Winterthur Library NewsFall 2015

Greetings from Winterthur.

In this issue, we present a diverse number of articles that chiefly spotlight library collections.

Two of the articles have to do with digitization. One reports on our efforts with the Chipstone Foundation and theUniversity of Wisconsin to make our Dominy Collection available to a wider audience by presenting it online, and theother has to do with a special project involving the Saul Zalesch Collection of American Ephemera.

We thank the H.W. Wilson Foundation for supporting manuscript acquisitions and include an essay on a little-knownform of manuscript material, the handwritten newspaper.

Our latest library exhibition is on gardens; we offer short bits of library news; there is a recap of a meeting of ephemeristsin the United Kingdom; and as usual, we provide a list of items available for adoption.

The library staff and I send all best wishes.

E. Richard McKinstryLibrary Director and Andrew W. Mellon Senior Librarian

5105 Kennett Pike • Winterthur, Delaware 19735

2

In 1940, Truman J. Spencer published The History of Amateur Journalism. In it, hewrote: “Amateur journalism forms a unique phase in the history of Americanyouth. It is not greatly known to the general public; its numbers are relatively fewin comparison with the millions of people in the nation. Yet from its ranks havecome professional journalists, editors, authors, publishers, scientists, inventors,governors, Senators, judges, ambassadors, lawyers, bankers, clergymen, educators,and men and women in almost every walk of life.”

It is difficult to document when amateur journalists, especially the ones who wrotemanuscript newspapers, got their start. Even so, items called avvisi—plural ofavviso, in English, pieces of news or announcements—can be traced to the 1500sto the 1700s in Europe, especially Italy. Some were circulated in secret to a limitedaudience, while others were for public consumption. The secret ones were oftencontroversial, while the public ones usually offered generic, harmless reporting.

In America, the earliest efforts at amateur newspaper publishing can be traced toDecember 28, 1805, when 14-year-old John Howard Payne issued Thespian Mirror.A short-lived attempt, his final issue came out on May 31, 1806. Payne, whowrote the song “Home! Sweet Home!,” would later become a dramatist and actor,achieving notoriety on the London stage.

The American Antiquarian Society has what it identifies as the earliest pen-printed—that is, handwritten to resemble mechanical printing—amateur newspaper,The Vermont Autograph and Remarker, written by local historian James Johns ofHuntington, Vermont, and dated October 10, 1834. Afterward, during the1830s into the 1850s, amateur newspapers proliferated.

Winterthur Library has examples of five amateur manuscript newspapers, allliterary in nature and all but one from the mid-19th century. The earliest, from1852, is called The Gazette, a not uncommon title for a newspaper. It was editedby R. D. Fitch and A. S. Gaylove (or Gaylore) and was “devoted to religion,literature, arts, science, and politics.” Unfortunately, we do not know where itcame from. The Gazette contains poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, most notablyessays on novel reading, “The School girl’s life,” and a story headed “Journeyto the moon.”

A group of students from Middleborough, Massachusetts, compiled The ScholarsFriend, a weekly paper. An issue from 1862 shows an illustrated cover with an eagleperched atop flags, roses, bee hives, and the motto “We will try to improve” on adecorative scroll. In addition to essays, there is a bit of humor: “A gentleman whohad a scolding wife in answer to an enquiry after her health said she was prettywell only subject at times to a breaking out in the mouth.”

Volume 9, number 1 of The Casket, from 1855, originated in Sanbornton Bridge, New Hampshire, and was perhaps issuedby students at the New Hampshire Conference Seminary and Female College. Its motto was “She hath done what shecould.” The paper was edited by E. H. Sargent whose office was in “Morrison’s Block, Maine Street, no. 3, upstairs.”Contributions included “My Sister Kate;” “The Boatman,” a poem; “The Every-day Young Lady;” and “A Dream.”In an effort to replicate the look of a newspaper, the pages of The Casket are double-columned.

