Did you send out your New Year’s cards yet?

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It’s no wonder Louis Prang is considered the “Father of the American Christmas Card.” During the height of chromolithography in the 1860s, 70s, and 80s, Prang’s firm in Boston introduced the concept of the Christmas card to America and produced over 5 million greeting cards per year. While Prang’s Christmas cards are displayed often, in ...

The Acquisitions Table: Norwich Fire Insurance Co.

Norwich Fire Insurance Co. New York: Hatch & Co., 1863-1865. This color lithograph for a Connecticut insurance company features a city view surrounded by international flags and the names of local directors with interests in the firm. The sheet was printed by Hatch & Co. in New York, who advertised that they could produce: "Portraits landscapes, ...

Santa and the Christmas Tree in Nineteenth-Century American Children’s Books

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Although we might think of Santa and an evergreen Christmas tree as inevitably wedded in nineteenth-century children’s book illustration, that was not necessarily the case.  Until about 1840, New Year’s Day was favored over Christmas as the family-appropriate winter holiday in the young American Republic, particularly in New England, where the descendants of the Puritans ...

The Surprisingly Similar Case of Shopping, Then and Now

shoe shopping

At this time of year, when shopping becomes a constant (and sometimes stressful) preoccupation, it’s easy to forget that for many people it’s a pleasurable pastime. Not just because of what you actually buy, but also because of the searching, comparing, matching, and imagining that all make up the act of shopping. As it turns ...

The Acquisitions Table: Traveller’s Rough Notes, on Niagara Falls

Travellers' Rough Notes, on Niagara Falls. Black Rock, NY: Smith H. Salisbury, 1827. APPARENTLY UNRECORDED, ONLY KNOWN COPY! Please excuse the yelling, but we get excited at AAS when we are able to add a new piece to scholarly and bibliographical knowledge. Though tiny (just a little over 11cm in height) this small pamphlet represents just such ...

Get the perfect gift for the antiquarian in your life, and help AAS and the world!

Give a Gift to World

This November AAS experimented with a new year-end fundraiser.  We called it "Give a Gift to AAS Give a Gift to the World."  Thirty objects were selected from across the entire spectrum of the Society's collections with several criteria in mind.  Items had to be significant sources of research, fragile or rare, and under about ...

On the Road for AAS

The Los Angeles skyline at dawn during a recent AAS business trip.

A lot of the Society's staff travels for work.  We are a national organization and we collect material from all across the fifty states and Canada.  Curators travel to conferences and to visit collectors,  catalogers move about for training and to stay up to date with the latest methods, managers visit members, foundations, granting agencies, ...

The Acquisitions Table: The News-Letter

The News-Letter (Otterville, Missouri). Jan. 27, 1862. Vol. 1, no. 1. Newspapers published by Civil War regiments are scarce. One scarce genre of newspapers is Civil War regiment publications. Sometimes a regiment had printing equipment at a fort or took over a printing office at an occupied town and produced its own newspaper for the amusement ...

The Annual Report: Not All Business

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Another year done means another Annual Report. For most, the phrase “annual report” doesn’t exactly elicit imaginings of stimulating reading material. But here at AAS we like to think of the Annual Report as more than just a business reckoning. It’s also a reflection of a thriving community—a learned society, if you will—made up of ...

The Acquisitions Table: The Blind Child’s First Book

Howe, Samuel Gridley. The Blind Child’s First Book. Third edition. Boston: New England Institution for the Education of the Blind, 1852. This is a fairly early (and rare) example of printing for the blind using raised type known as Boston Line, developed by the book’s author Samuel Gridley Howe (1801-1876), who gained national fame as the ...

Chromolithography at AAS – Now Including after 1876!

insurance co litho

As many researchers already know, life stops in 1876 for many parts of the American Antiquarian Society’s collections which are limited to the pre-Centennial era.  Recently, however, the Society has amended its collection policies to permit the curator of graphic arts to add prints produced between 1876 and 1900 to the Society’s holdings in order ...

The Acquisitions Table: Horoscope

Horoscope, Philadelphia, March 1850. A rare find for the manuscripts department is this hand written horoscope, or “nativitie,” The four page document features a chart mapping out alignments of planets and the moon. The astrologer gives the twenty-three year old subject details about his character, general fortune on specific days and months, and children – “you ...

Thanksgiving, 1863

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It has been a big year for some of the country’s most important documents. January saw the sesquicentennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, and just last week was the 150th anniversary of the reading of the Gettysburg Address. This Thursday in the United States we celebrate our national day of Thanksgiving, and so are looking back, ...

The Acquisitions Table: Calico Dress Ball!

Calico Dress Ball! There Will be a Social Dance at Lyceum Hall, West Acton. Boston: Searle Printing, 1870. This large (42” x 28 ½”) broadside was one of a group of five sheets purchased together, all of which relate to activities in Acton and West Acton, Massachusetts, between 1865 and 1875. Printed in Boston by F.A. ...

Give a Gift to AAS Give a (digitized) Gift to World!

Council for New England Records, "The booke of Orders," 1622-1623.

At most non-profits, November and December are year-end fundraiser months. You are probably getting a lot of solicitation letters in your mail box, along with those stacks of glossy holiday catalogs.  AAS has several important initiatives underway, including donations to our Annual Fund.  This year, however, we are also trying something new. The Society’s curators have selected thirty objects ...