“Patience, young Grasshopper.” Can’t help but wonder what stories this Grasshopper has to share.

Acheta Domestica. Episodes of Insect Life. New York: J. S. Redfield, Clinton-Hall, 1851.

We miss our collections, so this month we are revisiting a few favorites from the archive. 

Friendship albums first became popular in the United States in the 1820s, and were especially popular among young people. This album, compiled by Margaret Williams, includes a few wonderful examples of woven hair art made from locks of hair from her closest friends. In this time of social distancing, these cherished and sentimental odes to friendship seem especially poignant.

 http://ow.ly/6bYa50z867p

Time to settle into that favorite chair (if a certain someone hasn’t already taken it!)

Marriott Canby Morris, [Dog Jet on chair, probably Sea Girt, NJ], ca. 1880-ca. 1900. Glass negative.

Image depicts Jet, a small black dog wearing a collar with a bell, sitting on a wooden chair on a porch. A barrel stands behind the chair with a window the the left. 

This sitter and his pup are really raising the bar for the #wfhoutfit challenge! 

Parlor Gallery, [Unidentified African American man with a dog], ca. 1880. Albumen on cabinet card. 

Image depicts a full-length portrait of a man wearing a riding coat, standing in front of a backdrop adorned with an ornate window. He holds a walking stick and leans on a balustrade on which a top hat rests. A dog lies in the foreground.  

In the historical record, when we see notes about the weather, a shopping list, records of births, marriages, and deaths—the mundane details of a past human life— they can jolt us out of our present moment, fire up our imaginations, and bring forth new meaning and perspective. When future beings look to the records of our lived experiences to help understand their own present, similarly mundane details are likely to become poignant testimony about our lived reality. 

Consider the potential future significance of journals and diaries created in the present moment, while we live under quarantine during the global pandemic COVID-19. 

We invite you to create your own written record of some aspect of your life during the COVID-19 pandemic. It can be as simple or elaborate as you want:

Note the weather from the window that you look out of every day. Keep track of your Zoom appointments and school work. Track your daily activities like workouts, books you are reading, or TV shows you are watching. Write out your grocery lists: What do you need? Was the toilet paper sold out?   Like to draw? Make a sketch. Like to cut and glue? Make a scrapbook. Anything goes! 

Read Andrea Krupp’s full post about diaries and journals, find some inspiration from our collections, and download instructions on how to make your own pocket notebook here. If you choose to share some pages from your journal on social media, please tag us @librarycompany and #notetofutureself, we’d love to see what you do.

Image 1: Poor Will’s pocket almanack, for the year 1828. [Philadelphia]:  Kimber & Sharpless, [1827] with manuscript notes of Mary Robinson Morton. 

 mage 2: Artist and LCP Conservator Andrea Krupp’s notebooks and journals

The Library Company of Philadelphia is excited to announce that we have jumped on the bread-making bandwagon!  That’s right, we’re changing our name to The Bakery Company of Philadelphia, and cant wait to be your go-to carbohydrate purveyor! Stay tuned as we embark on this new chapter in LCP history!

New blog post alert! In today’s post, Curator of Art and Artifacts and Visual Materials Cataloger Linda August writes about the “other” Hamilton, Sir William Hamilton, and a volume of beautiful colored engravings which LCP bought from him in 1772. Learn more about Hamilton, the book, and its influence here: https://librarycompany.org/2020/03/30/another-hamilton-in-philadelphia/

Today, we’re drawing inspiration from Musée d'Orsay’s series imagining how historic artists in their collection might have used social media. As Women’s History Month comes to a close, we thought it might be fun to speculate how pioneering artist Violet Oakley might “takeover” our social media platforms. Enjoy! 

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“I’m excited to give you all a sneak peek of my latest #wip at the Pennsylvania State Capitol in Harrisburg. I’ve been working on a series of murals pertaining to the history of the Commonwealth. To create these murals, I am drawing a lot of inspiration from the life of William Penn and my own beliefs in the Quaker values of pacifism. I have a long way ahead of me, but I’m excited to take on this challenge! 📷: Mathilde Weil” 

Mathilde Weil, Violet Oakley at work upon the panel of “International Understanding and Unity” for the Senate Chamber, Capitol of Pennsylvania, ca. 1913. Gelatin silver mounted on paper.

Happy #ForeedgeFriday from these #chonkybois and their fore-edge clasps.

“Quarantine day 11…I never thought I would say this but if I see one more box of pasta I might scream…" 

 Sydney Whiting. Memoirs of a stomach, written by himself, that all who eat may read. [London]: Published by W.E. Painter, 342 Strand, [1854?]