The Experiment has survived at Winterthur in six issues, dating from 1858 and 1859. Edited by Silas M. Titcomb and HannahMoody Pearson, it was published monthly by the Youth’s Reading Association, whose co-ed members were to practicedeclamation and discuss books, at “Artichoke Farm,” West Newbury, Massachusetts. The publication was “devoted tomutual improvement and amusement,” and its motto was “try–keep trying.” Written in the neatest of penmanship, forprotection, its pages were hand sewn into larger paper wrappers.

Finally, from 1871 to 1874, the Glasgow Literary Society, established “with a view to the development and cultivation ofthe literary tastes and oratorical powers of its members,” published The Glasgow Rising Star. Subscriptions for the Delaware

AMATEUR MANUSCRIPT NEWSPAPERSBy Richard McKinstry

Amateur Manuscript Newspapers continued...

Amateur manuscript newspapers in the JosephDowns Collection, Winterthur Library.

publication were $2.00 per year, “invariably in advance.” The newspaper’s pages carried news about local events,correspondence, editorials, poetry, reports on sermons, and humor. “What is the only way to chew tobacco? Ans.To eschew it.” The library has 23 issues.

Winterthur’s manuscript newspapers are splendid sources for studying the culture of a place and period, 19th-centuryeducation, penmanship, journalism, literary interests, reading habits, hobbies, and leisure activities. But to give Will L.Wright the final word: Wright, in the 1870s an editor of an amateur newspaper in Cairo, Illinois, observed, “The trueobjects of amateur journalism are to cultivate a taste for pure and wholesome literature, to broaden the intellectualpowers, to give one a practical knowledge of the world, and to teach one to think and act for himself.”

Amateur Manuscript Newspapers continued...

500-PLUS COVERS DIGITIZED FROM THE SAUL ZALESCH COLLECTIONOF AMERICAN EPHEMERA NOW ON WINTERCATBy Linda Martin-Schaff

In the 1990s Saul Zalesch, a then Ph.D. student studying art history at theUniversity of Delaware, spent time as a research fellow in the Winterthur Library.It was during this fellowship that Zalesch became interested in the library’sephemera collections. This interest burgeoned over the years, and Zaleschbecame an avid collector of these materials. In 2011 he began to donate itemsfrom his rich collection to the Winterthur Library. These include trade catalogues,manuals, guidebooks, and advertising and promotional material on a vast varietyof subjects: home design and decoration, health, clothing, cooking, travel andetiquette—and a wealth of other topics. To date he has donated more than3,000 items.

Due to the library’s recent efforts to digitize the covers of many of the publicationsfrom the Saul Zalesch Collection of American Ephemera, these records and theirpictorially interesting covers have become some of the “not so hidden gems” ofthe Winterthur Library. As with many ephemera items, the images illustrated onthe covers are as significant—and often more so—than their textual content.According to Zalesch “The images being posted on Winterthur’s online catalogueshould draw many new users because they are different from those that searcherskeep seeing elsewhere. There are always young scholars seeking to blaze newtrails of inquiry and expand canons of knowledge, and Winterthur, more than anyother institution, will be offering the novel images and materials they need.”

To date we have digitized more than 500 covers from the collection. These imagesare available in WinterCat, Winterthur Library’s online catalogue, and can befound by entering “Zalesch” and another word (try: health, cooking, travel,clothing, etc.) in the search box. Clicking on an image leads to an enlarged view.

Some of the more interesting examples from the collection include a coverillustration by the artist and comic book illustrator Clayton Knight (1891–1969)for the Standard Oil Company; one of the earliest trade catalogues to offer cargarages from the Edwards Manufacturing Company; and a charmingly illustratedchildren’s story featuring “Wheaties” cereal by an unknown illustrator. Oftenillustrators for these publications were not credited for their work. Posting imageson the internet may eventually lead to the discovery of the name of a previouslyuncredited artist.

Dr. Zalesch currently teaches art history at Louisiana Tech University. Hecontinues to collect ephemera and hosts his own ephemera website. Itemsin his personal collection can be viewed on: http://ephemerastudies.org.

