In his 1913 “Report of the Librarian” published in the AAS Proceedings, Clarence Brigham concludes with an account of “one of the most valuable gifts ever received by the Society.” It was a collection of some 300 pieces of Staffordshire with American scenes. “It is particularly appropriate,” noted Brigham, “that the Society, which already possesses ...
“A book holds a house of gold.” – Chinese proverb AAS has quite a variety of American newspapers in different languages: German, French, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Welsh, Cherokee, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Dutch, and Hawaiian. There is one language, however, that provided a unique challenge for printers. All of the newspapers above are letterpress. Each letter is ...
We know how to keep busy in the dead of winter here at the American Antiquarian Society. In late 2012 Patricia Johnston, the Professor Rev. J. Gerard Mears, S.J. chair in fine arts at the College of the Holy Cross, approached AAS with the idea of having one of her Holy Cross classes research and ...
Barrow, Frances. New Little Mittens. New York & London: D. Appleton and Co., 1869. This wood-engraved frontispiece is a comic scene set in the culture clash between a Chinese gentleman going out for a stroll, and an ignorant American sailor who pulls his queue and says “My stars and stripes! What a long tail our pussy ...
Of all the artifacts AAS has held on to over two centuries, the hardest one to explain is the collection of Staffordshire pottery. It's not because it is a stretch really, but more because of the never-ending layers to unpack when the question comes up. How is it that a library that is devoted unwaveringly ...
