美国石版画 Cotton Oil Mill, Merritt Mauzey, 1938-43. -6parkbbs.com

Cotton Oil Mill (Molten Skies). Lithograph. Between 1938 and 1943. Edition of 30-40 (Molten Skies with stated edition of 20). Merritt Mauzey (1898 – 1975). 6park.com

The image is included with the title “Molten Skies” on page 74 in the book Cotton-Farm Boy written and illustrated by Merritt Mauzey, published by Henry Schuman, New York, 1953. The book contains a series of scenes depicting Texas cotton farm life, taken from the author’s childhood and accompanied by texts with a young boy, Billy, as central character. 6park.com

The caption for this image reads: “It wasn’t until after Billy (young Mauzey) was grown up that people realized how much they could do with cotton sees. Billy and Jess (Mauzey’s brother) used to take their seeds home from the gin to feed the cattle, to save for planting and even to burn. 6park.com

But now farmers send seeds to the cotton oil mill. There the seeds are parted from the little wisps of cotton still clinging to them. This fuzz is called linters, and it is turned into padding, paper, even moving-picture screens.
The outer layers of the cotton seeds are taken off at the cotton oil mill to make cattle-feed. Sometimes the seeds themselves are cooked in blocks and these cottonseed cakes help fatten cattle. 6park.com

Cotton seeds turn up in strange places – in smokeless powder and in fertilizer, in phonograph needles, in linoleum and paint. And the oil forced out of them goes into shortening and salad dressings. 6park.com

To Billy, most of this would have seemed like magic.” 6park.com