[This post was written by Craig Eliason, Katherine F. Pantzer Jr. Fellow, 2010] The history of printing types is full of confusing labels for the varied letterform designs that have emerged over the centuries. The complicated nomenclature devised for what are now most commonly called sans-serif types is a case in point. Sans-serif letters, as…
A new exhibition in Houghton’s Chaucer Case celebrates the 100th anniversary of T.S. Eliot’s graduation from Harvard. See the Houghton Modern blog for more details on Class Notes: The Centenary of T.S. Eliot at Harvard 1910-2010….
This fall, Houghton will present an exhibition “Life is in the Transitions”: William James, 1842-1910 in commemoration of the centenary of James’s death. The exhibition opening coincides with a conference organized by the William James Society, co-sponsored by the Houghton Library, and the Chocorua Community Association, “In the Footsteps of William James: a Symposium on…
Harvard graduate student Philipp Penka was awarded first place in this year’s competition for the Philip Hofer Prize for Collecting Books or Art, for his collection of works published by Russian displaced persons following World War II. The Hofer Prize, named for a former Houghton curator and donor, is awarded each year to the Harvard…
The highlight of the recent auction at Sotheby’s of items from the James S. Copley Library was a letter signed by Button Gwinnett. Gwinnett’s is a name that is familiar mostly only to autograph collectors: he was one of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence. Because he died in a duel less than…
For the next two weeks, the Woodberry Poetry Room will be home to an art installation that celebrates the poetry of Emily Dickinson. Created by Adams House art tutor Zachary Sifuentes, “Fugitive Sparrows” literally offers a number of new ways of looking at Dickinson’s poems, including small placards placed in the yard below, viewable through…
Conservators at Weissman Preservation Center have discovered that a photograph from the William James collection was made with the rare Kallitype process, a predecessor to gelatin silver prints. Read the full story at Harvard College Library News….
Author Stephen O. Saxe will give this year’s Philip and Frances Hofer Lecture on April 20, 2010, at 5:30 pm, in Houghton’s Edison and Newman Room. The talk is entitled “Turning Lead into Gold: Nineteenth-Century American Type Foundries and Their Specimen Books” and is free and open to the public. From a shaky beginning in…
Books on Books: Reflections on Reading and Writing in the Middle Ages is a new online exhibition that features medieval images of books in the process of being made, presented, exchanged, written or read. A joint project of the Houghton Library and Jeffrey Hamburger, Kuno Francke Professor of German Art & Culture, and Chair, Medieval…
[This post adapted from Dr. Kathryn Lowerre’s Reader’s Choice exhibition in the Houghton Library] Music was an integral part of the lively London theater world of the beginning of the eighteenth century. In late 1700, noble subscribers underwrote a competition offering cash prizes for the composer whose setting of poet and playwright William Congreve’s The…
