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News & Announcements – Digital Commonwealth « News & Announcements – Digital CommonwealthDigital Commonwealth Sign Up / Log In Search in for Search... Search Search Explore For Educators For Institutions About News & Announcements Valentines in the American Antiquarian Society’s Collection Posted on February 14, 2024 by Outreach Committee Unknown, Love Protects” , American Antiquarian Society. Valentines in the American Antiquarian Society’s Collection There are over 230 institutions that have contributed historical materials to Digital Commonwealth’s online collections. These institutions have selected materials that they have determined would be appropriate to enhance the whole of what is available on the Digital Commonwealth website. But in many cases, the collection or collections that they have elected to share with Digital Commonwealth are only a taste of their entire holdings. The American Antiquarian Society is a perfect example. The AAS library today houses the largest and most accessible collection of books, pamphlets, broadsides, newspapers, periodicals, music, and graphic arts material printed through 1876 in what is now the United States, as well as manuscripts and a substantial collection of secondary texts, bibliographies, and digital resources and reference works related to all aspects of American history and culture before the twentieth century.” AAS selected 140 maps not duplicated in Boston Public Library’s Leventhal Map Center collection, out of their 10,000 maps, to be made available as a Digital Commonwealth collection . That said, the American Antiquarian Society has a collection of over 3,000 valentines ranging in date from the 1830’s to 1900. The collection includes both manuscript and printed designs, with a strong representation of locally-produced cards made in Worcester.” AAS has created an online exhibition, Making Valentines: A Tradition in American.” , providing an overview of their extensive collection. Victorian Valentines: Intimacy in the Industrial Age”, a collaborative student project between AAS and the Smith College Department of Art, provides an additional opportunity to explore the collection. Worcester was the home of two of the pioneers in the production of commercial valentine cards in the nineteenth century. Esther Howland (1828-1904) was considered the Mother of the Valentine.” Howland was a cousin of Emily Dickinson; she set up her business in a workroom in her family home. With the help of a number of local girls, her business thrived for 30 years, with sales of $75,000 per year. True Love” with Piper. Worcester:Esther Howland, ca. 1860. Another Worcester native, George Whitney established a valentine manufacturing company that prospered from 1866 to 1942. It was considered one of the largest valentine publishers in this country, with offices in New York, Boston and Chicago. Sentimental Lace Valentine Box Lid. George C. Whitney (mfg) A portion of AAS’s valentine collection includes a sub-genre, the comic valentine, also known as the Vinegar Valentine. In sharp contrast to the sweet and sentimental valentine, caricatures were often cruel and the humor venomous, expressing everything by love.” Lyre (liar)” is an example of this kind of valentine. Lyre (liar) Nineteenth Century Comic Valentine By the end of the nineteenth century, the Boston lithograph firm, Louis Prang & Company , was also in the greeting card business. Commissioning the country’s best illustrators and creating design competitions, Prang sold beautiful cards that were unmatched for years. He also created fun and interesting cards for almost every holiday of the year,” including Valentine cards. Advertisement for Prang’s Valentine Cards Library of Congress Prints & Photographs A Valentine . L. Prang & Co., lithographer, 1888. On this February 14, 2024, we wish you a Happy Valentine’s Day. Barbara Schneider, Member, Digital Commonwealth Outreach Committee All Images courtesy American Antiquarian Society, unless otherwise noted. Posted in Features . A Changing World: Photography by Verner Reed Posted on December 18, 2023 by Outreach Committee Verner Reed, Brunswick Hotel, 1957 . Verner Reed and Historic New England In 2002, Verner and Deborah Reed gave Historic New England 26,000 negatives encompassing Reed’s work as a freelance photographer in the third quarter of the twentieth century. His photographs include portraits, landscapes, and images capturing special moments and current events, document[ing] urban and rural life in New England from the 1950s to the ’80s.” This gift greatly expanded Historic New England’s mid-twentieth century’s photography collection. In 2004, while Verner Reed was still alive, Historic New England mounted an exhibition, and published a catalog of the exhibition, entitled A Changing World: New England in the Photographs of Verner Reed 1950-1972 . By 2022, Historic New England was Celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the Verner Reed Archives” . Who was Verner Reed? The following short biography comes from an article by Nancy Wolfe Stead, The Life and Times of Verner Zevola Reed III” in the Stowe Guide and Magazine , Summer/Fall 2021, p.86-92 . Nancy Stead knew Verner Reed personally during his years in Stowe, and recounts from memory numerous episodes of mayhem, fun, and outlandish enterprise”. Verner Reed, furniture maker, sculptor, jeweler, and photographer, was born in 1923 in Denver. . . Verner’s early years were spent in New York, Boston, and Stowe, where his father had built Edson Hill Manor as a wedding present for his wife. Following World War II and a stint in the U.S. Army Air Corps in Burma, China, and India, he became a builder of fine, handcrafted furniture. Marketing his product introduced him to the camera, and photography quickly became his passion. A chance meeting with a LIFE bureau chief at a 1953 rally in Boston before the impending execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg opened an immense new arena for Verner. He became a freelance photographer for LIFE and, as his skills and interests deepened, he added Fortune , Paris Match , Time , and regional publications such as Vermont Life and various newspapers to his roster. He always worked freelance, refusing to be tied down, and he chose his subjects, exploring and exalting in the streets, neighborhoods, celebrations, losses, and people of his world.” For more biographical information, see vernerreed.com/biography . The images In Brunswick Hotel , the featured image at the top of the blog post, Reed clearly relished the simple irony that emerges between the decorum maintained by the sitters and the decrepitude of their environs. Yet, his chosen moment reveals a final twist: these Bostonians recognize their situation; they celebrate long-standing traditions even as they acknowledge changing times.”* Verner Reed’s work in photography is informed by his times and his surroundings, rooted in New England. It is also clear that he has taken to heart Henri Cartier-Bresson’s definition of photography written in the text accompanying the iconic work , Images à la sauvette / The Decisive Moment (1952). Photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression.” ** Reed cultivated a photographer’s eye. In The Photographer’s Eye , based on the Museum of Modern Art’s 1964 exhition showcasing the history of photography, John Szarkowki wrote, Photography alludes to the past and the future only in so far as they exist in the presnt, the past through its surviving relics, the future through prophecy visible in the present.”*** Verner Reed was always conscious of this elusive aspect of time. Verner Reed, Northern Vermont Family, 1960 . Walker Evans, Sharecropper’s Family, Hale County, Alabama, 1935 . In 1960, Verner Reed stopped to take a picture of a family in their yard in Northern Vermont. According to the description...