3

Publication covers from the Saul ZaleschCollection of American Ephemera,Winterthur Library

In 2015, the English ephemera society celebrates its 40th birthday, and theAmerican society its thirty-fifth. Beginning on May 18, to commemorateboth occasions, the two organizations held a joint meeting in the U.K.Library Director Richard McKinstry, former board member and presidentof the American society, attended for the first week.

While London libraries have a multitude of printed ephemera, the firstthree days of the gathering took place elsewhere. On Monday, thegroup traveled to the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club inWimbledon, the site of the best-known tennis tournament in the world.At the impressive museum and library, the highlights of the visit werean exhibition showing posters with a tennis theme, a look at the site’sresearch library, and a behind-the-scenes tour of the closed storage stackswhere library staff had mounted a special show of ephemera.

Tuesday, attendees traveled to Oxford University’s newly opened WestonLibrary, were treated to a PowerPoint presentation by Julie Lambert aboutOxford’s John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera, and then saw aselection of items from the collection. An unexpected plus was the opportunityto print a memento of the visit on a hand press in the library’s lobby.

The last outside-of-London visit was on Wednesday, when society memberswent to the University of Reading, where the Centre of Ephemera Studiesis located. Director Michael Twyman presented about the centre anddisplayed a small part his large collection of French printed ephemera,providing comments about how French ephemera differed from Americanand English examples.

On Thursday, members stayed in London to visit Blythe House, a hugebrick building constructed between 1899 and 1903. Originally a bank,it is now used for storage by the Victoria & Albert Museum. V&A staffled members on a tour of a massive storage floor and curated a display oftheater ephemera, mostly documenting the London stage. Thursday night,attendees gathered at the National Liberal Club for a banquet. Followingdinner in the Lloyd George Room, the English society awarded its PepysMedal, its award for achievement, to the American Ephemera Society.The week ended with a journey to the Museum of the City of Londonand a display of paper ephemera dating from the mid-19th to the mid-20thcenturies in a gallery called The People’s City.

The English Ephemera Society and its chairman, Valerie Jackson-Harris,are to be congratulated for organizing and leading such a stimulatingweek. Those who attended look forward to marking the 50th and 45thanniversaries of the organizations 10 years from now in 2025.

4

AMERICAN AND ENGLISH EPHEMERA SOCIETIES CELEBRATE ANNIVERSARIES

DOMINY FAMILY RECORDS NOW DIGITIZED

In 1959, Winterthur Library began acquiring manuscript records of members of the Dominy family who were activecraftspeople in East Hampton, Long Island, New York, beginning in the early 18th century. The Dominys are best known formaking and repairing furniture, including tables, footstools, chairs, chests, cradles, stands, beds, desks, frames, tall caseclocks, bureaus, etc. They are also recognized for their watches, tools, metalwork, local house carpentry, and cooperage.The tools and equipment from the Dominy’s Long Island workshop were collected and installed in two recreated shopsat Winterthur on view on the second floor of the Galleries.

Above: A hand-pressed memento of Richard McKinstry’svisit to the Weston Library at Oxford University. Below:Richard McKinstry making his own memento on a handpress at the Weston Library, Oxford University.

Dominy Family Records Now Digitized continued...

5

Thanks to a multi-year grant from the H. W. Wilson Foundation, thelibrary purchased an extensive collection of toleware illustrations by20th-century figure Ann Baker and an exercise book from 1804, possiblycreated by a student at Westtown School in Chester County, Pennsylvania.

Ann Baker (1942–2006), a resident of Westerly, Rhode Island, wasrecognized for her recreations of 18th- and 19th-century tolewaredesigns. Additionally, she was a teacher and author, contributing anarticle entitled “Six Decorators, Their Shops and Characteristics ofTheir Painting,” to The Decorator, a magazine published by the HistoricalSociety of Early American Decoration. Baker’s archive consists ofhundreds of original designs, many based on elaborate floral imagery.Her art is supplemented by stencils, patterns on tracing paper, andwritten instructions for transferring designs onto tinware. Additionally,the archive includes photographs depicting work in progress.

