it’s a closed system working on a continuous cycle, the heating & cooling repeats continuously and, component failure and material decay aside, in theory a lava lamp could run forever.

Lindsay Lohan: Prom Queen scene in Mean Girls (2004).  If rendered in precious metal and studded with diamonds a tiara is not kitsch but something which is the same design but made with anodized plastic and acrylic rhinestones certainly is.

Führerkitsch: A painting attributed to Adolf Hitler.

The Nazi regime devoted much attention to spectacle and representational architecture & art was a particular interest of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945).  Hitler in his early adulthood had been a working artist, earning a modest living from his brush while living in Vienna in the years before World War I (1914-1918) and his landscapes and buildings were, if lifeless and uninspired, executed competently enough to attract buyers.  He was rejected by the academy because he could never master a depiction of the human form, his faces especially lacking, something which has always intrigued psychoanalysts, professional and amateur.  Still, while his mind was completely closed to any art of which he didn’t approve, he was genuinely knowledgeable about many schools of art and better than many he knew what was kitsch.  However, the nature of the “Führer state” meant he had to see much of it because the personality cult built around him encouraged a deluge of Hitler themed pictures, statuettes, lampshades, bedspreads, cigarette lighters and dozens of other items.  A misocapnic non-smoker, he ordered a crackdown on things like ashtrays but generally the flow of kitsch continued unabated until the demands of the wartime economy prevailed.

To the Berghof, his alpine headquarters on the Bavarian Obersalzberg near Berchtesgaden, Barvaria, there were constant deliveries of things likes cushions embroidered with swastikas in which would now be called designer colors and more than one of his contemporaries in their memoirs recorded that the gifts sometimes would be accompanied by suggestive photographs and offers of marriage.  Truly that was “working towards the Führer”.  At the aesthetic level he of course didn't approve but appreciated the gesture although they seem never to have appeared in photographs of the house’s principle rooms, banished to places like the many surrounding buildings including the conservatory of Hans Wichenfeld (the chalet on which the Berghof was based).

Hitler's study in the Berghof with only matched cushions (left) and the conservatory (centre & right) with some pillowshams (embroidered with swastikas and the initials A.H.).

In the US, Life magazine in October 1939 (a few weeks after the Nazis had invaded Poland) published a lush color feature focused on Hitler’s paintings and the Berghof, the piece a curious mix of what even then were called “human-interest stories”, political commentary and artistic & architectural criticism.  One heading :“Paintings by Adolf Hitler: The Statesman Longs to Be an Artist and Helps Design His Mountain Home” illustrates the flavor but this was a time before the most awful aspects of Nazi rule were understood and Life’s editors were well-aware a significant proportion of its readership were well disposed towards Hitler’s regime.  Still, there was some wry humor in the text, assessing the Berghof as possessing the qualities of a “…combination of modern and Bavarian chalet” styles, something “awkward but interesting” while the interiors, “…designed and decorated with Hitler’s active collaboration, are the comfortable kind of rooms a man likes, furnished in simple, semi-modern, sometimes dramatic style. The furnishings are in very good taste, fashioned of rich materials and fine woods by the best craftsmen in the Reich.”  Life seemed to be most taken with the main stairway leading up from the ground floor which was judged “a striking bit of modern architecture.”  Whether or not the editors were aware Hitler thought “modern architecture” suitable only for factories, warehouses and such isn’t clear.  They also had fun with what hung on the walls, noting: “Like other Nazi leaders, Hitler likes pictures of nudes and ruins” but anyway concluded that “in a more settled Germany, Adolf Hitler might have done quite well as an interior decorator.”  There was no comment on the Führer’s pillows and cushions.

Lindsay Lohan themed pillowshams are available.

Whatever Life’s views on him as interior decorator, decades later, his architect was prepared to note the dictator’s “beginner’s mistakes” as designer.  In Erinnerungen (Memories or Reminiscences), published in English as Inside the Third Reich (1969)), Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945) recalled:

“A huge picture window in the living room, famous for its size and the fact that it could be lowered, was Hitler s pride.  It offered a view of the Untersberg, Berchtesgaden, and Salzburg. However, Hitler had been inspired to situate his garage underneath this window; when the wind was unfavorable, a strong smell of gasoline penetrated into the living room.  All in all, this was a ground plan that would have been graded D by any professor at an institute of technology. On the other hand, these very clumsinesses gave the Berghof a strongly personal note. The place was still geared to the simple activities of a former weekend cottage, merely expanded to vast proportions.”

He commented also on the pillowshams: “The furniture was bogus old- German peasant style and gave the house a comfortable petit-bourgeois look.  A brass canary cage, a cactus, and a rubber plant intensified this impression.  There were swastikas on knickknacks and pillows embroidered by admiring women, combined with, say, a rising sun or a vow of "eternal loyalty."  Hitler commented to me with some embarrassment: "I know these are not beautiful things, but many of them are presents.  I shouldn't like to part with them."

The gush was also trans-Atlantic.  William George Fitz-Gerald (circa 1870-1942) was a prolific Irish journalist who wrote under the pseudonym Ignatius Phayre and the English periodical Country Life published his account of a visit to the Berchtesgaden retreat on the invitation of his “personal friend” Adolf Hitler.  The idea of Hitler having a "friend" (as the word conventionally is understood) is not plausible but that an invitation was extended might in the circumstances have been though is unexceptional.  Although when younger, Fitz-Gerald’s writings had shown some liberal instincts, by the “difficult decade” of the 1930s, experience seems to have persuaded him the world's problems were caused by democracy and the solution was an authoritarian system, headed by what he called “the long looked for leader.”  Clearly taken by his contributor’s stance, in introducing the story, Country Life’s editor called Hitler “one of the most extraordinary geniuses of the century” and noted “the Führer is fond of painting in water-colours and is a devotee of Mozart.”

