Early 1900s

Ruth Budd Spinning Plates

Ruth Budd, born Ruth Carpenter, was a popular Vaudeville performer of the early 1900s. An exceptionally strong woman, Ruth reversed gender stereotypes and performed feats normally reserved for male acrobats. To further her career, she developed her singing voice and would sing as she swung suspended from a trapeze or slid down a rope upside-down. Billed as "The Upside Down Lady," Ruth's unique talent was combining masculine strength with feminine grace and extraordinary agility.

During the age of the Suffragette movement, she challenged ideas of roles expected of women. By the 1930s, Budd had returned to Fort Wayne and operated a small grocery with her husband and her parents. The "girl with the smile" also worked in the cigar store in the Keenan Hotel during the 1950's where she would share scrapbooks of her international adventures with the patrons. These shiny chrome spinning plates were used by Ruth Budd in her aerial act. The center of each plate has slight conical shape where a rod would be placed in middle for spinning the plate. There are a few dents in the plates, indicating that even the best performers sometimes make mistakes.