The exercise book joins a collection of around 20 other exercise booksin the Downs Collection. It might have been kept by Westtown studentW. L. Earl. The volume’s 125 pages contain mathematical exercisesinvolving geometry and trigonometry, as well as figuring heights, distances,areas, divisions of land, and offsets which “are perpendiculars measuredfrom the angular points of the Land to the Stationery Distance on eitherside thereof.” Colorful illustrations supplement Earl’s handwritten text.

In 2014, the H. W. Wilson Foundation awarded the library a three-yeargrant to fund acquisitions for the Joseph Downs Collection of Manuscriptsand Printed Ephemera. That year, we used the monies from the foundationto acquire two volumes of original account books kept by early 19th-century Philadelphia furnituremaker George Ritter and three volumesof manuscripts, including a pattern book, maintained by 19th-centuryPennsylvania German weaver Henry Small.

H. W. WILSON FOUNDATION SUPPORTS LIBRARY ACQUISITIONS

Above: A drawing from the Westtown School exercisebook. Below: A sketch from Ann Baker.

At the request of the Chipstone Foundation, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Winterthur Library digitized its Dominy holdings tomake them available online through the University of Wisconsin’s digital repository. The repository includes a brief descriptionof the Dominy project, as well as browse and search functions for researchers interested in pursuing details about the collection.

Most of the manuscript records pertain to the activities of a father, son, and grandson: Nathaniel IV (1737–1812), Nathaniel V(1770–1852), and Felix (1800–1868). Additionally, Felix’s son, Nathaniel VII (1827-1910), is represented. Beyond theircraftsmanship, Nathaniel IV was a town supervisor and overseer of the poor; Nathaniel V managed mills for processing grainand lumber and was also an overseer of the poor; and Felix served as a major in the New York State Militia, was elected townsupervisor, and later kept a lighthouse and ran a hotel. Nathaniel VII operated a jewelry store, repaired clocks and watches,took daguerreotypes, and was a general handyman.

The Dominy family records are in the form of account books and ephemera. Records include daybooks, letters, weatherdiaries, bills, receipts, notes, exercise books, and watch papers. Using these resources, Winterthur curator emeritus Charles F.Hummel wrote the definitive monograph on the Dominys, With Hammer in Hand: the Dominy Craftsmen of East Hampton,New York, published in 1968 by the University Press of Virginia. Eventually, the website will contain a revised and enlargeddigital edition of With Hammer in Hand.

As the University of Wisconsin’s website points out: “Survival of their [the Dominy’s] shop equipment and tools intothe twentieth century, combined with extensive accounts, letters, and receipts chronicling their craft production, businessactivity, education, social life, and political views, provide unique insights about craftsmen working in rural and urbancommunities of colonial America and the New Republic; barter economies; transfer of shared Western craft technologyand equipment; and an example of early nineteenth-century technological unemployment.”

Dominy Family Records Now Digitized continued...

6

ADOPT A BOOK

We hope you will consider adopting from our current list. Donors will be recognized in our next newsletter. If you haveany questions about the books please contact Emily Guthrie (eguthrie@winterthur.org). Donations should be sent toWinterthur Library, 5105 Kennett Pike, Winterthur, DE 19735. Please make checks payable to Winterthur Museum.Thank you very much.

Franklin D. Vagnone and Deborah E. Ryan. Anarchist’s Guide to Historic House Museums. Left Coast Press,2015. $29.95The authors contend that America’s house museums need to take bold steps to expand their overall purpose beyond those ofwhat they term the traditional museum. This book provides a how-to guide for making historic house museums sustainablethrough several themes, including communicating with the surrounding community, engaging that community, and re-imaginingthe visitor experience.

Peter Brears. Cooking & Dining in Tudor & Early Stuart England. Prospect Books, 2015. $40.50Brears combines an account of cookery beginning in the 15th century with a close look at the kitchens and dining halls wherefood was prepared and consumed. The book begins with Henry VII and VIII—with special attention to Henry VIII’sbanquets and feasts for foreign monarchs—and continues with the reign of Elizabeth I, the effects of new foodstuffs fromAmerica, and the first two Stuart kings, James I and Charles I, who experienced a more modern style of cooking.