Country Life, March 1936 (both Hermann Göring (1893–1946) and Werner von Blomberg (1878–1946) were then generals and not field marshals).  General Göring wearing the traditional southern German Lederhosen (leather breeches) must have been a sight worth seeing.

Substantially, the piece in Country Life also appeared in the journal Current History with the title: Holiday with Hitler: A Personal Friend Tells of a Personal Visit with Der Führer — with a Minimum of Personal Bias”.  In hindsight it may seem a challenge for a journalist, two years on from the regime’s well-publicized murders of probably hundreds of political opponents (and some unfortunate bystanders who would now be classed as “collateral damage”) in the pre-emptive strike against the so-called “Röhm putsch”, to keep bias about the Nazis to a minimum although many in his profession did exactly that, some notoriously.  It’s doubtful Fitz-Gerald visited the Obersalzberg when he claimed or that he ever met Hitler because his story is littered with minor technical errors and absurdities such as Der Führer personally welcoming him upon touching down at Berchtesgaden’s (non-existent) aerodrome or the loveliness of the cherry orchid (not a species to survive in alpine regions).  Historians have concluded the piece was assembled with a mix of plagiarism and imagination, a combination increasingly familiar since the internet encouraged its proliferation.  Still, with the author assuring his readers Hitler was really more like the English country gentlemen with which they were familiar than the frightening and ranting “messianic” figure he was so often portrayed, it’s doubtful the Germans ever considered complaining about the odd deviation from the facts and just welcomed the favourable publicity.

As a "cut & paste" working journalist used to editing details so he could sell essentially the same piece to several different publications, he inserted and deleted as required, Current History’s subscribers spared the lengthy descriptions of the Berghof’s carpets, curtains and furniture enjoyed by Country Life’s readers who were also able to learn of the food severed at der Tabellenführer, (the leader's table) the Truite saumonée à la Monseigneur Selle (salmon trout Monseigneur style) and caneton à la presse (pressed duck) both praised although in all the many accounts of life of the court circle’s life on the Obersalzberg, there no mention of the vegetarian Hitler ever having such things on the menu.

Djuna Barnes (1892–1982) in polka-dots.

Briefly, Putzi Hanfstaengl was engaged to the US author Djuna Barnes who, although she denied being predominantly lesbionic, was regarded by some contemporary critics as having written the most definitive expressions of lesbian culture since Sappho.  It was one of Hanfstaengl's wives who spoke the most succinct thumbnail sketch of Hitler's sexuality: “I am telling you Putzi, he is a neuter.”

Fitz-Gerald was though skilled at his craft and interpolated enough that was known to be true or at least plausible to paint a veneer of authenticity over the whole.  Of the guests he reported: (1) Hitler’s long-time German-American acquaintance & benefactor (when speaking of Hitler, both better words than "friend") Ernst "Putzi" Hanfstaengl (1887–1975 and a one-time friend of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR, 1882–1945, US president 1933-1945) was a fine piano player (which nobody ever denied), (2) that Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946; Nazi foreign minister 1938-1945) was a wine connoisseur (he entered the wine business after marrying into the Henkell family’s Wiesbaden business although his mother-in-law remained mystified, remarking of his career in government it was: “curious my most stupid son-in-law should have turned out to be the most successful” and (3) that Dr Joseph Goebbels (1897-1975; Nazi propaganda minister 1933-1945) was an engaging dinner companion and a “droll raconteur” (it is true Goebbels’ cynicism and cruel wit could be amusing even to those appalled by his views, something like the way one didn’t have to agree with the press baron Lord Beaverbrook (Maxwell Aitken, 1879-1964) to enjoy his tart cleverness).  Much of the credibility was however sustained by it being so difficult for most to “check the facts” and few would have been able to find out that in the spring of 1936 when Fitz-Gerald claimed to be enjoying the Führer’s hospitality, the quaint old Haus Wachenfeld was part of a vast building site, the place being transformed into the sprawling Berghof, the whole area unliveable and far from the idyllic scene portrayed.

Führerkitsch: A painting attributed to Adolf Hitler.

Dutifully, Hitler acknowledged the many paintings which which were little more than regime propaganda although the only works for which he showed any real enthusiasm were those which truly he found beautiful.  However, he knew there was a place for the kitsch… for others.  In July 1939, while being shown around an exhibition staged in Munich called the “Day of German Art”, he complained to the curator that some German artists were not on display and after being told they were “in the cellar”, demanded to know why.  The only one with sufficient strength of character to answer was Frau Gerhardine "Gerdy" Troost (1904–2003), the widow of the Nazi’s first court architect Paul Troost (1878–1934) and one of a handful of women with whom Hitler was prepared to discuss anything substantive.  “Because it’s kitsch” she answered.  Hitler sacked the curatorial committee and appointed his court photographer (Heinrich Hoffmann (1885–1957)) to supervise the exhibition and the depictions of happy, healthy peasants and heroic nude warriors returned.  Hitler must have been satisfied with Herr Hoffman's selections because in November that year he conferred on him the honorific "professor", a title he would award about as freely as he would later create field marshals.

Kitsch: One knows it when one sees it.

What is kitsch will be obvious to some while others will remain oblivious and the disagreements will happen not only at the margins.  Although there will be sensitive souls appalled at the notion, it really is something wholly subjective and the only useful guide is probably to borrow and adapt the threshold test for obscenity coined by Justice Potter Stewart (1915–1985; associate justice of the US Supreme Court 1958-1981) in Jacobellis v Ohio (1964):

I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it…

Matinée de septembre (September Morn (1911)), oil on canvas by Paul Émile Chabas (1869–1937), in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City (not currently on display).

