Beware of a swindler!! New York: J.W. Bell, 1835. This spectacular broadside documents the accusations of printer Jared W. Bell (1798?-1870) against a former journeyman, James B. Whitney. Bell accuses Whitney, who became a lieutenant commandant in the New York artillery, of embezzling money from Bell’s printing business. Bell was notoriously difficult. In 1821 he ...
Here at AAS we have lots of small collections that are safely tucked away, accessible only due to the knowledge of the reference staff, catalogers, or curators who bump into them occasionally when searching for other things. As we work our way through our holdings we try to increase access to these “lost” collections ...
March 1, 2010 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of the pianist composer Frédéric François Chopin (1810-1849). Chopin was born near Warsaw and lived much of his short life in France so you may be asking yourself why on earth there is a post about him on the blog of the American Antiquarian Society. ...
In the cold of a New England winter, it is easy to feel sorry for one’s self as the grey clouds of January barely dissipate in the low light of February’s early gloam. Some believe that the best way to tackle winter is to embrace it, and so the Graphic Arts department offers for your ...
Dogs. Some people love them, others hate them. Regardless, there is just no getting around the fact that the lives of humans and dogs have long been intertwined. Depictions of dogs were painted on cave walls by early man and just last week images of “First Dog” Bo (the Obama’s Portuguese water ...
In 2010, the Graphic Arts department will be evaluating and re-housing its collection of nineteenth-century valentines. We have over 3,000 of these lacy, be-flowered paper objects and they are being sorted to provide better access for readers. Due to the high number and complexity of each object (some have moving parts, accompanying envelopes, etc., while ...
Just in time for your winter viewing pleasure (who needs football?), the Graphic Arts team is pleased to announce that an inventory of the European Political Print Collection is now on-line and is fully illustrated. Have a look: http://www.americanantiquarian.org/Inventories/Europeanprints/ This is the latest work by our Graphic Arts Assistant Jaclyn Penny, who inventoried, described, re-foldered, and digitized ...
With the pending release of Apple Computers’ tablet computer and the surrounding press and discussion, it seemed like a good time to review the precursor to it all, the humble school slate. The Antiquarian Society has several nineteenth-century slates in the games collection, including one with multiple pages, patented in 1867 and bound like a ...
Recently the Graphic Arts staff at the American Antiquarian Society posted its latest illustrated inventory, a complete listing of political and social engraved satires from the Charles Peirce collection (yes, that last name is spelled correctly! Peirce, not Pierce!). You can have a look by following this link http://www.americanantiquarian.org/Inventories/Peirce/ Like many collections here at the Society, ...
Last Friday we posted an entry about bookmarks describing the variety of scraps and ephemeral objects used by eighteenth and nineteenth century readers to mark their places in their books. As that blog post was being edited, yet another bookmark was discovered, and a most curious one at that. A small letter was found tucked ...
If you were lucky enough to be the recipient of multiple books this holiday season, all of which beg to be read immediately, you may be in need of a crucial tool . . . the humble bookmark! At the Antiquarian Society, as books are catalogued they are checked over carefully by our staff and often ...
