This week’s #MusicintheLibrary feature is from a printed music book that was used a commonplace book in the 19th century, and comes from our Stevens-Cogdell-Sanders-Venning Collection. 

The Stevens-Cogdell-Sanders-Venning Collection documents the development of a prominent middle-class African American family in Philadelphia. The materials date from 1734 to 1982 and consist of scrapbooks, ephemera, newspaper clippings, Common Prayer books, invitations, holiday cards, correspondence, business papers, and a variety of personal papers. Check out the finding aid here.

Cogdell, Richard Walpole: Commonplace book with mostly correspondence tipped into a printed music volume, 1856-1867. Box 2, Folder 1,  Stevens-Cogdell-Sanders-Venning collection, 1734-1982, Library Company of Philadelphia.

[Detail of] William Birch’s Paint Box, ca. 1780. Courtesy of the Philadelphia History Museum at the Atwater Kent, The Historical Society of Pennsylvania Collection.

Enamel painting is a painstaking technique in which a glass-like flux is mixed with mineral colors and fused to a piece of metal under extreme heat.  It was hard to control the process, and the same color compound could “come from the fire very different in their seperate [sic]  preparations, from the delicacy of chymical practice.”  

William Birch’s paint box, which was handed down through six generations of his descendants, contained color charts (one dated 1782), bottles of powdered colors, a mortar and pestle to grind them with, dozens of blanks in various sizes, mostly copper but also brass and iron, more blanks already glazed and ready for painting, and a single paint brush.

See this painting and more on view now in our main gallery as part of our current exhibition, William Birch, Ingenious Artist: His Life, His Philadelphia Views, and His Legacy, through October 19, 2018.

In addition to this woodcut of two charming #HatsintheLibrary, The Little Book of Trades (New Haven, circa 1840) features images and descriptions of several professions, including blacksmith, paper-maker, and weaver. #MiniatureMonday

The Little book of trades.  New Haven. Published by S. Babcock, [ca. 1840]

Our recently acquired Goldman Collection of trade cards contains hundreds of images of African Americans, nearly all of them degrading, stereotyped, and racist. Why were caricatures of African Americans so often used in Victorian advertising? Our Hurford Center Summer Intern Mathilde Denegre shares her thoughts, today on the LCP blog.

Passing the Torch

James and John Harper founded their publishing firm, J. & J. Harper, in 1817. In 1833 the firm changed its name to Harper & Brothers and began to use variations on the publishers’ device shown above: two hands with a torch.

According to the 1889 edition of The Book Buyer : A Summary of American and Foreign Literature, the meaning behind the Harper & Brothers device stems from Book I of Plato’s Republic, which has a reference to a torch race at a festival in honor of a Thracian Goddess that reads: “Carrying torches, they will pass them on to one another.”

Here we see two variations on the Harper & Brothers device from the front covers of two books. The first example is from 1846, the second example is from 1856. Although Harper & Brothers has since become HarperCollins Publishers LLC, resulting from a merger with Scottish publisher, William Collins, Sons, the torch has remained a part of their legacy. The current HarperCollins device combines the two firms’ logos: a torch above a fountain.

Browse the Library Company’s database of 19th-Century Cloth Bindings to see more!

1846, Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido for the suppression of piracy. Keppel, Henry.  New York : Harper & Brothers

1856, The wonders of science; or, Young Humphry Davy. Mayhew, Henry. New York : Harper & Brothers.

Our copy of the Wissahickon Polka (ca. 1858) reminds us of cheerful days in Philadelphia’s picturesque park along Wissahickon Creek. 

Drayton, Frank, composer. Wissahickon Polka.  Philadelphia: Lee & Walker, ca. 1858.

William Birch, Lansdowne, the seat of the late Wm. Bingham Esq. Pennsylvania (Philadelphia,1809).  Hand-colored engraving.  

Lansdowne was considered by many to be the best country house in America. William Bingham was fabulously wealthy; his wife Anne Willing Bingham was the hostess of the Federalist era “Republican Court.”  Birch wrote:  

Lansdowne lies on the bank of the Pastoral Schuylkill, a stream of peculiar beauty, deservedly the delight and boast of the shores it fertilizes. The house was built upon a handsome and correct plan by the former governor Penn.

See this painting and more on view now in our main gallery as part of our current exhibition, William Birch, Ingenious Artist: His Life, His Philadelphia Views, and His Legacy, through October 19, 2018.

Toby is a tiny pup, and this little book is even tinier #MiniatureMonday

Toby and the wasp.  Warren, Pa.: E.T. Hazeltine,1883.

This pamphlet from LCP’s collections offered LCP fellow @obrassillkulfan a glimpse of what happened when the infamous 1832 cholera epidemic struck Philadelphia’s Arch Street Jail - it was “a tale of horror”.  #LCPFellowFriday

A tale of horror!  Philadelphia: : To be had, wholesale, at the S.E. corner of South and Second Streets., [1832?]