Detail of gilt birds from book cover.

Exploring Ephemera

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As an intern in the Print and Photograph Department, I work frequently with the Library Company’s ephemera collection. Ephemera – a term first defined by Maurice Rickards in 1988 as the “minor transient documents of everyday life” –…
Detail of gilt birds from book cover.

Welcome Print Department Intern Lydia Bello

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The Print Department is greatly benefiting from the help of college interns this winter and spring. Currently, the department is fortunate to host Lydia Bello, a Bryn Mawr College senior, who will spend approximately eight hours a week throughout…
Detail of gilt birds from book cover.

An Influential African-American Painter Remembered

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If you missed Curator of African-American History Phil Lapsansky’s op-ed piece in the Inquirer last month, you may not know the extent of the influence of Robert Douglass, Jr., whose painting of Washington crossing the Delaware hung…
Detail of gilt birds from book cover.

A Rogue in the Sunlight: The Life and Death of James Fisk

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We discovered James Fisk (1834-1872) in the course of developing our current exhibition “Capitalism by Gaslight.” Unlike most of the petty criminals, con artists, and other shady characters featured in the show, Jim Fisk swindled…
Detail of gilt birds from book cover.

Marking African American History Month

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In 1926, Carter G. Woodson initiated Negro History Week, which during the bicentennial was expanded to Black History Month. Created to celebrate the achievements of African Americans, Black History Month also recognizes the central role played…
Detail of gilt birds from book cover.

Angry Birds

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This book cover has such interesting gold stamping. The unusual design of the four corner brasses incorporates images of animals in the swirls and curlicues. The birds look so determined as they fly under the ornaments!   I…
Detail of gilt birds from book cover.

Mr. Rementer’s South Philly Pear Orchard

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I was recently contacted by James Rementer, a descendent of a South Philadelphia family that owned a pear orchard on Irish Tract Lane for more than a century before it was covered with landfill in the late 1800s. Though long gone, Irish…
Detail of gilt birds from book cover.

March Madness: Early American Advertising Conference

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The evolution of modern advertising in this country continues to garner attention from the scholarly community and the popular media, as well as to influence contemporary visual culture. Paying homage to this ongoing fascination with how we…
Detail of gilt birds from book cover.

Lost and Found: The Library Company Acquires Three Books from Benjamin Franklin’s Library

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The reconstruction of Benjamin Franklin’s private library obsessed our former Librarian Edwin Wolf 2nd for 44 years. That obsession took hold of him at the estate sale of Franklin Bache (a Franklin descendant) at Freeman’s in 1947. Bache…
Detail of gilt birds from book cover.

19th-Century Advertising on Exhibit

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Inspired by the upcoming Before Madison Avenue conference, an exhibition highlighting our varied and wide-ranging 19th-century advertising collections will open in our small gallery on February 21. Coordinated with the topics of conference panelists,…
Detail of gilt birds from book cover.

Spring Events

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Before Madison Avenue: Advertising in Early America Visual Culture Program Conference, Wednesday, March 15, and Thursday, March 16 Speakers at this conference will present new research on advertising in North America before the rise of the…
Detail of gilt birds from book cover.

The Mourner’s Gift (1837)

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Connie King writes: Much as we send sympathy cards today, Americans gave small volumes of consolation literature to people who were in mourning during the early decades of the 19th century. In recent years, the Library Company has been able…
Detail of gilt birds from book cover.

Interns Happily Invade the Print Department

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The Print Department is greatly benefiting from the help of college interns this winter and spring. In early January between semesters, Haverford College sophomore Jon William Sweitzer-Lamme volunteered his time in the department processing…
Detail of gilt birds from book cover.

Things that Make You Go “Hmmm”

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When I first began working at the Library Company more than a decade ago, one of the first Print Department treasures I handled was the silhouette attributed to Raphaelle Peale showing the noted African American silhouettist Moses Williams.…
Detail of gilt birds from book cover.

Library Company Collections on Flickr

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I’m an intern at the Library Company, working here for the first two weeks of January in the Print Department, doing various tasks relating to the Library Company’s collections of lithographs, drawings, cartoons, photographs, and other…
Detail of gilt birds from book cover.

Investigating 19th-Century Criminal Enterprise on WHYY

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Curator Wendy Woloson talks with WHYY's Peter Crimins about the Library Company's current exhibition "Capitalism by Gaslight: The Shadow Economies of 19th-Century America." Visit the WHYY website to read the full article.
Detail of gilt birds from book cover.

Readex to Digitize Afro-Americana

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This Spring, Readex, a division of the NewsBank Company, will launch a digital edition of Afro-Americana, 1535-1922: From the Library Company of Philadelphia.  This unique online resource will provide researchers with more than 12,000 searchable…
Detail of gilt birds from book cover.

Help Put Us on the Map!

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In 2011 the Library Company received a bequest that included 96 rare and extraordinary maps from the estate of Robert L. McNeil, Jr. In 2012 the Library Company will make high resolution digital images of those documents and catalog them…
Detail of gilt birds from book cover.

LCP Joins the National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA)

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The Library Company has become a member of the National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA). An initiative of the Library of Congress, the NDSA is charged with ensuring the stewardship of our nation’s digital archive as well as employing…