Carmel Mission. Iron, Height 5.5 in. Circa 1910.
Alta California was first visited by Spanish explorers in the 1530s. It wasn’t until 1769 that Spain began to claim control of the West Coast by sending soldiers and Franciscan priests to establish presidios and missions at strategic points. Each Spanish outpost to be an independent and self-reliant agrarian community. The first Presidio and Mission were built on a bluff overlooking San Diego Bay in 1769. Eventually a line of 4 presidios and 21 missions from San Diego to Sonoma secured Alta California for Spain and later Mexico.
The second mission established, San Carlos Borromeo, with its presidio or military garrison, in 1770 was some 450 miles north of San Diego, at Carmel. It is familiarly known as Carmel Mission. Local Indians were conscripted to be its work force and to be converted to Catholicism. Carmel Mission became the headquarters for the California mission chain from 1770 to 1803. Father Junipero Serra, founder of the chain of Spanish missions in Alta California, is buried there.
Carmel Mission circa 1800: Historic American Buildings Survey Oriane Day Paintings (1861 – 1885) DeYoung Museum – San Francisco, California Prior to 1835. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Today, San Carlos Borromeo is known as the Carmel Mission Basilica and the Shrine of Saint Junipero Serra. It is a parish church, museum, and home to important Catholic colonial era relics: the Caravaca Cross reliquary which was carried by Father Serra and was found on his chest during a 1943 archeological exhumation and Our Lady of Bethlehem Statue, also known as La Conquistadora, which accompanied the first expedition from Mexico. The library at the Carmel Mission is considered the First Library of California with it’s collection of books and papers brought by Father Serra and other early Franciscans.
Carmel Mission is considered the most authentically restored mission of the chain. Beginning in 1931 Harry Downie, at the request of Monsignor Philip Scher, spent the next 50 years restoring the Mission Church and outbuildings.
Our set of beautifully cast, painted iron bookends depicts Carmel Mission as it appeared in the late 1800s. A stereographic photo included in C.W.J. Johnson’s Views of California (circa 1875 – 1890) may have been the inspiration for this particular rendition of the Carmel Mission. It reflects the church in a state of decay – collapsed roof and a remnant of an adobe outbuilding that on the bookends bears the inscription “Carmel Mission 1770.” A later photo (1909) shows the Mission with a roof that was erected to preserve the chapel that didn’t come down until the 1930s restoration. Also, by the 1909 photo the adobe ruins have disappeared.
The Bookend Collector 