Now is the moment you’ve all been waiting for–the answers to last week’s object quiz! This gizmo is a saddle watch and pedometer manufactured by Ralph Gout around 1800. The horse’s movement causes the watch and outer case to move up and down, forcing the chain to pull on the pedometer mechanism. The lower right …
I’m away this week, so I figured I’d turn the tables and make you, the reader, do the work. I’ve pulled some images of unusual or quirky items in our collection. Your job is to figure out what they are. Answers in next week’s post or if you can’t wait you can always use our …
I realize that I never finished my something old, something new… series of posts from a few weeks back, so here’s the last installment–something borrowed. Along those lines I thought I’d fill you in on some of our items that are currently being borrowed by other institutions, or will be soon. Lending to other institutions …
This week marks the 5th anniversary of the Rosen-blog, which began on Thursday August 25, 2005. In lieu of my regular post, I encourage our loyal readers to revisit the blog archives and see where we’ve been. Here are some of my favorites from deep storage [none written by me], to get you started: Black …
No, the Rosenbach does not own the Earl of Oxford’s jug. If you came to the Friend or Faux exhibit you are familiar with the story of our Bellarmine jug; the jug is a genuine Elizabethan era object, but by the mid-20th century an unusual (and false) legend had attached itself to the piece—it was …
I meant to post a link to this a while back, but back in July the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum announced that Abraham Lincoln’s writing had been found on papers carried by the Donner Party. Apparently James Reed, one of the organizers of the Donner Party, lived in Springfield Illinois and served with …
As promised, the “something new” this week is our new Westward Ho! exhibit, which opened on Wednesday. The exhibit got a nice shout out in the City Paper yesterday, so thanks to them for that. This show, like pretty much everything we do here at the Rosenbach, was a real team effort:it was co-curated by …
Picking up on last week’s theme of “something old”, I’m jumping to the end of the rhyme to highlight a few of my favorite “something blue” items in our collection. Patch box. 1954.2058 First off is this lovely blue box, which dates from the late eighteenth-century (ca 1790-1800). The picture doesn’t do it justice, but …
It’s good to be back after a week’s vacation. Earlier this week I was giving a walk-through to some folks who were very interested in finding out about the oldest items in our collection. This is actually a question I’ve had several times, so for all of you who’ve wondered about this, here’s the answer. …
As one last follow up on the Declaration of Independence, I’d like to give a hat-tip to our friends at Independence National Historical Park for their annual reading of the Declaration, which happens every July 8, the day the Declaration was first read publicly. It has become a bit of a collections department tradition to …