Angelina Barros D’Sa, et al., eds. Current Technical Challenges in the Conservation of Paintings. ArchetypeBooks, 2015. $75.00This collection of papers from the 2014 ICON Paintings Group Conference, “Modern Conservation: What’s New?”discusses various aspects of modern conservation, including the deterioration and conservation of contemporary works ofart, appraisal of new conservation materials and their properties, innovative techniques that are being developed and usedto address conservation problems, and new ways of using traditional or well-known materials already in the conservator’stool kit.

Adriano Aymonino and Anne Varick Lauder. Drawn from the Antique: Artists and the Classical Ideal.Sir John Soane’s Museum, 2015. $37.75Linked to the exhibition at Sir John Soane’s Museum, June 25–September 26, 2015, this book examines one of the mostimportant educational tools and sources of inspiration for Western artists for over 500 years: drawing after ‘the Antique’.The exhibition features a selection of 34 drawings, paintings, and prints from the Katrin Bellinger collection and loansfrom the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Rijksmuseum, the Kunsthaus Zurich, the British Museum, the Royal Academy ofArt, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Courtauld Gallery.

Brooke L. Blower and Mark Philip Bradley, eds. The Familiar Made Strange: American Icons and Artifactsafter the Transnational Turn. Cornell University Press, 2015. $79.95Twelve historians offer essays on American icons and artifacts that cut across rather than stop at the nation’s borders tomodel new interpretive approaches to studying United States history. They consider such famous icons as John SingletonCopley’s painting Watson and the Shark and Alfred Eisenstaedt’s photograph V-J Day, 1945, Times Square. Together, theypresent a road map to the varying scales, angles, and methods of transnational analysis that shed light on American politics,empire, gender, and the operation of power in everyday life.

Christy Anderson, Anne Dunlop, and Pamela H. Smith, eds. The Matter of Art: Materials, Practices, CulturalLogics, c. 1250–1750. $26.39

This study offers a new approach to an important period in the history of art, science, and culture, linking the study of painting,sculpture, and architecture to much wider categories of the everyday and the exotic. Drawing on research and models fromanthropology, material culture and the history of art, scholars writing in this book explore topics as diverse as Inka stonework,gold in-panel painting, cork platforms for shoes, and the Christian Eucharist.

Adopt A Book continued...

7

In a previous issue of Winterthur Library News, we stated that the library had acquired two volumes of manuscript day bookskept by George Ritter, a furnituremaker and undertaker from Philadelphia, dating May 1818–December 1838.The volumes are among the most informative in the Downs Collection, often providing design and construction detailsof the furniture Ritter made. To mark its importance, Laura Parrish has name indexed the volumes. To see the index, goto http://findingaid.winterthur.org/html/HTML_Finding_Aids/FOL0419.htm.

The library has initiated a new registration process that involves an annual sign-in with security staff. Researchers areasked to provide their name, contact information, and topic of study, as well as a government-issued photo ID card. Ourprocedure aligns us with our counterparts in the 20-member Independent Research Libraries Association and otheracademic research centers.

It has been some time since we have mentioned statistics from our online catalogue, WinterCat. During the fiscal yearending on June 30, 2015, WinterCat hosted 33,081 sessions and 5,548 users, who accessed 151,707 pages for an average of4.6 per session, and who stayed online for an average of 5 minutes and 14 seconds. Researchers from 56 countries came toWinterCat; the top 10 represented by users were the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy,Australia, Russia, Spain, and Ireland. Among other countries, there were sessions from people in Thailand, Singapore,Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates.

Several years ago the library, together with Lyrasis, a library cooperative, arranged to have more than 900 trade cataloguesand a few collection guides digitized for inclusion on the Internet Archive website. A recent check reveals that the 25 mostpopular trade catalogues have been accessed about 50,000 times, Winterthur’s printed trade catalogue guide nearly 3,000times, and the Shaker collection guide around 2,500 times. Winterthur on the Internet Archive:https://archive.org/details/winterthurlibrary.

