The Travels of a Fox on His Way to the Grapes

The Shaw Childhood in Poetry Collection has just received the gift of a crocheted representation of Aesop’s fable “The Fox and the Grapes.”

A Seychelles Crochet, “The Fox and the Grapes,” ca. 18th century. Gift of Jacqueline Dupont, PhD 1962, to the Shaw Collection, March 2015.

Sometime many years ago, an industrious native of The Seychelles, a country of islands nearest to Africa in the Indian Ocean, used a crochet hook to knot this piece of fabric art. Early in the 20th century, Louise Dupont, another native of The Seychelles, immigrated to England and then to Florida. In 1938, on a return holiday to her birthplace, she obtained this piece of fabric and brought it back to the United States with her.

Detail of an illustration from the book Bewick’s select fables of Aesop and others by Thomas Bewick. London: Longmans, Green, and Co. 1878.

In the 1960s Louise was living in Plant City, Florida near her son’s family when her granddaughter, Jacqueline Dupont, came to Florida State University to study for her Doctorate. When she graduated, Jackie arranged for her family members to stay with local Tallahassee friends. She chose John and Lillian Shaw to host her Grandmere Louise. By this time, John Shaw had given his Childhood in Poetry books, including editions of Aesop’s Fables, to Florida State.

From Aesop’s Fables, Coblentz and Syverson. Norwalk: C.R. Gibson Co. 1968.

Having worked closely together, Jackie and her major professor Harvye Lewis remained friends after she graduated and Harvye moved to Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. Her Grandmere Louise presented this piece of Seychelles crochet to Harvye in 1974 in gratitude and respect for Harvye’s mentoring and friendship with her granddaughter. Harvye had it framed and wrote a note on the back of it indicating that it “should be given to Jacqueline L. Dupont.”

When Harvye died in 1998, Jackie, recognizing that “The Fox and the Grapes” would appear often in the Shaw Childhood in Poetry Collection, gave it to John Shaw’s daughter, Cathmar Prange, in whose Iowa home it hung ever since Harvye’s death.

After traveling halfway around the world and thousands more miles within the United States, this fox has been delivered to his final stop in Strozier Library’s Special Collections & Archives at Florida State. He is yet to get the grapes however.

Illustration from Aesop’s Fables by Percy J. Billinghurst. Ware: Omega Books Ltd. 1984.

Cathmar Prange is a long time volunteer and donor to Special Collections & Archives and every winter, shares her time in helping to curate and grow her father’s, John Mackay Shaw, collection.