The following is the third in a series of guest posts by Micah Messenheimer, Assistant Curator of Photography, Prints and Photographs Division, that discuss the parallel development of two technologies in the 19th century: railroads and photography. The catalysts for a transcontinental railroad lie in the increasing industrialization of the country and the rapid expansion …
The following is a guest post by Martha H. Kennedy, Curator of Popular & Applied Graphic Arts, Prints and Photographs Division. The recently opened exhibition “Drawn to Purpose” features more than 30 works by North American women illustrators and cartoonists, spans the late 1800s to the present and includes Golden Age illustration, early comics, magazine …
Settle in for a good strong cuppa because December 15 is International Tea Day! Tea drinking began thousands of years ago in China and made its way west to Europe through Dutch trade in the sixteenth century. By the nineteenth century, the East India Company had a monopoly on the tea trade between China and …
The following is a guest post by Jan Grenci, Reference Specialist for Posters, Prints and Photographs Division. Winter is one of my favorite seasons, what with the snow, and the cookies, and the caroling. There are a number of posters in the collections of the Prints and Photographs Division that illustrate some of the things …
I did more than a double take when I saw the photograph below while searching in the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog – I did a triple and maybe even a quadruple take! Once I convinced my brain of what I was seeing, I knew mirror images would be the theme of this installment of …
The following is an interview with Woody Woodis, Senior Cataloger in the Prints and Photographs Division, about discovering and cataloging a woven “print” memorializing Joseph-Marie Jacquard, inventor of the programmable Jacquard loom. Melissa: What can you tell us about this woven “print” depicting inventor-weaver Joseph-Marie Jacquard? Woody: During his lifetime Jacquard developed a loom attachment …
The following is the second in a series of guest posts by Micah Messenheimer, Assistant Curator of Photography, Prints and Photographs Division that discuss the parallel development of two technologies in the 19th century: railroads and photography. Picking up the story after John Plumbe’s successes as a daguerreotypist and his disappointments in plans for a …
The following is a guest post by Naomi Subotnick, Liljenquist Fellow, Prints and Photographs Division, Summer 2017. This past summer, I worked as a Liljenquist Fellow in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress, where I helped to digitize, catalog, and house recently acquired Civil War-era photographs. Working with the Liljenquist Family …
The calavera, or skull, is one of the most recognizable symbols of the Día de Muertos, or Day of the Dead, a Mexican celebration of the dead that has both Indigenous and Spanish Catholic roots. The Prints and Photographs Division holds a treasure-trove of prints by eminent Mexican printmaker José Guadalupe Posada (1852-1913). Posada helped …