What makes something defined (or re-defined) as kitsch is thus a construct of factors including artistic merit (most obviously when lacking), the price tag and the social or political circumstances of the time.  When Paul Émile showed Matinée de Septembre at the Paris Salon of 1912, it did not attract much comment, female nudes having for decades been a common sight in the nation’s galleries (although there had been a legislative crackdown on low-cost commercial products, presumably on the basis that while the “educated classes” could appreciate nudes in art, working class men ogled naked women merely for titillation).  In other words, Parisian salon-goers had seen it all before and Matinée de Septembre, while judged competently executed, was in no way compelling or exceptional.  The work may thus have been relegated to an occasional footnote in the history of art were it not for the reaction in Chicago when a reproduction appeared in the street-front window of a photography store.  Reflecting the contrasting aspirations of those Europeans who first settled in the continent, in the US there has always been a tension between Puritanism and Libertarianism and one of the distinguishing characteristics of the USSC (US Supreme Court) is that it has, over centuries, sometimes imperfectly, managed usually to interpret the constitution in a way which straddles these competing imperatives with rulings cognizant of what prevailing public opinion will accept and while the judges weren’t required to rule on the matter of Matinée de Septembre’s appearance in a shop window, the brief furore was an example of one of the country’s many moral panics.

Although at first instance a jury found the work not obscene and thus fit for public view, local politicians quickly responded and found a way to ensure such things were restricted to art galleries and museums, places less frequented by those “not of the better classes”.  The notoriety gained from becoming a succès de scandale (from the French and literally “success from scandal”) made it one of the best-known paintings in the US and, not being copyrighted, widely it was reproduced in prints, on accessories and parodied in what would now be called memes.  The popularity however meant a re-assessment of the artistic merit and many critics dismissed it as “mere kitsch” although it was in 1957 donated to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art where it has on occasion been hung as well as being loaned to overseas institutions.  The Met placed it in storage in 2014 and while that’s not unusual, whether the decision was taken because of it’s the depiction of one so obviously youthful isn’t clear.  The artist claimed his model was at the time aged 16 (thus some two years older than the star-cross’d lover in William Shakespeare’s (1564–1616) Romeo and Juliet (1597) and half a decade older than the girl who appeared on the cover of Blind Faith’s one-off eponymous album (1969)) but there is now heightened sensitivity to such depictions.

Kitsch also has a history also of becoming something else.  As recently as the 1970s, tea-towels, placemats, oven mitts, tea-trays and plenty else in the West was available adorned with depictions of indigenous peoples, often as racist tropes or featuring the appropriation of culturally sensitive symbols.  These are now regarded as kitsch only historically and have been re-classified as examples variously (depending on the content) of cultural insensitivity or blatant racism.

Kitsch at work: Lava Lamps and Random Number Generation

Some may have dismissed the Lava Lamp as "kitsch" but the movement of the blobs possesses properties which have proved useful in a way their inventor could never have anticipated.  The US-based Cloudflare is a “nuts & bolts” internet company which provides various services including content delivery, DNS (Domain Name Service), domain registration and cybersecurity; in some aspects of the internet, Cloudflare’s services underpin as many as one in five websites so when Cloudflare has a problem, the world has a problem.  For many reasons, the generation of truly random numbers is essential for encryption and other purposes but to create them continuously and at scale is a challenge.  It’s a challenge even for home decorators who want a random pattern for their tiles, their difficulty being that however a large number of tiles in two or more colors are arranged, more often than not, at least one pattern will be perceived.  That doesn’t mean the tiles are not in a random arrangement, just that people’s expectation of “randomness” is a shape with no discernible pattern whereas in something like a floor laid with tiles, in a random distribution of colors, it would be normal to see patterns; they too are a product of randomness in the same way there’s no reason why if tossing a coin ten times, it cannot all ten times fall as a head.  What interior decorators want is not necessarily randomness but a depiction of randomness as it exists in the popular imagination.

Useful kitsch: Wall of Entropy, Cloudflare, San Francisco.  Had this been in an installation in a New York gallery circa 1972, it would have been called art.  

For most purposes, computers can be good enough at generating random numbers but in the field of cryptography, they’re used to create encryption keys and the concern is that what one computer can construct, another computer might be able to deconstruct because both digital devices are working in ways which are in some ways identical.  For this reason, using a machine alone has come to be regarded as a Pseudo-Random Number Generator (PRNG) simply because they are deterministic.  A True Random Number Generator (TRNG) uses something genuinely random and unpredictable and this can be as simple as the tiny movements of the mouse in a user’s hand or elaborate as a system of lasers interacting with particles.

One of Cloudflare’s devices encapsulating unpredictability (and thus randomness) is an installation of 100 lava lamps, prominently displayed on a wall in their San Francisco office.  Dubbed Cloudflare’s “Wall of Entropy”, it uses an idea proposed as long ago as 1996 which exploited the fluid movements in an array of lava lamps being truly random; as far as is known, it remains impossible to model (and thus predict) the flow.  What Cloudflare does is every few milliseconds take a photograph of the lamps, the shifts in movement converted into numeric values.  As well as the familiar electrical mechanism, the movement of the blobs is influenced by external random events such as temperature, vibration and light, the minute variations in each creating a multiplier effect which is translated into random numbers, 16,384 bits of entropy each time.

Wall of Entropy, Cloudflare, San Francisco.

