The March 2013 issue of AJN: The American Journal of Nursing featured on its cover a well-known AAS collection item – A Map of the Open country of a Woman’s Heart by “A Lady” published by Kellogg c. 1833–1842. Throughout the month of April, we received queries about this image from nurses around the country. [...]
As a Jay and Deborah Last Fellow at the American Antiquarian Society, I was excited to find a wealth of material related to my dissertation on photography and intellectual property law. The United States Constitution pledged “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing, for limited Times, to Authors and Inventors the [...]
Tonight is the night! Come to AAS at 6 p.m. for the Society’s 6th annual Adopt-a-Book event! There will be food, drinks, original collection materials to view, and curatorial knowledge-sharing. If you haven’t pre-adopted it will be $10 to get in, but if you have, it’s free! You can still browse the 2013 Adopt-A-Book Catalog to [...]
The AAS curatorial team is just delighted by the response to our 6th annual Adopt-a-Book event, with over half of the selected “orphans” already adopted by generous supporters. Thank you! Below, please find one of the few titles for children still available from the online catalog as well as a railroad map from the cartography [...]
On Friday, April 5th from 6:00 to 8:00pm, the American Antiquarian Society will be hosting our 6th Annual Adopt-A-Book event. This event is an important fundraiser for the curatorial team at the Society, and monies raised will go towards future acquisitions of books, prints, newspapers, manuscripts, and children’s literature. You can browse the entire catalog [...]
Attribution is something libraries and museums struggle with every day. Who is the sitter in this portrait? Who is the author of this pamphlet? Often the objects give us clues, but not always. Sometimes they even lead us astray. This is the story of a pair of daguerreotypes at the American Antiquarian Society and how [...]
As many scholars of American history are aware, for many decades before 1840 the largest winter holiday in the nation was New Year’s Day, not Christmas. Christmas was perceived by many Protestant Americans as too closely linked to Catholicism. New Year’s Day, on the other hand, was a secular family holiday often marked by travel [...]
Nineteenth-century American publisher McLoughlin Brothers pioneered the use of chromolithography in the production of color picture books starting in the 1860s. Until that point, most children’s books were illustrated with wood engravings that were locked into the printing press form along with set type. Coloring these images generally entailed using hand-colored stencils or employing a [...]
Camp of the Duryea’s Zouaves Federal Hill Baltimore, Md. Looking North. Baltimore: E. Sachse& Co., 1861. This hand colored lithograph is one of six prints of Civil War encampments by E. Sachse& Co. given to the Society by member David Doret. The publisher, Edward Sachse (1804-1873), had just opened at a new location on South [...]
Some children would do just about anything to catch a glimpse of the gift-giving St. Nick on Christmas Eve – others have parents who would set up a camera and create a stereographic photograph to capture the whole visit. This image, titled “Santa Claus loaded for business” illustrates just such a scene. A bearded and [...]
Photograph Album. [1863-1866]. This album of over 150 cartes-de-visite images of American prints illustrates the methods used to distribute images in the nineteenth century. Many of the photographs were made by John B. Soule. Soule worked with lithographers, such as J. H. Bufford, to reproduce popular lithographed images of children, attractive women, kittens, and comical [...]
As a description of a professional trajectory in the research library world, it certainly makes for an impressive resume: Library Assistant, American Antiquarian Society Curator of Maps and Prints, American Antiquarian Society Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Graphic Arts, American Antiquarian Society Director, Center for Historic American Visual Culture, American Antiquarian Society At the same [...]
Edward W. Clay, Practical Amalgamation. The Wedding. New York, John Childs, ca. 1839. This print by Edward W. Clay is one in a series of images that comments on interracial relationships in America during the 1830s. Most of the prints in the set are held by the Society. This impression is actually a second copy [...]
This month Circus and the City: New York, 1793-2010 opened at the Bard Graduate Center Galleries in New York (September 12, 2012 to February 3, 2013). You can learn more about the exhibition here. Two former AAS fellows, Matthew Wittmann and Brett Mizelle, contributed essays to the related (and very substantial) publication, The American Circus (New [...]
W. Barnard after Joshua Cartwright, The Cambrian of Boston, Willm. Marshall Master. Beating off a French Butter Privateer, on 23 October 1804. Boston, C. Cave, 1805. In the fall of 1804, the British ship Cambrian was part of a blockade of New York Harbor. This print depicts the ship engaging a French cutter (several French [...]
No license. A question to be settled in the State of New York. New York: Journal of the American Temperance Union, 1846. On linen. This textile broadside was issued as an extra to the Journal of the American Temperance Union during the 1846 elections in New York State. That year, every one of the 800+ [...]
E.W. Clay, attr., The Quarrel, lithograph, NY: John Childs, 1839. This previously unrecorded cartoon, published in New York, is one in a set of prints investigating the social implications of interaction between white citizens and African Americans. The cartoon, which was probably designed by the artist Edward W. Clay for John Childs, depicts two African [...]
Hollis Jubal Haven with American flag, tintype, 1861; Unidentified Civil War soldier with bayonet, ambrotype; and Albertina Haven Revere, tintype. Occasionally AAS visitors bring along objects they wish to donate to the Society. This autumn we had several visits from Dr. Christian W. Aussenheimer, a Worcester resident with connections to the Haven and Hoar families. [...]
Arrangements for paying funeral honors to the memory of La Fayette, on Tuesday, July 15, in the city of Hudson. Hudson, NY: P. Dean Carrique, 1834. When the Marquis de Lafayette died on May 20, 1834, Americans—who still closely identified the French general with the success of the American Revolutionary War—marked the occasion with solemn [...]
The fifth annual Adopt-A-Book event will be held on Tuesday, April 3, at 6 p.m. Browse the 2012 Adopt-A-Book Catalog to view the 150 items up for adoption. Here are a few highlights still available for adoption from the Graphic Arts collections. 77. BIGGER IS BETTER! Adopt me for $250 A Mammoth newspaper! 10 Copies [...]
Schoolmarm, 1870
