Brown University Library Collections
Fine and Decorative Arts Collections
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Annmary Brown Memorial Library
The Annmary Brown Memorial, at 21 Brown Street in Providence, RI, was built in 1907 by Rush C. Hawkins (1831-1920) as a memorial to his deceased wife Annmary Brown Hawkins (1837-1903). The Memorial was designed as a tomb for the couple (both are interred there), and as a private library to house the Hawkins' collection of incunabula, paintings, manuscripts, books authored by or written about individuals with the surname of Hawkins, travel books, bibliographies, biographies, standard histories, books on printing wood engravings, and volumes on the early history of printing. This collection contains the records about the construction and maintenance of the building, documentation about the books and paintings collected by Hawkins, and records about the operation of the Memorial. It also includes a volume of minutes for the New York Dispensary for the Diseases of the Throat and Chest for which Rush Hawkins was a Trustee. Researchers can also find documentation about the Civil War swords presented to Rush Hawkins which were stolen from the Memorial and later recovered
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Bromsen (Maury A.) Lincoln
In 2006, the Hay Library received a large bequest of materials relating to Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War from the estate of Boston book dealer Maury A. Bromsen. The collection included a significant array of prints and ephemera from the period, along with books, pamphlets, sheet music, sound recordings, period newspapers, portraits, and manuscripts. Among the key items included in the bequest were the original copper plates and full sets of prints from the Confederate War Etchings series by Maryland artist Adalbert Volck, substantial sets of manuscripts of Confederate General P.T.G.Beauregard and Union General George B. McClellan, and a set of the copy plates made by George Ayres from the original glass plate negatives created during an 1860 photo shoot by Chicago photographer Alexander Hesler.
Bromsen was an assiduous collector, and his own papers, which comprise part of the bequest, reveal his collecting activities as well as his efforts to place important items in public institutions.
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Hedges (Elaine)
Elaine Ryan Hedges (1927-1997) was a pioneer in the field of Women's Studies, and founder of the Women's Studies curriculum at Towson State University. A noted expert on women in literature, in the mid-1970s she turned her focus to women's domestic arts as a medium of intellectual expression. Comprising books (many with detailed annotations), papers, manuscripts, graphic images and correspondence, the collection documents her avid attention to the intimate details of women's lives.
The critical focus of the collection was Hedges' long term research interest in women's quilts and quilt-making. The book collection represents a scholar's working library on this topic. Though it covers quilting world-wide, material on American quilts represents the bulk of the collection. It includes a range of historical surveys, state by state overviews, pattern books, exhibition catalogs and documentation on ethnic and political themes in quilting, particularly by African Americans and Native Americans.
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Medieval and Early Modern Manuscripts
Brown University Library holds some 50 manuscript codices as well as numerous manuscript documents and fragments, all housed in the John Hay Library. Most of these items were acquired as gifts over the past two centuries, some of them coming as parts of other named collections such as the Harry Lyman Koopman Collection, the Annmary Brown Memorial Collection, and the Albert E. Lownes Collection of Significant Books in the History of Science. Most are from western Europe and date from the 11th through the 17th centuries, and are in Latin, Greek, French, German, Italian, and other European languages, although we also hold three Ethiopic manuscripts in Ge'ez, and several in Arabic. The Minassian Collection of Persian, Mughal, and Indian Miniatures is also relevant to this collection.
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Posters
The Poster Collection, a part of the Broadsides Collection, contains over 800 items, focusing mainly on American war posters from World War I and II. Other collections include some labor posters, book-related items, and posters designed to be displayed on buses.
Other named collections within special collections also contain posters, including the Sidney Albert-George Bernard Shaw Collection, the Robert J. Tierney Jr. Entertainment Memorabilia Collection, the Chester H. Kirk Collection on Alcoholism and Alcoholics Anonymous, the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection, the William Chauncey Langdon Collection of Pageants, the H. Adrian Smith Collection of Conjuring and Magicana, the Paul R. Dupee Jr. '65 Collection on Fireworks, the Sidney S. Rider Collection, among others. ...more information
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Pottery and Porcelain Club (Providence, RI)
The group, established in 1947, is dedicated to the study of fine porcelain and pottery. Study groups and exhibitions are its main activities. The collection contains administrative materials, membership lists, newsletters, and slides documenting exhibitions.
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Image Source: Angelica Kauffmann. "Zeuxis Selecting Models for his Picture of Helen of Troy". Annmary Brown Memorial Collection. Painting is hung in the John Hay Library.
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