The arrangement of colors which avoids any two being together, in the horizontal or vertical, was a deliberate choice rather than randomness although, there's no reason why, had the selection truly been random, this wouldn't have been the result.  Were there an infinite number of Walls of Entropy, every combination would exist including ones which avoid color paring and ones in which the colors are clustered to the extent of perfectly matching rows, colums or sides.  What Cloudflare have done in San Francisco is make the lamps conform to the popular perception of randomness and that's fine because the colors have no (thus far observed) effect on the function.  In art and for other purposes, what's truly random is sometimes modified so it conforms to the popular idea of randomness.

Trunk

Trunk (pronounced truhngk)

(1) The main stem of a tree, as distinct from the branches (limbs) and roots (also as bole; tree trunk).

(2) Of, relating to or noting a main channel or line, as of a railroad, waterway or something which assumes a similar shape (topographically).

(3) A large, sturdy box or chest for holding or transporting clothes, personal effects or other articles.  Such trunks usually have a hinged (sometimes domed) lid and handles at each end, provided because such is the size & weight, it takes at least two to carry one when loaded.

(4) A compartment, most often in the rear coachwork of an automobile, in which luggage, a spare tire, and other articles may be kept (a “boot” in the UK and certain other places in the English-speaking world and a “dicky” in India and elsewhere in South Asia).

(5) A storage compartment fitted behind the seat of a motorcycle and known also as a top-ox or top-case (as distinct from a “pannier” or “saddlebag” which is fitted at the side (usually in pairs), below the level of the seat).

(6) In anatomy, the body of a person or an animal excluding the head and limbs (the torso).

(7) In pathology, the main body of an artery, nerve, or the like, as distinct from its branches.

(8) In ichthyology, that part of a fish between the head and anus.

(9) In engineering and architecture, a name for a conduit, shaft, duct, channel or chute etc, used variously for airflow (thermal or blown), water, coal, grain etc.

(10) In steam engines, a large pipe forming the piston rod of a steam engine, of sufficient diameter to allow one end of the connecting rod to be attached to the crank, and the other end to pass within the pipe directly to the piston, thus making the engine more compact.

(11) In extractive mining, a flume or sluice in which ores are separated from the slimes in which they are contained.

(12) In architecture, the dado or die of a pedestal.

(13) In architecture, the part of a pilaster between the base and capital, corresponding to the shaft of a column.

(14) In hydrology, the main channel, artery or line in a river, railroad, highway, canal or other tributary system.

(15) In telephony, a telephone line or channel between two central offices or switching devices that is used in providing telephone connections between subscribers generally (also called a “tie-line”).

(16) In telegraphy, a telegraph line or channel between two main or central offices.

(17) In telecommunications, to provide simultaneous network access to multiple clients by sharing a set of circuits, carriers, channels or frequencies.

(18) In clothing, brief shorts (loose-fitting or tight) worn by men chiefly for boxing, swimming and athletics (some historically known as “trunk hose”.

(19) In zoology, the elongated prehensile, flexible, cylindrical nasal appendage of the elephant and certain other creatures (the proboscis).

(20) In nautical use, a large enclosed passage through the decks or bulkheads of a vessel, used as air ducting for purposes of heating, cooling, ventilation and such.

(21) In shipbuilding, any of various watertight casings in a vessel, as the vertical one above the slot for a centerboard in the bottom of a boat.

(22) A long tube through which pellets of clay, peas etc are driven by the force of the breath; a peashooter (archaic).

(23) In software engineering, the most current source tree, from which the latest unstable builds (so-called “trunk builds”) are compiled.

1400–1450: From the late Middle English tronke & trunke, from the Old French tronc (alms box, tree trunk, headless body), from the Latin truncus (stem, a stock, lopped tree trunk), a noun use of the adjective truncus (lopped; cut off, maimed, mutilated), (the later related to the English truncated).  Trunk & trunking are nouns & verbs, trunkful is a noun, trunked is a verb & adjective and trunkless is an adjective; the noun plural is trunks.

There are a myriad of “truck” terms in human pathology and other derived phrases include “elephant's trunk” (rhyming slang for “drunk”), “hand trunk” (a piece of luggage smaller than the traditional trunk and able to be carried by one), “junk in one's trunk” (corpulence of the buttocks, the alternative forms being “dump truck” or the vernacular “fat ass”), “the apple does not fall far from the trunk” (a variant of “the apple/pear etc does not fall far from the tree”) (children tend in appearance & characteristics to resemble their parents), “trunklid” (literally obviously “the lid of a trunk” and used of the opening panel which provides access to a car’s trunk), “bootlid” the UK equivalent and confusingly in the US used also as “decklid” on the basis of the trunk being a part of a car’s “rear deck”), “trunk novel” (a novel abandoned by the author while still a project), “trunk or treat” (an organized alternative to trick-or-treating where candy is handed out to children from cars in a parking lot; it was introduced as a child safety measure), “trunk show” (an event in which vendors present merchandise directly to store personnel or customers at a retail location or other venue, based on the idea of selling “out of a trunk”), “trunk sale” (and event at which goods are displayed for sale in the trunks of cars), “boot sale” the companion term)), “trunking” (travelling sitting in the trunk of a car”), and “trunk shot” (in film-making, a cinematic shot from within a car trunk (although there was a case of a serial killer who shot his victims while concealed in the trunk of a car.

Louis Vuitton Trunk #5 (left) and Louis Vuitton Trunk on Fire (right) by Tyler Shields (b 1982).