During the summer of 2016, the library will be installing compact shelving in the fifth stack. Thankfully, the constructionof the library stacks is such that the weight of the shelving and what the shelves hold can be accommodated by supportsthat run from the bottom stack upward. We are close to storage capacity in all of our collections and look forward to theroom compact shelving will provide. As this is being written, library and facilities staff members are engaged in theplanning process.

Our holdings of Arthur S. Vernay records were given welcome publicity in antiquedealersblog: https://antiquedealersblog.wordpress.com/2015/04/06/vernay-archives-at-winterthur/. Vernay was an antiques dealer in New York City whospecialized in English objects. Many thanks to Chris Jussel, first host of The Antiques Roadshow, for donating the records.

ODDS AND ENDS: BITS OF NEWS FROM THE LIBRARY

Amy M. Porter and Nancy E. Baker. Their Lives, Their Wills: Women in the Borderlands, 1750–1846. TexasTech University Press, 2015. $39.95Using last wills and testaments as main sources, the authors explore the ways in which they reveal details about religion,family, economics, and material culture. In addition, the wills speak loudly to the difficulties of frontier life in whichwidowhood and child mortality were commonplace. Information in the wills helps explain the workings of the patriarchalsystem of Spanish and Mexican borderland communities, showing that gender role divisions were in some respects fluid.

A. Franklin Parks. William Parks: The Colonial Printer in the Transatlantic World of the Eighteenth Century.Penn State University Press, 2012. $49.95This book, a cultural biography, traces an early American printer and newspaper publisher’s path from the rural provinces ofEngland to London and then to colonial Maryland and Virginia. Incorporating much new biographical information, the booktreats print culture on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as the societal pressures on printing and publishing in England andcolonial America.

Adopt A Book continued...

LIBRARY STAFF AND CONTACT INFORMATION

Heather Clewell,Winterthur Archivist and Records Manager

Rosa Gracia, Library Assistant, Collection of Printed Books and Periodicals

Emily Guthrie, NEH Librarian, Collection of Printed Books and Periodicals

Sarah Lewis, Library Assistant, Collection of Printed Books and Periodicals

Richard McKinstry, Library Director and Andrew W. Mellon Senior Librarian

Linda Martin-Schaff, Associate Librarian, Collection of Printed Books and Periodicals

Laura Parrish, Librarian, Joseph Downs Collection of Manuscripts and Printed Ephemera

Lauri Perkins, Library Assistant, Collection of Printed Books and Periodicals

Jeanne Solensky, Librarian, Joseph Downs Collection of Manuscripts and Printed Ephemera

8

General Queries

Phone: 302.888.4681

Fax: 302.888.3367

E-mail: reference@winterthur.org

Hours: Monday–Friday,8:30 am–4:30 pm

LIBRARY EXHIBITION: GARDEN PLANS

Winterthur Library has an array of wonderful books, manuscripts, and archivalmaterials relating to gardens. Highlighting them, the current library exhibit focuseson the garden planning process, drawing from holdings in the Joseph Downs Collectionof Manuscripts and Printed Ephemera, rare books, the circulating collection, theWinterthur Archives, the Edward Deming Andrews Memorial Shaker Collection,the Saul Zalesch Collection of American Ephemera, and the John and CarolynGrossman Collection.

Among the items on display are archival material from noted 20th-century landscapearchitect Marian Coffin, who designed a portion of Winterthur’s gardens; garden notesfrom Winterthur founder Henry Francis du Pont; a book by English landscape designerHumphry Repton (1752–1818); a Shaker resource from 1843 about selecting a site for akitchen garden, The Gardener’s Manual, that doubled as a Shaker seed catalogue; a recordof the Eastman family’s pear and apple trees in Concord, New Hampshire; and Howto Make an Outdoor Living Room, which encouraged homeowners to turn a part of theiryard, no matter what its size, into an enjoyable place to relax and entertain.

Curated by Laura Parrish, Librarian in the Downs Collection, Garden Plans is on viewfrom July 29 to October 18, 2015.