When Mennis died the secret of suppa and flight itself was lost with him. It was disbanded in the 1860s due to the death of Peter Mennis, an inventor and pilot as well as discoverer of a 'Lifting Fluid' variously called 'NB gas' or 'supe' or 'suppe' or 'suppa'. This is roughly when, according to Dellschau, the Sonora Aero Club was active. Through his art he claimed that, sometime in the 1850s, he was in California where he was the Aero Club's draughtsman. He came to the United States in 1853, where he worked for most of his life as a butcher. He was a German immigrant, born in Prussia in 1830. There is no evidence for the Sonora Aero Club that does not appear in Dellschau's artwork, but plenty against it elsewhere in the historical record.ĭellschau claimed to have been the Aero Club's draughtsman.
But it seems abundantly clear to me that we can in fact say that it pretty much definitely never existed. The Atlantic describes it as 'The Amazing Story of an Airship Club That Might Never Have Existed', as though we should be surprised if it had not. This is a beguiling idea, and some of Dellschau's admirers have tried to find out whether it is actually true (such as Pete Navarro, who is largely responsible for rescuing Dellschau's work). Secondly, his overarching narrative: that his artwork records the activities of the Sonora Aero Club, a secret group of airminded inventors who actually created and flew the aircraft he depicted in California in the mid-nineteenth century. Firstly, his subject matter: his artwork is filled with strange flying machines (balloons? airships? aeroplanes?) intermingled with press clippings about aviation.
Dellschau, who produced thousands of strange and wonderful watercolours, drawings and collages in Houston, Texas, between about 18, is significant as an early outsider artist, but he is mainly of interest to me for two things.
The art of Charles Dellschau has been receiving some attention lately, thanks to the recent publication of a book about his work.
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