Category: Uncategorized

Front facade of Houghton Library

Smokerama

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. If you are looking for “classic tobacco accoutrements” this volume of Smokerama is just the ticket!  In today’s anti-smoking climate it may seem hard to imagine that smoking was once considered a sophisticated and glamorous habit and accessories for…

Sherlock shoots up, in shorthand

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Among the works of Arthur Conan Doyle, the Fitz Hugh Ludlow Memorial Library took a particular collecting interest in his second Sherlock Holmes novel, The sign of the four. The novel’s opening lines, here quoted from the…

“The Physical Impossibilities of Death in the Mind of Someone Living”

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Damien Hirst is a world-renowned (and criticized) English artist, entrepreneur, and art collector, said to be the wealthiest living artist from the United Kingdom. In his I Want to Spend the Rest of My Life Everywhere,…

More lobster sheet music

No quadrilles, but more lobster sheet music. Here are two pieces for piano, once again featuring ladies in large hats (see previous post) Published in Cleveland … lobsters are an exotic menu item in Cleveland perhaps?…

Vultures of vice!

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. True Detective Mysteries, called True Detective starting with its October 1939 issue, was a magazine about crime and criminals published for over 70 years. Beginning in 1924, it was often regarded as the first true crime…

New on OASIS in April

Finding aids for two newly cataloged collections have been added to the OASIS database this month: Processed by: Irina Klyagin Tony Straiges set designs and models (MS Thr 1317) Berkeley Sutcliffe costume designs (MS Thr 1323)…

April Fool’s Day: odd sheet music

The Historical Sheet Music Collections at Houghton have been yielding some weird cover art lately. Here are a few in honor of April foolishness: This song tells the story of a gentleman escorting a lady friend to a cabaret, where she pawns him off on a female friend enamoured of his wealth; her friend calls…

Summer loving

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection.  Flower children, hippies, acid freaks, drop outs, college students, political activists, middle-class tourists, and even some military personnel, all of them were there in San Francisco during the Summer of Love in 1967.  The Haight-Ashbury district commonly…

“Be the envy of your friends and neighbors”

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. The Santo Domingo collection contains plenty of material about various smoking paraphernalia, but Build This Bong has some extremely creative diagrams for building said paraphernalia. Taking a light hearted yet technical approach to the subject, author…

Acupuncture Anesthesia

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. In the 1950s Chinese physicians in the People’s Republic of China began to wonder if acupuncture, which was typically used to treat pain, could actually be used to prevent pain during surgical procedures, which led to…