Conservation of a “Valuable Lot”

The author working closely with chief conservator Babette Gehnrich.

Halaina Demba, our guest author here, is a third year student in the Buffalo State College Program in art conservation. She spent this past summer, the final one of her graduate studies, interning in the Society’s book and paper conservation lab. This summer the American Antiquarian Society received a unique gift of an 1854 broadside with ...

Watch Papers at the American Antiquarian Society

This summer, Graphic Arts intern Dominique Ledoux, a student at Wellesley College, created an inventory of the Society’s collection of 464 watch papers. Watch papers are round decorative papers placed between the inner and outer case of a pocket watch to protect its inner workings. They also served as advertisements for watchmakers as they often ...

Behind the Scenes at the American Antiquarian Society, or What I Learned from a Tour of the Library

Did you know that a patriot printer named Isaiah Thomas founded the American Antiquarian Society in 1812? Did you know that the terms uppercase, lowercase, and stereotype originated from terms used in relation to early printing presses? Did you know that early printers needed to read backwards and upside down? Do you know why the ...

A Place of Reading: Three Centuries of Reading in America

fatherreading

A Place of Reading.  That phrase defines Antiquarian Hall.  Reading is an everyday occupation for those of us in Antiquarian Hall whether staff or, yes, readers.  But it is also part of the title for the newest online exhibition posted on the AAS website.  How did this one come to pass? It started over twenty ...

Dispatch from an AAS Intern: 19th-Century Children’s Letterwriting

dad

These days you would be more likely to encounter a young child e-mailing or texting than writing a letter to a family correspondent. Many believe that letter writing is a lost art in the digital age. It is certainly romanticized in films and books but in the 19th century household correspondence was an ...