Fan. France, ca. 1784. 1954.2077 The great aeronautical events of December 1, 1783 are commemorated on this beautiful French fan in our collection. What exactly happened 228 years ago, you ask? The first manned ascent in a hydrogen balloon, carried out by Jacques Charles and Nicolas-Louis Robert. The balloon was launched from the Tuileries garden …
Have you seen this bird? Nicolas Martinet, illustrator. In Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon; Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière. C3 .B929h This lovely fellow is an illustration of the turkey (or, in French, Le Dindon) from Buffon’s 18th-century Histoire Naturelle. Here’s another plate, also from Buffon, of a rather mean-looking turkey in a barnyard …
This is the third post in a series that will explore the Rosenbach’s newest initiative, Families Affected by Wartime. This ground-breaking initiative, which is still in the planning stages, will serve the military community, a population largely ignored by museums. The project aims to connect families from the past with those from the present, demonstrating …
Happy Veterans Day! Our series of Families Affected by Wartime posts will resume shortly, but while we’re waiting I thought I’d share an object we showed to the project advisers. In honor of Veteran’s Day, which also commemorates the conclusion of World War I, I picked a World War I piece—A Mother’s Letter, by Annie …
This is the second post in a series that will explore the Rosenbach’s newest initiative, Families Affected by Wartime. This ground-breaking initiative, which is still in the planning stages, will serve the military community, a population largely ignored by museums. The project aims to connect families from the past with those from the present, demonstrating …
This is the initial post in a series of articles that will explore the Rosenbach’s newest initiative, Families Affected by Wartime. This ground-breaking initiative will serve the military community, a population largely ignored by museums. The Rosenbach houses an exceptional collection of wartime letters and documents which speak to the personal experience of war and …
First off, a quick Dracula shout out. A recent announcement reveals that a journal belonging to Bram Stoker has been discovered by his descendants. The journal dates from 1871-1881, well before he was working on Dracula, but it’s nonetheless a fascinating find. A published version, with annotations by Dracula scholar Elizabeth Miller (who also edited …
Edward Estlin Cummings was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts on October 14, 1894–Happy 117th birthday! As with so many 20th century literary figures, Cummings comes to the Rosenbach through the Marianne Moore collection. Moore initially met Cummings in the 1920s through her friends Hildegard & Sibley Watson; Sibley was President of The Dial magazine and a …
Who does research at the Rosenbach? The answer turns out to be all kinds of people–literary scholars, cheese specialists, artists, historians, Rosenbach docents, and fashion designers. We’ll be celebrating the fascinating work that these folks have done in an upcoming exhibit Inquiring Minds, which opens November 23, but I thought I’d give a sneak peek …
Okay, I’ll admit it. Two of my favorite pieces in the new Creature Comforts exhibition are not the beautifully illustrated Buffon natural history encyclopedia or Jefferson’s seminal Notes on the State of Virginia, but a pair of letters about the Rosenbachs’ pet parrots. The Rosenbachs had many parrots (and other birds) over their careers; if …