The original idea of a trunk being a “box; case etc” may lie in the first such “trunks” being hollowed-out tree trunks although some suggest the post-classical development of the meaning “box, case with a lid or top” was based on the notion of human body’s trunk being a “case” in which the organs were transported.  The modern idea of a “luggage compartment of a motor vehicle” dates from circa 1930, about the time trunks cease to be something separately carried and replaced by and space for luggage integrated into the bodywork.  The use of trunk had long been familiar in the medical literature (both of the torso and blood vessels etc) and the idea was by 1843 extended to railroad trunk lines and telephone networks by 1889.  “Trunk-hose” were first sold in the 1630s and seems to have been a kind of thermal underwear, the description a reference to them covering the whole torso (ie, the trunk) as opposed to most “hose” which was for the lower limbs.

The use of trunk to describe the “long snout of an elephant (or other beast with a similar appendage)” appeared first in the 1560s but etymologists are divided on whether it was an allusion to a tree’s trunk or has some connection with “trumpet”, based on the loud sound elephants are able to generate although the evidence does suggest the early use may have been a reference to the thing’s ability to hold water.  Predictably, by the early eighteenth century, it was a slang term for the human nose.  The use in clothing (always in the plural as “trunks”) emerged in the mid 1820s and initially described “short breeches of thin material”; it was a use of trunk in the sense of “torso”.  Use began in theatrical jargon but, as was not uncommon, soon it was applied to breeches generally, especially in US English and for the short, tight-fitting breeches worn by swimmers and other sporting types, adoption was close to universal by the 1890s.  “Swimming trunks” has survived as a regionalism; even within the one country, there are often several different names for what is one of humanity’s most simple garments.

Trump Trunks: MAGA (Make America Great Again) swimming trunks.  Trump trunks are made from a “silky, breathable, 4-way stretch mesh fabric” and features include (1) a small internal pocket, (2) a built-in anti-chafe liner.  The country of manufacture is not disclosed.  Clearly, the DNC (Democratic National Committee) in 2016 missed an opportunity by failing to release the "Crooked Hillary Clinton Bikini".

One linguistic curiosity was “subscriber trunk dialing” (later changed to “subscriber toll dialing” which later still switched to DDD (Direct Distance Dialing).  The “other” use of STD was as “sexually transmitted disease”, previously known as VD (venereal disease) and it wasn’t until the 1970s the initialism VD began to be replaced by STD (VD thought to have to have gained too many specific associations) but fortunately for the US telecommunications carrier American Telephone and Telegraph Company (later AT&T), in 1951 they renamed their STD service (for long-distance phone calls) to DDD, apparently for no better reason than the alliterative appeal although it's possible they just wanted to avoid mentioning “toll” with all the potential market resistance the word imparts.  Many countries in the English-speaking world continued to use STD for the phone calls, even after the public health specialists had re-purposed the initialization.  In clinical use, STI (Sexually Transmitted Infection)seems now the preferred term.

The evolution of the trunk: 1851 Concord stagecoach on display at the Smithsonian's National Postal Museum, Washington DC (left) with truck strapped to the back, additional trunks carried on the roof; 1928 Mercedes-Benz Nürburg 460 K Pullman Limousine (W08, centre left) with separate trunk still carried on a rear frame; 1936 Studebaker Dictator 4-door sedan (centre right) with the trunk now an integrated part of the bodywork and from that modest appendage they would grow.  The US full-sized cars of the 1960s & 1970s had most capacious trunks but few could match Leyland Australia's infamous P76 (1973-1975, right) which effortlessly could carry a 44 (imperial) gallon (53 US gallon; 205 litre) drum although the reputed ability to handle fours sets of golf clubs was probably more of a selling point.  Unfortunately, as the P76's rapid demise indicates, there just aren't that many golfers.

Drumming up business: Leyland P76 carrying 44 gallon drum in trunk.  Quite how many customers literally took advantage of this selling point isn't known but the large capacity was doubtless an attraction for some.

The compartment which is most located in the rear coachwork of an automobile is used for luggage and historically also the spare tyre a toolkit (neither now not always supplied).  In North American use, this is called a “trunk”, an inheritance from the time when the passengers’ trunks (ie, in the sense of the box-like suitcases) were strapped on to an extension at the back of horse-drawn carriages.  In the early automobiles, the practice continued (often with lined wicker baskets because they were of lightweight construction) and when these were integrated into the bodywork, the space provided continued to be called “the trunk”.  The British called the same thing a “boot”.  In horse-drawn carriages in the UK, a “boot” was a compartment used to store travel essentials, among which (in an age of rutted, poorly maintained roads) included boots, the male passengers sometimes required to push the coach when it became stuck in mud, the frequent inclusion of a “boot box” or “boot locker”, made typically of leather and attached at the rear.  The other suggested origin is the French boute (compartment; box).  The term “boot” thus spread throughout the British Empire although, under the Raj, in India & Ceylon (later Sri Lanka) it became the “dickie”.  That was based on the dicky seat (also as “dickie seat” & “dickey seat” and later more commonly known as the “rumble seat”), an upholstered bench mounted at the rear of a coach, carriage or early motorcar and as the car industry evolved and coachwork became more elaborate, increasingly they folded into the body.  The size varied but generally they were designed to accommodate one or two adults although the photographic evidence suggests they could be used also to seat half-a-dozen or more children.  Why it was called a dicky seat is unknown (the word dates from 1801 and most speculation is in some way related to the English class system) but when fitted on horse-drawn carriages it was always understood to mean “a boot (box or receptacle covered with leather at either end of a coach, the use based on the footwear) with a seat above it for servants”.  Under the Raj, “dickie” was preferred while the colloquial “mother-in-law seat” was at least trans-Atlantic and probably global.

Lindsay Lohan illustrates how there are frunks (left) and there are trunks (right).

