One of my jobs as Curator is to acquire new books for the collection. This is one of the worst books I’ve ever bought. It’s a broken set, missing one of its four volumes. Some of the pages are damaged, and we already have three copies of this edition. So why did I buy it?…
The Jimi Hendrix Bibliographic Experience
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. This week’s feature is the second of two sculptural volumes: in this case, the binding itself, rather than the enclosure, defies convention. The book, a paperback French biography of Jimi Hendrix published in 1976, is unremarkable in itself. However,…
Lakota War Book Named One of “48 Books to Read”
Each year the staff of the Kenyon Review select a number of recent books as suggestions for their readers summer reading. This year among the 48 Books to Read is Castle McLaughlin’s A Lakota War Book from Little Bighorn: The Pictographic “Autobiography of Half Moon.” A Lakota War Book was selected by Natalie Shapero, Kenyon…
Eastern Magic
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection. Indian Conjuring, a book written by L.H. Branson is a detailed instruction manual to a collection of tricks that Branson discovered while living in India. A magician himself, Branson explains tricks he has witnessed, as well as ones…
Two Recently Identified Sketches by Edwin Austin Abbey
American painter and illustrator Edwin Austin Abbey offered the following counsel to aspiring young artists: You should be sketching always… Draw the dishes on the table while you are waiting for breakfast. Draw the people in the station while you are waiting for your train… It is all part of your world. You are going…
Everything is just a rebus
Advertising was at the heart of Johann Strauss Senior’s Viennese dance empire. Always on the lookout for gimmicks to whet the public appetite for new dances, his grasp of popular culture was brilliant: dance titles made reference to current political, cultural, and scientific events, visiting dignitaries and performers, themes and arias from the most popular…
New on OASIS in July
Two finding aids for newly cataloged collections have been added to the OASIS database this month: the sermons of a Connecticut clergyman at the turn of the 19th century and a collection of portrait prints of theatrical, literary, and historical personalities. Processed by Ashley M. Nary: Portrait Prints of Notable 16th – 19th-Century Personalities, 1720-1914…