In the case of architect Frank Furness (1839-1912), one can easily see how the buildings are the product of the man. Furness has been described as hotheaded and difficult, as well as pioneering and imaginative. Critics and admirers alike have called his buildings challenging, even outrageous, but...
This Arma Christi Roll arrived at CCAHA as a rolled bundle of parchment, linen, and leather measuring just five inches wide and a few inches tall. When CCAHA Paper Conservator Minah Song unrolled it for examination, she revealed a nearly six-foot-long manuscript—one of just 20 known copies of the...
A couple from the Philadelphia area was wandering through the shops in London’s Kensington district, perusing old maps and prints, when the two came across a piece of history that reminded them of home: an aquatint and etching by T. Cartwright called Philadelphia, from the Great Tree at Kensington...
Less commonplace today—maybe because they never unstuck cleanly from the not-so-tasty backing paper—Candy Buttons were once a childhood staple. The colorful dots of sugar came in three flavors, lemon, lime, and cherry, arrayed in rows of four. “Candy Bottoms,” a work reminiscent of the candy (but...
Known as the “Poet of the People” for his ability to capture in writing the struggles and achievements of ordinary Americans, Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) produced a wide range of critically-acclaimed works—from poetry to children’s stories and American folk song compilations—in his lifetime. He...
The owner of this crayon enlargement portrait had always admired it while it hung, for as long as she can remember, in her aunt’s home in Camden County, North Carolina. In the 1980s, she finally asked her aunt if she could have it. “I asked my aunt, ‘who is it?’, and she said it was her grandmother...
Clayton Douglass Buck, who served as governor of Delaware from 1929 to 1937 and United States senator from 1943 to 1949, lived his entire life on a beautiful estate in New Castle known as Buena Vista. He was not the first statesman to own the property, as John M. Clayton, who built the house between...
German-speaking immigrants who settled in Pennsylvania in the 18th and 19th centuries documented their religious beliefs, as well as important events in their personal lives, through decorated manuscripts called fraktur. In each, colorful images of flowers, animals, and religious scenes surround...
CCAHA started the summer by welcoming visitors from the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. From June 9 to 17, Natalia Avetyan, Tatiana Sayatina, Natalia Laytar, and Evgeniia Glinka learned the basics of photograph conservation—a field that does not yet exist in Russia. Their visit was...
In 1630, a Dutch diamond merchant named Killiaen van Rensselaer joined his country’s push for globalization and exploration and negotiated with the Mohican Indians for a tract of land in the Hudson River Valley of New Netherland (present-day New York State). His purchase founded the Manor of...
