Library Company of Philadelphia
We love the delicate gold decoration on our copy of The Ladies’ Hand-Book of Knitting, Netting, and Crochet (New York, 1844).
#PublishersBindingThursday
The Ladies’ hand-book of knitting, netting and crochet.
New York : J. S. Redfield.
1844
“The house in which a great poet has lived always interests us, but it can not hold so much of his life as the trees through which his thoughts have made Æolian melodies, or the roadsides along which his imaginations have blossomed into song.” –Lucy Larcom.
We’re celebrating #PublishersBindingThursday and #NationalPoetryMonth with our copy of Lucy Larcom’s Landscape in American Poetry (New York, circa 1879), which features overlapping landscape designs printed in black and gold, as well as bevelled edge boards.
Larcom, Lucy.
Landscape in american poetry. New York : D. Appleton and Company.
[c1879]
There’s still time to see our current exhibition, Stylish Books: Designing Philadelphia Furniture, on display now in our main gallery through next Friday, April 26th.
Printed designs spread new ideas. Artisans, as well as their patrons, relied on books as a way to learn about the latest fashions in interior decoration. Books, periodicals, and advertisements generated consumer desire. Philadelphia became known for creating stylish furniture. The Library Company of Philadelphia played a key role by acquiring architecture and design books, which its members, some of whom were cabinetmakers, read and used. On display are items spanning the 18th through 19th century, including this “Chair Lounge” (1848).
Désiré Guilmard, Le Garde-Meuble Ancien et Moderne (Paris, ca. 1848).
This French bed is calling our name…
An architectural draughtsman, Augustus C. Pugin’s (1762-1832) skill as an illustrator is evident. He collaborated with publisher Rudolph Ackermann on several books, and many of the colorful plates in this volume came from the Repository magazine. Pugin included a number of elegant French beds draped in silk with lace and fringe.
This item is on display in our main gallery as part of our current exhibition, Stylish Books: Designing Philadelphia Furniture, up through April 26th.
Side Hustles for 19th-century Ladies
This how-to book, Ladies’ Manual of Art, or Profit and Pastime (Philadelphia, 1887), includes chapters on tinting photographs, painting china, making wax molds, and taxidermy in addition to more familiar topics such as embroidery and landscape painting. The front cover presents a clever composition of painting supplies and a stool in a natural setting, with a small landscape painting superimposed on a similar image enlarged. The presumably female reader would have laughed at the book’s frontispiece depicting a man perched atop a fence to escape the bulls who have invaded the bucolic scene he is attempting to paint!
- Connie King, Chief of Reference and Curator of Women’s History
Our copy of Lydia Howard Sigourney’s The Weeping Willow (Hartford, 1847) is bound in a striped cloth that nearly obscures the blind-blocked decorative border on the cover. #PublishersBindingThursday
Over the next five weeks, we will be highlighting articles by five different Library Company fellows featured in a special “Keywords” issue of Early American Studies (University of Pennsylvania Press, Fall 2018).
First in this series is Jessica C. Linker’s article, “Technology”, which takes a close look at the women and technologies essential to creating the colored plates in Jacob Bigelow’s American Medical Botany (Boston, 1817).
#LCPFellowFriday
Our copy of Clarence Cook’s The House Beautiful (New York, 1878) includes this gold-stamped illustration of a young woman reading on a chaise longue by a fireplace… #goals
#MacroMonday
Our copy of Allitter, or The Melody of Language (New York, 1836) features a gorgeous example of ribbon embossed cloth. #PublishersBindingThursday
Strait, H.
Allitter, or the melody of language. New York: G. A. C. Van Beuren.
1836.
Our copy of The Lover’s Companion: A Handbook of Courtship and Marriage (Philadelphia, 1850) features a helpful ring-bearing cherub
#AFineLibraryRomance