The rear-engined Porsche 911 Carrera (997, 2004-2013) Cabriolet (Los Angeles, 2012, right) has a frunk while the front-engined Mercedes-Benz SL 65 AMG roadster (Los Angeles,  2005, right) has a trunk.  Based on the R230 (2001-2011) platform, the SL 65 AMG was produced between 2004-2012 and Ms Lohan also later drove an SL 550 (2006-2011), a model which was a quirk in the naming system because the designation was exclusive to the the North American market, the RoW (rest of the world) cars retaining the SL 500 badge even though both used the 5.5 litre (333 cubic inch) V8 (M273).  As the SL 65's open trunk lid reveals (right), because of the need to accommodate the bulky, folding aluminum hard-top, when lowered, it absorbed much of the trunk space so the design, like many, involved a trade-off between what was gained and what was lost.  Ms Lohan had (relatively) minor accidents in both her SL 65 and later a 911 coupé so clearly should avoid driving black, German cars.

The Fiat X1/9 (produced by Fiat 1972–1982 and Bertone from 1982–1989) featured both a frunk (left) and a trunk (right).

Most cars built have had the engine mounted in the front, thus most trunks appeared in the rear bodywork.  There have however been cars with engines behind the driver (such things were quite numerous until well into the 1970s) and these usually had a storage compartment at the front (where the engine otherwise would sit, under the hood (bonnet)).  Until the early years of the twentieth century, these seem just to have been called a “trunk” or “boot” but as electric vehicles began to appear in volume “frunk” (the construct being f(ront) + (t)runk) and the less popular “froot” (the construct being fr(ont) + (b)oot)) came into use.  There have been mid-engined cars which have both a trunk and a frunk and those in the diminutive Fiat X1/9 were surprisingly large while others (such as Ferrari's Dino 308 GT4 (1973-1980) & 208 GT4 (1975-1980), both badged as Ferraris after 1976) were of a less generous capacity, the frunk in the Dinos best suited to storing something the size of a topless bikini but the GT4 was a genuine four-seater (in the sense of a 2+2), something not often attempted with the mid-engined configuration.

When there was no trunk lid, luggage racks were a popular fitting: 1959 "bug-eye" (or "frog-eye" depending on location) Austin-Healey Sprite (left) and 1971 Chevrolet Corvette Convertible LS5 454/365 (right).

There have been cars (and not all of them were sports cars) with no trunk lid.  In the case of the Austin-Healey Sprite (1958-1971), the lack of the structure on the early versions (1958-1961) was a cost-saving measure (the same rationale that saw the planned retractable headlights replaced by the distinctive protuberances atop the hood (bonnet) which lent the cheerful little roadster its nickname (bug-eye in North American and frog-eye in the UK & most of the Commonwealth).  It had additional benefits including weight reduction and improved structural rigidity but the obvious drawback was inconvenience: to use the trunk one had to reach through the gap behind the seats.  It was easy to see why luggage racks proved a popular accessory, sales of which continued to be strong even when later versions of the Sprite (1961-1971) and the badge-engineered companion model (the MG Midget (1961-1980)) gained a trunk lid.

Have trunk, can travel: Nor Cal’s (of Stockton, California) trunk lid kit for Austin Healy Sprite, May 1961.  Note the standard-sized registration (license) plate; the Sprite really was small.

However, noting Austin-Healey’s cost-cutting meant the Series 1 Sprite’s trunk came lidless, modern commerce quickly saw a gap (technically also a “lack of gap”) in the market and “lid kits” soon appeared.  Advertised as meaning “no more acrobatic maneuvers when loading luggage”, mention was made also of an installation making the spare tyre easier to reach, a matter in the early 1960s of some significance because tyres then were not as durable and punctures more frequent.  The advertising copy was selective in that it mentioned “no welding necessary” but neglected to point out an owner would need to cut the required hole but presumably, that would have been obvious.  It was a proper trunk lid in that it was lockable and said also to be “waterproof”, the latter a quality owners of British sports cars really didn’t expect so that novelty would have been a selling point.  For those Sprite owners whose family had gained a child, the improved accessibility to the trunk would have been most helpful because, as parents know, going anywhere with an infant requires carrying a large bag of stuff.  They might also have been attracted to the "baby seat" available as an accessory from the Healey factory; it was a design which would now be thought extraordinary (other words also come to mind) but it was at the time just the way things were done.

1962 MG Midget.

When the updated Austin-Healey Sprite and the companion MG Midget were released in 1961, the re-design included a trunk-lid, making the little machines more practical although niceties like external door handles and side-windows were until 1964 thought unnecessary luxuries.  With the addition of a trunk lid, the rear wheel arches were given a “flattened top”, the explanation being the additional metal was required to ensure structural rigidity because the large hole cut to allow a lid meant there would be too much “lateral flex” were the old round arches retained.  It was thus a surprise when late in 1971 the round wheel arches re-appeared so either British Leyland used some body-engineering technique to achieve the required strength with less steel or it had been concluded the original conclusions were too conservative.  The change was welcomed because not only did it improve the look but it made it easier to fit wider wheels and tyres, something of great interest to the many using their Midgets in competition.

Desirable 1973 "RWA" MG Midget (left) and 1976 "Rubber Bumper" MG Midget (right); the rubber bumpers at the front looked even worse.  

