Winged Dragon and Knight’s Head

This cast metal inkstand features a winged dragon and the head of a knight as the finial for a swivel lid covering the inkwell. The base is marked “St. Louis, Oct. 4^th, 1898”.  The letters V & P, entwined as part of the decoration on the base, represent a secret society called the “Veiled Prophet”. The knight’s head seen on this inkstand represents the head of the “Veiled Prophet”.

The Veiled Prophets Parade and Ball was initiated in 1878 by a group of ‘anonymous’ businessmen in St. Louis called the Mysterious Order of the Veiled Prophets. According to the Mysterious Order of the Veiled Prophets, the annual event sought to boost tourism, increase civic engagement and patriotism in the community, and reassert St. Louis as the region’s most important city. Other interpretations argue that the parade represented an attempt by patriarchs to reassert their control over society with displays of force and class solidarity.

Amidst faltering agricultural and mechanical fairs and the social upheaval of the Great Uprising (an 1877 nationwide labor strike that brought the country to a virtual standstill), Charles Slayback and his brother Alonzo brought together many of St. Louis’ business and civic leaders to revive interest in harvest season events. Drawing inspiration from the poet Thomas Moore’s Veiled Prophet of Khorassan, the founders of the Mysterious Order of the Veiled Prophets wanted the organization’s members to remain anonymous so that the focus of the Order’s good deeds would be on the organization, and not any single member. Later, secrecy would lead to controversy. Groups excluded from the Mysterious Order began to accuse the organization of being a front group for anti-labor, anti-Semitic, and racist elements in St. Louis society.

The Mysterious Order of the Veiled Prophets created an entire mythology around the Veiled Prophet of Khorassan adapted from their city’s Mardi Gras Mystick Krewe of Comus. The story held that the prophet was a powerful world traveler with super-human traits who made his home in St. Louis.

For a complete history of the Veiled Prophet Parade and Ball, see this article in Wikipedia: Veiled Prophet Parade and Ball – Wikipedia

In 2021, the “Veiled Prophet Parade” was replaced by the “American Birthday Parade” as to assuage concerns that the pageant was “a symbol of wealth, power, and to some racism.”