Artists in the AAS Archive: New Series on the AAS Artist Fellowships

In April, we published an article in honor of National Poetry Month, entitled "Poets in the AAS Archive." In this same thread, we are pleased to share our plans now to create a new series on Past is Present dedicated to our artist fellows. This new series will spotlight the work of current and past fellows ...

When Times are Tough, AAS Gets Going . . . on Transcription!

Staff at AAS have been sad and frustrated about Covid-19’s effects on our researchers, fellows, and fellow cultural institutions. Despite this hardship, we’ve been able to find some joy in our days and to feel connected to the collections we love by working on a staff-wide transcription of the first AAS donation book. For those of ...

“Don’t Expose Me”: The Beecher-Tilton Scandal of New York

Maggie Panteli is pursuing a BA degree in History and is graduating May 2020 from Clark University. During the summer of 2019, she worked part-time as a Readers’ Services Page and as an assistant in the Graphic Arts Department cataloging stereographs. Her favorite cataloging job was working with the McLoughlin illustrations. Her time at AAS ...

Join AAS This Summer On a Social Media Road Trip

For many people, Memorial Day weekend marks the unofficial start of summer. As we antiquarians here at AAS began thinking about summer in the collections, we started to imagine how wonderful it might be to go on a road trip and visit every state represented in our collections—that’s all fifty, of course!

Since the feasibility of ...

Worcester’s “Garden City”

My favorite part of cataloging is figuring out a mystery. When little information is given with an object and I am able to solve that mystery, I’m a happy camper. So when a set of three photographs came across my desk, one of them a very sweet image of children holding rabbits and chickens, I ...

Identifying the Unidentified

Kathleen Major has been volunteering in the Manuscripts Department at AAS for several years. She worked at AAS from 1976 to 1984 and was Keeper of Manuscripts for a portion of that time. After leaving the Society to care for her children, Kathy worked at the Gale Free Library in Holden, most recently as head of ...

Feelin’ Blue: Cyano-HYPE at AAS

Ali Phaneuf is a junior at Fairfield University and was a page in the Reader’s Services Department this past summer. As a journalism major and a studio art minor, Ali has always been an avid book reader and art enthusiast, and her love of books and creativity was able to grow through her experience at ...

Pasted Pandemonium!

After highlighting marbled paper in a blog post last year, I received this suggestion from several people: Why not explore another popular kind of decorative paper- paste paper? Paste papers are much simpler than marbled papers, but the art form has a rich history and has produced countless beautiful examples. I searched through the AAS ...

Back to School (supplies!)

In the AAS Penmanship Collection, a group of penmanship exercises  and copy books by various students, there is a poem titled “After Vacation” by an unknown pupil from the Parkerville School in Westford, Massachusetts. The poem is on the first page of one of the mostly-filled volumes and captures an adieu to summer with the ...

Nimrod, Newspapers, and the Apocalypse of 1812

"I saw the gathering tempest and heard its dreadful roarings, which seemed to me the roaring and burstings of ten thousand canons at once. Then I saw the trees of the forest torn by the violence of the winds, and dashed against each other, and against everything that stood before them, and houses and rocks ...

Boo! Bookplates!

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Each year as Halloween comes around, the staff here at AAS tries to think of ways to feature the spooky, scary, and creepy material in the Society’s collection. We have shown off our postcard collection and some fright-inducing stereograph photos. We’ve hunted for ghost stories, featured gift book illustrations of the supernatural, and peered into ...

It started with a passport and ended with a duel…

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Early in the summer, AAS received a generous donation of graphic arts materials from one of the Society’s members, Jim Heald, via the Worcester Art Museum. Among these items nestled on the acquisitions table was a mid-nineteenth-century passport, which stood out for two reasons. Primarily, until that moment, it had not occurred to me that ...

Little Lamb, Big Story

The Birthplace of Mary

Ali Phaneuf is a rising sophomore at Fairfield University and is currently a readers’ services summer page. As a journalism major and an art minor, Ali has always been an avid book reader, and her love of books and creativity was able to grow through her experience at AAS.

The story of “Mary had ...

So you think you can bake? Nineteenth-Century Edition

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Kristina Bush is a rising senior at Mount Holyoke College. She majors in medieval studies and minors in public history, museums, archives, and digital humanities. Kristina is currently working at the American Antiquarian Society as a summer page in readers’ services. Being an avid book-lover and history nerd, Kristina has greatly enjoyed her time at ...

#hamildays: A Hamilton-Inspired Journey Through the Stacks

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The following is the story behind the newest feature on AAS's website, #hamildays: A Hamilton-Inspired Journey Through the Stacks.

As a monographs cataloger at the American Antiquarian Society, I work primarily with books and pamphlets, often ones printed in the United States during the nineteenth century. However, the twenty-five miles of shelves at AAS hold much more ...