The change however didn’t last; in 1974 the previously used wheel arches were back, the engineers at the time citing the need for additional body strength because US impact regulations had forced them to fit heavy (and ugly) rubber-fronted bumper bars.  That may have been true but the speculation has long been it was done also to disguise the way the body had been raised on its suspension, that unfortunate change made to ensure the low-slung roadster could comply with US minimum headlight height rules.  So, like the MGB, the Midget after 1974 was heavier, less powerful and slower than before, added to which the increased ride-height raised the centre of gravity so anti-roll bars had to be fitted to disguise the effect on the handling.  Despite that, both would remain in production until the end of the decade and demand was strong even when the ranges were terminated, the modest machines having much charm.  In the MG community, the Midgets with the round wheel arches are known as “RWAs” and they were never fitted to the last of the Sprites although at least one exists and it’s presumed that was a private conversion rather than something done by the factory.  

1963 Corvette (C2) Coupe. This was one of GM's official publicity stills and one can see why the decision was taken not to include a trunk lid but the absence enhanced structural integrity and it was this Chevrolet chose to emphasize.

Curiously, between 1953-1962, the Chevrolet Corvette (C1) did have a trunk lid but when the second generation (C2, 1962-1967) was released for the 1963 season, it had been removed and not until the fifth generation (C5) in 1998 did one again appear.  By then, the Corvette's luggage rack moment mostly had passed but into the twenty-first century they were still being fitted.  In the modern collector market, it’s one of those accessories, the very sight of which seems to upset some.

Trunks: The long and short of it.

1968 Holden HK Brougham (left) and 1970 Holden Premier (right).

The Holden Brougham (1968-1971) was not so much a landmark of the era as a cul-de-sac but it did indicate how quickly the “brougham” label had come to be associated with prestige and like Chevrolet’s Caprice, the Brougham was a response to a Ford.  In Australia, Ford had been locally assembling the full-sized Galaxies for the government and executive markets but tariffs and the maintenance of the Australian currency peg at US$1.12 meant profitability was marginal, so the engineers (with a budget said to be: "three-quarters of four-fifths of fuck all") took the modest, locally manufactured Falcon, stretched the wheelbase by five inches (125 mm), tweaked the front and rear styling (which although hardly radical resulted in a remarkably different look), added some gorp (the term bling not yet in use) and named it Fairlane.

The Fairlane name was chosen because of the success the company had had in selling first the full-sized US Fairlanes (nicknamed by locals as the “tank Fairlane”) between 1959-1962 and later the smaller version (1962-1965) which Robert McNamara (1916–2009 and briefly the president of Ford Motor Company before serving as US secretary of defense (1961-1968) under John Kennedy (JFK, 1917–1963; US president 1961-1963) & Lyndon Johnson (LBJ, 1908–1973; US president 1963-1969)) described as "the size of car Americans should be driving".  In that at least McNamara was right and what came in the 1960s to be called the "intermediates" (ie between the "compact" & "full-size" lines) proved a sweet spot in the market and that was because they were essentially the size of the "standard" US automobile before the breed became oversized in the mid-late 1950s.  The Australia Fairlane was for decades a successful and profitable product and eventually Holden (General Motors's (GM) local outpost) followed the formula but not before the curious diversion which was the Brougham.  For 1968, Holden chose what even at the time was thought a bizarre approach in trying to match the Fairlane; instead of a longer wheelbase (and thus more interior space), the Brougham was conjured up by extending the tail of the less exalted Premier by 8 inches (200 mm), the strange elongation a hurried and less than successful response.  Unwanted for decades when the could be bought for Aus$250, the handful of surviving Broughams became twenty-first century collectables, advertised for sale at as much as $Aus$90,000, some Holden connoisseurs (as one-eyed a crew as any) even finding a previously undetected elegance in the lines.

1958 Cadillac Series 62 Extended Length Sedan (Body Style 6239EDX, left) and 1958 Cadillac Series 62 Sedan (Body Style 6239, right).

In their defense, Holden could have pointed to a corporate precedent, the 1958 Cadillac range including the “Series 62 Extended Length Sedan”.  The Series 62 Sedan was already an impressive 216.8 inches (5.5 m) long but the Extended Length version measured an even more imposing 225.3 (5.7), the additional 8.5 inches (216 mm) all in the rear deck, creating a more capacious trunk.  There can’t have been many Cadillac buyers with that much luggage (although, impressionistically, golf club car parks did suggest there would be those for whom the ability to carry several sets of clubs might be compelling) but the new model did attract buyers, either despite or because of the healthy industry in jokes about Mafia functionaries and other figures in organized crime grateful finally to have more space to transport the bodies.  Unfortunately for Cadillac, there were only so many golfers and Mafia hit-men and despite 20,952 of the 103,455 (excluding Eldorados and “chassis only” sales) Series 62s produced in 1958 being the Extended Length Sedan (some 20%), it proved a single-season one-off which perhaps should have been a warning to Holden.

Cadillac's other take on the “long & slightly less long” of it: 1963 Cadillac Four-Window Sedan De Ville (Body Style 6239, left) and 1963 Cadillac Sedan De Ville Park Avenue (Body Style 6389, right).

Strangely, Cadillac’s next venture in rear-deck management went the other way, “short deck” versions of certain models offered between 1961-1963, the things created by removing 7 inches (178 mm) of aft bodywork, the effect more noticeable for the final season when the truncation was 8 inches (203 mm).  Demand, anyway muted, quickly declined and there ended Cadillac’s experiments with rear deck length.  There was at the time much criticism that “full-size” US cars had become too big but the “short deck” venture was most un-Cadillac like and, by international standards, the truck capacity of even the abbreviated models was still quite generous, able effortlessly to accommodate two sets of gold clubs, something which later became a de-facto standard in assessing the practicality of sports cars.  Jaguar used this feature as a selling point when the XK8 (1996-2006) was introduced because it wasn’t possible with all versions of the old E-Type (1961-1974).  For a variety of reasons, by the 1970s, there would be a smaller Cadillac and the first generation Seville (1975-1979) was most accomplished but of the even smaller Cimarron (1982–1988) there are few fond memories.  It wasn't that the Cimarron was, by the standards of its time, an especially bad car; it just wasn't "a Cadillac" as that construct was then understood.

