Most members of the American Antiquarian Society are aware of the enormous contributions made by the Salisbury family of Worcester County, Massachusetts. Stephen Salisbury II served as president of the Society from 1854 until his death in 1884, and his son, Stephen Salisbury III, served as president from 1887 until his death in 1905. (A ...
Not so long ago I got a phone call from AAS member David Doret (elected 2009), telling me that he had a Christmas book of potential interest. It was what seemed to be the first fully illustrated book-length edition of Clement Clarke Moore’s classic Christmas poem A Visit from St. Nicholas, better known as "The ...
The trappings of an American Christmas have become as familiar as one’s own family—lights and trees, Santa Claus and reindeer, food and good cheer. That hasn’t always been the case, of course. The Puritans, for one, simply banned Christmas in the New World. Stemming from pagan celebrations of the harvest and the winter solstice, the ...
One year from now AAS will be opening the exhibition Radiant with Color and Light: McLoughlin Brothers and the Business of Picture Books, 1858-1920 at the Grolier Club in New York. The show will feature nearly two hundred books, games, watercolors, toys, and ephemera, all produced by the McLoughlin Bros. firm and their contemporaries. The ...
Although Clement Clarke Moore is now recognized as the celebrated Christmas poet, early twentieth-century writer Carolyn Wells (1862-1942) expanded on Moore’s vision of Christmas as a season of wholesome family-centered celebration in her Christmas Alphabet. Issued by New York picture book publisher McLoughlin Brothers in 1900, the Christmas Alphabet weaves evocative verse and gorgeous full-color ...
In December it is traditional to send Christmas cards. We have discussed this practice on the AAS blog in the past and also have looked at the popularity of the New Year's card, something that has fallen out of fashion entirely in the United States. But one aspect of nineteenth-century holiday cards that we have ...
Last month we took a look at how young Marion “Minnie” Boyd Allen spent Thanksgiving Day in 1875 and 1876 (rousing renditions of popular plays and too much food were all the rage). But Minnie didn’t contain her holiday exuberance to Thanksgiving; she had plenty left over for Christmas.
Minnie says very little about the lead-up to ...
Starting in 1880, the chromolithographer Louis Prang held an annual design contest for the selection of his color-printed Christmas cards. Prang, who is often called “The Father of the American Christmas Card,” helped to popularize the practice of sending cards in the United States after he made an 1864 visit to Europe. While there he ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
This piece of sheet music in the Society’s collection represents a handful of Confederate imprints published by George Dunn and Company (printer) and written or edited by F.W. (Fitz William) Rosier. Even before official secession, and certainly after, the Confederate States produced their own government documents and publications; there were also religious pieces and education ...
We are going to brave the waters of wartime Christmas. In the next few days, there will be three posts examining Confederate-printed items in the Society’s collection. This season of festivities is also one of commemoration and reflection as we are squarely in the War’s sesquicentennial.
A glance over the pages of the nation’s most popular ...
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 ...
The holiday rush has started for us all, so we hope you will forgive us at Past is Present for having taken a bit of a break recently. To kick off the month of December, in the spirit of Christmas giving, please accept these chromolithographed Christmas cards as our present from the past. Click on ...
