Library Company of Philadelphia
The daguerreotype shown here was the first one purchased for LCP’s Graphic Arts Collection, but why this example of an unidentified man taken by an unknown photographer was worthy of acquisition remains a puzzle.
It was incorrectly identified as a quarter-plate daguerreotype in the Library’s accession book, indicating that at least some of the Graphics Art Department staff was still learning about this type of material.
Portrait of an Unidentified Man, ca. 1850. Ninth-plate daguerreotype.
During WWI the U. S. Food Administration encouraged Americans to change their eating habits in order to save food for our military and allies in Europe.
Posters like this one advocated food conservation, with slogans like “Meatless Mondays” and “Wheatless Wednesdays.”
This early salted paper print was commissioned by Charles Poulson as part of a series of 120 cityscape views by Philadelphia painter and photographer Frederick De Bourg Richards (1822-1903) to document the changing architecture of the city.
Richards’ painter’s eye for composition is visible in this perspective view of Carpenters’ Hall, the historical building that housed the Library Company 1773-1790. Richards’ photograph encapsulates the tacit acknowledgement that a city needs to preserve its history but also needs to evolve to remain vital.
Frederick De Bourg Richards, Carpenters’ Court and Hall (in perspective), Chestnut St. bet. Third & Fourth St. May 1859.
This tiny color wood engraving is from a collection of letter seals, all about the size of a postage stamp.
#ForgetMeNotDay
[Illustrated letter seals containing admonitions]. [United States, ca. 1860]
The Graphic Arts Collection is home to a large collection of posters from World War I, the provenance of which is largely unknown since most of them are backed with linen. However, this poster provides curators with clues on the collection’s origins.
A manuscript note on the back of the poster, which is not backed by linen, indicates that it was brought by Corinne Keen Freeman in 1919 for display at LCP’s Juniper Street building.
Freeman was the chairperson of the South Philadelphia Women’s Auxiliary Liberty Loan Committee, which worked to get community members signed up for loan subscriptions that helped the U.S. pay for the war effort.
It wasn’t until 1980, however, that our more than 300 WWI posters were formally added into the collection.
Vic Forsythe, And They Thought We Couldn’t Fight, ca. 1919. Poster print.
The designs of popular medicine trade cards for often-dubiously manufactured products were meant to catch the eye with a glance as well as to be looked at repeatedly.
For Dr. Kilmer’s Female Remedy, images of the private and public domains and relationships of women predominate. The visual metaphors show the life to be had by a middle-class Kilmer consumer transformed from the confinement of immobility on a veranda to one of freedom for recreation, travel, and tranquility.
This female empowerment imagery may also have been read as the freedom from motherhood. Advertised as a cure for “suspicious growths,” the rhetoric suggests its possible use as an abortifacient as well.
These early 19th-century silhouettes are just some of the hundreds that were created at the Peale Museum, and probably cut by Black silhouettist Moses Williams between 1803-1810. They were acquired through the 1869 Rush bequest, but not formally accessioned into the collection until 1991. On view in our exhibition Imperfect History
You know what they say, winter is coming. And for bears, that means it’s time to eat a ton of food before hibernating until Spring. Happy #FatBearWeek!
This hand-colored lithograph is from an 1831 volume of “The Cabinet of Natural History and American Rural Sports,” and was printed by J. F. & C. A. Watson.
Jacque Alexander Tardy was a pirate whose family fled from France to San Domingue and eventually settled in Philadelphia and South Carolina. He went on to commit a series of maritime crimes that were highly sensationalized in the early 19th century.
Because of Tardy’s infamy, this watercolor likely made its way into the Graphic Arts Collection over a century before it was found and cataloged in the 1980s.
Edward Clay, Tardy the Pirate, ca. 1835. Watercolor. Given by Edward Clay to James Rush, 1835.
In 1733, the Library Company received what is believed to be its first graphic art work. The print depicted an orrery (a model solar system) and was gifted by Thomas Penn.
Today, this significant donation is unlocated, like many other important graphic acquisitions from before 1850.
One of the goals of Imperfect History, which opens on September 20, is to examine the overlooked history of the graphic arts at the Library Company, including the gaps.