Ethiopian bookbinding class. October 10, 2011.

Riddle of Independence: Independent but not Free

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Danielle Allen will give the Program in African American History’s 2015 Juneteenth Freedom Symposium talk at the Library Company. While in residence, our Mellon Scholars interns read Dr. Allen’s Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration…
Ethiopian bookbinding class. October 10, 2011.

A Dead Prostitute, a Male Impersonator, and a Medium: Three Sensational Pamphlets

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Our Curator of Printed Books Rachel D’Agostino found these three sensational pamphlets at a recent book fair. Purchased with the Davida T. Deutsch Women’s History Fund, they are the sort of lowbrow items our 19th-century predecessors…
Ethiopian bookbinding class. October 10, 2011.

The Union Library Company of Hatboro

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The Union Library Company of Hatboro, Pennsylvania, founded in 1755, is one of the oldest public libraries in America and one of many that imitated the Library Company of Philadelphia in name, mission, and organization. Recently the Board…
Ethiopian bookbinding class. October 10, 2011.

Frocks and Frills: Children’s Fashion at the Turn of the 20th Century

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Marriott C. Morris took this photograph of his son, Marriott Jr., in 1903 outside their house on Cresheim Road in the Mt. Airy neighborhood.  Young Marriott’s attire was typical for a boy of three at the time: skirted sailor suit, long…
Ethiopian bookbinding class. October 10, 2011.

Preserving the Legacy of the Pennsylvania Railroad

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The following is a guest post by Michael Froio who is a professional photographer, associate professor and facilities manager for the Photography Program, part of the Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts and Design at Drexel University…
Ethiopian bookbinding class. October 10, 2011.

Keeping the Highways and Byways Safe

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In 1906 the Keystone Automobile Club was established, and fifteen years later became affiliated with the newly formed National Motorists' Association, a group promoting national standards for roads, pedestrian and motorist safety, as well as…
Ethiopian bookbinding class. October 10, 2011.

Behind the Scenes

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As a visitor to the Library Company, you might see any of the thousands of objects in our collection in a variety of ways.  You could view prints, pamphlets, and paintings as part of an exhibition in the gallery, study rare books in the reading…
Ethiopian bookbinding class. October 10, 2011.

Love is in the Air

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Perhaps as a distraction from yet another month of winter weather, turning the calendars to February focuses some of our thoughts on Valentine’s Day and romance. While we are all familiar with today’s ubiquitous visual records of weddings,…
Ethiopian bookbinding class. October 10, 2011.

Down the Shore with Marriott C. Morris

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About seven miles north of Avocado, the Morris family shore house located in Sea Girt, New Jersey, is the small town of Ocean Grove.  Founded in 1869 by a group of devout Methodists as a permanent camp meeting location, Ocean Grove became a…
Ethiopian bookbinding class. October 10, 2011.

A New View of an Old Graveyard

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A wide variety of projects have resulted from readers using our historical collections. Occasionally we like to feature them in our blog. In late 2014 I had the pleasure to meet Ronald Shaffer, who among his many activities serves as the president…
Ethiopian bookbinding class. October 10, 2011.

Over There, Over Everywhere: The Aero Service Collection at the Library Company of Philadelphia

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The following post is by guest blogger Carl H. Winnefeld, Jr. who is mining our Aero Service Collection looking for photographs of company personnel and aircraft.  A former Aero Service employee, Winnefeld and colleagues are compiling…
Ethiopian bookbinding class. October 10, 2011.

Word Pictures

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The Morris Collection keeps on growing!  David Marriott Morris, Eleanor Rhoads Morris Cox and William Perot Morris recently added to the Library Company’s holdings of over 1600 of their grandfather’s photographs with a gift of travel journals…
Ethiopian bookbinding class. October 10, 2011.

Two “van”-Tastic Persons

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LCP’s Print Department boasts a collection of some 4000 printed portraits, stored within 52 archival boxes, ranging from Augustus H. Abbott to Ulrich Zwingli. Needless to say, entering all of these priceless items into the LCP database presents…
Ethiopian bookbinding class. October 10, 2011.

Reconstructing Fragments of African American Life

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The Library Company’s next major exhibition, The Genius of Freedom: Northern Black Activism and Uplift after the Civil War, will be on display from November 11, 2014, through June 26, 2015. One of the more unusual items in the exhibition…
Ethiopian bookbinding class. October 10, 2011.

Negative/Positive

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The way we experience photographs today is very different from the way people experienced them 120 years ago.  We press the shutter on our digital cameras without concern; if the photograph doesn’t turn out it can easily be deleted.  We…
Ethiopian bookbinding class. October 10, 2011.

“Ghosts Everywhere, and of Every Color”: Spectral Visions at the Library Company

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The catalog entry for Spectropia; or, Surprising Spectral Illusions (New York, 1864) piqued the interest of Library Company Fellow Jessica Linker, who is researching women science practitioners in early America. Upon examination, she discovered…
Ethiopian bookbinding class. October 10, 2011.

Marriott C. Morris Collection Online

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Over the next year, more than 1600 glass negatives, photographic prints, film negatives, and lantern slides by Philadelphia photographer Marriott Canby Morris (1863-1948) will be processed, digitized, and used to create a permanent online exhibition. …
Ethiopian bookbinding class. October 10, 2011.

The Marriott C. Morris Photograph Collection

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A young woman leans against a painted brick wall, her back straight and her hair dark hair pulled into a knot at the top of her head. She holds a baby in her arms wrapped snugly in a knitted blanket. The baby’s left hand is a blur of motion;…