1967 Ford GT40 Mark III (left) and 1967 Ford GT40 Mark I (road version, right).

From 1967 there was also a more contemporary example to inspire the antipodean engineers although it’s unlikely it much caught their eye; that was the Ford GT40 (1964-1969), one of the most successful machines in 1960s sports car racing which beat not only the competition but also the attempts by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (the FIA; the International Automobile Federation) to legislate it into un-competitiveness,  Then (as now), the FIA was international sport’s dopiest regulatory body.  In the happy era when it was possible to make a few minor modifications and register a Le Mans race car for the road, 31 of the 105 GT40s were so configured (even a cigarette lighter was installed) but the driving experience was still very much that of a (slightly) quieter race car, the accommodation cramped, the ventilation marginal and the luggage space fit for little more than a proverbial topless bikini.  But some hardly souls bought them because there were few things on the road faster so thoughts turned to making a “more civilized” version with the creature comforts now expected.  Thus the 1967 GT40 Mark III with a slightly detuned engine, improved ventilation, a conventional, centrally mounted gear shift, sound deadening, more compliant suspension settings and even a reasonably sized ashtray to compliment the cigarette lighter.  However, only seven were built because they cost as much as a middle-class house, were still cramped (with challenging ingress and egress for all but the young or athletic) and in appearance differed in several aspects from the cheaper (Mark I) GT40 road cars still available from John Wyer (1909–1989).

Herbert von Karajan's 1967 Ford GT40 Mark III (Chassis M3/1105, left); of the seven produced, it was one of four LHD (left hand drive) versions and a GT40 Mark III "Luggage Box" (right).

By virtue of the long tail, the Mark III did though have more luggage space, the specially-fabricated "luggage box" behind the engine large enough to handle the luggage a couple would have packed for a dirty weekend while the frunk could have held little more than a conductor's baton though that may be unrelated to the Mark III's most famous owner being the Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan (1908–1989).  The Mark III was fitted with additional sound deadening and the exhaust system made the sometimes Wagnerian sound of the 289 cubic inch (4.7 litre) V8 less intrusive but inside it was no Rolls-Royce and certainly not a 1965 Ford Galaxie (which Ford paid acoustic engineers to prove was quieter than a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud III) so those who fitted the optional radio and cassette tape player would have had to turn the volume high.  Other options included tinted glass, air-conditioning and, remarkably, even a television.  It would anyway have been better to focus on the road because even in its detuned form the GT40 Mark III could be a handful, especially to those unacquainted with the then still novel characteristics of mid-engined road cars although Karajan also for a while drove a Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Gullwing (W198, 1954-1957) so he may have been not unfamiliar with quirky handling.  Wisely, he never drove his GT40 on wet roads.

1935 MG NA Magnette Allingham 2/4-Seater by Whittingham & Mitchel (left) and a burl walnut storage box mounted in the frunk (right).  The box was a custom fitting and most Magnettes were seen with the frunk simply carpeted.  Sometimes described by auction houses as a DHC (drophead coupé), this body style (despite what would come to be called 2+2 seating) really is a true roadster.  Note the six spare spark plugs in the engine bay; motoring used to be a much more maintenance-intensive business. 

The combination of a frunk and a front-mounted engine is unusual but it has been done.  What the coach-builder did with the MG Magnette was take advantage of what would otherwise be wasted space and the frunk typically was used as the place to store the car's tool-kit (sometimes an extensive inventory because such things often were needed, reliability then not what it became).  Frunks as a thing long pre-dated use of the term which seems to have come into use only in the 1990s (apparently part of the jargon among the cult of of rear-engined Porsche owners) but it was Tesla "formalizing" the terminology in the 2010s which made it mainstream.  The MG N-Type Magnette (1934-1936) used a 1271 cm³ (78 cubic inch) straight-six and while the combination of that many cylinders and a small displacement sounds curious, the configuration was something of an English tradition and a product of (1) a taxation system based on cylinder bore and (2) the attractive economies of scale and production line rationalization of “adding two cylinders” to existing four-cylinder units to achieve greater, smoother power with the additional benefit of retaining the same tax-rate.  Even after the taxation system was changed, some small-capacity sixes were developed as out-growths of fours.  Despite the additional length of the block, there remained between cowl (scuttle) and engine enough space to include a modest frunk.

1935 MG NA Magnette Allingham 2/4-Seater by Whittingham & Mitchel with dickie seat.  Note the resemblance of the front bucket seats to those used in the early (S1 3.8; 1961-1964) Jaguar E-Type (1961-1974).  While the scalloped shape was admired for its elegance they really weren't all that comfortable and there were few complaints when a pair with more prosaic lines was substituted.   

The other unusual feature included by Whittingham & Mitchel in this Magnette was a dickie ("rumble" to the Americans) seat as part of the cockpit.  Although most rumble seats were mounted in an aperture separated from the passenger compartment, in smaller vehicles the additional seat often was integrated but became usable (by people) only when the hinged cover was raised; otherwise, the rear-seat cushion was a nicely upholstered parcel shelf.  Stylistically, what this afforded the designers was the scope to make a car appear a rakish two-seat roadster but one with the practicality of seating four when the panel was folded back.  That's no longer done but the concept remains, some designers artfully now concealing rear-door handles to hint at the look of a two door coupé, something now made more plausible by the adoption of the "four-door coupé" motif for the few remaining sedans and (less successfully) many SUVs (sports utility vehicles).