June 26, 2014 by btylr | Comments Off on The Accordion Player
The month of June was designated National Accordion Awareness Month in 1989, which makes 2014 its 25th anniversary. Highlighted below is a pen and wash sketch drawn by Horace Day (1909–1984) during World War II, part of the Brown University Library’s Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection. The Brown Digital Repository currently features over 130 of Day’s artworks.
“Accordion Player” by Horace Day
June 12, 2014 by rness | Comments Off on Images of the Great War
Over 25,000 prints, drawings, and watercolors from the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection have been digitized and added to the Brown Digital Repository, a portion of which feature World War I subject matter. Events surrounding the centennial of World War I (1914-1919) mean that some of this artwork will be displayed in public exhibitions. In April, an exhibit titled “Images of the Great War: The European Offensives – 1914-1916, World War I Prints and Drawings from the Anne S.K. Brown University Library” opened at the President Woodrow Wilson House in Washington D.C. The exhibit presents multiple perspectives on the war, and was co-curated by Peter Harrington, curator of the Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection, and Stephanie Daugherty, curator at the President Woodrow Wilson House. Peter Harrington feels that the significance of the thirty-five prints and drawings on exhibit is that “they offer an interesting contrast between those produced for the home front, often for commercial purposes, and the images created by the soldiers themselves.” Among the prints created for commercial purposes is this colored plate after the Dutch propaganda cartoonist Louis Raemaekers, depicting three French infantrymen guarded by a German soldier. The image was published in London for the British Weekly “Land and Water” and can be viewed in The “Land & Water” edition of Raemaekers’ cartoons.
Read more about the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection prints highlighted in the exhibit (on view through August, 2014) here and on the Brown University Library News blog.
French Prisoners of War, c. 1914-1915. Louis Raemaekers.
June 9, 2014 by lelgin | Comments Off on To the Moon and Back
Many of the books and objects that my colleagues and I photograph are hundreds of years old, so it’s not unusual for us to encounter materials that have a bit of dust on them. This past April, though, I encountered an entirely new kind: moon dust.
I had found myself in the extraordinarily lucky position of being asked to photograph the ceremony in which retired U.S. Air Force Colonel and NASA Astronaut David Scott gave the flight data files from the Apollo 15 mission to the Brown University Library. These flight records are the only complete collection in the world that has been to the surface of the moon, and it was a remarkable experience to learn about them, and to photograph the ceremony and a selection of the objects. We were all given careful instructions not to disturb the dust on the objects – it being lunar dust and all.
For more photos and information on this incredible collection, please take a look at the Library blog post here.
May 23, 2014 by btylr | Comments Off on Commencement 1906
This weekend marks Brown’s 246th commencement; shown below are two photos from the commencement ceremony of 1906, digitized for the Images of Brown project. The Brown 250 website features the earliest known video footage of a Brown commencement, from 1915.
Commencement 1906
Commencement 1906
May 8, 2014 by rness | Comments Off on Today, it’s all about Ducks!
It’s been an exciting day all across campus, as the SciLi Duck made a perilous trek with her newly hatched brood from Brown’s Sciences Library down the hill to the Providence River, where Papa duck was waiting. Let’s celebrate the newsmaking mallards with this detail of a colored engraving from American ornithology, or, The natural history of the birds of the United States, published in 1808.
Reproduced below is the broadside “Ode to the Mammoth Cheese…”, an 1802 nine-stanza poem presented to Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) by Thomas Kennedy (1776–1832). The broadside was captured by Digital Production Services in 2008 at the request of a library patron. The poem states that “Cheese is the attendant of a New-Year’s day,” and is dated January 1, 1802.
“Ode to the Mammoth Cheese…” (1802)
April 3, 2014 by rness | Comments Off on Magnolia Season
The blooming of the magnolia trees on campus is not far off (believe it or not!). With my thoughts on these long awaited blossoms, I type “magnolia” into the Brown Digital Repository and discover a beautiful 18th century hand colored intaglio print. The variety of magnolia represented in the print is known as Magnolia altissima lauro-cerassi folio, flore ingenti candido, Catesb. (commonly called the Laurel-Leaved Tulip Tree or Carolina Laurel) and is named for 18th century naturalist, Mark Catesby. Catesby spent three years documenting the flora and fauna of South Carolina, Florida and the Bahamas in the 1720’s. The tree featured in the print produced its flowers in the garden of Sr. Charles Wager at Parsons Green near Fulham, in August of 1737. The print was delineated and engraved by George Dennis Ehret (1708-1770), and is part of Joannis Martyn‘s Historia plantarum rariorum [1. The volume is part of the Albert E. Lownes Collection of Significant Books in the History of Science, a collection particularly strong for illustrated materials on natural history.]
According to the Campus Guide to Trees and Shrubs, Brown University is home to three varieties of magnolia trees; Magnolia acuminata or Cucumber Tree, Magnolia soulangiana or Saucer Magnolia, and Magnolia stellata or Star Magnolia. As the days warm, and I walk around campus during the coming month, I will be noting which of the fourteen stages the buds and blossoms are in.
1. The bud of the Flower as it first Appears.
2. The involucrum which encloses the Bud.
3. The Emplalement or Flower-cup.
4. The Flower-cup opening and discovering the Flower.
5. The cup falling of(sic) from the Flower.
6. The Flower-cup as it Appears before it is expanded.
7. The outside of the Apex or summit Represented.
8. The inside of the summit Represented.
9. The Ovary or Rudiment of the Fruit.
10. A Ripe Fruit with the seed falling from their cells and hanging by small threads.
11. A Seed as it Appears in it’s Cell.
12. A Seed falling out of it’s Cell.
13. The Footstalk with the marks where the Petals or Flower leaves were inserted.
14. A Flower fully expanded which is 11 inches in Diameter and has 10 Petals.