Author Archives: Marianne Hansen

Our Hearts Were Young and Gay – Emily Kimbrough and Cornelia Otis Skinner

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OurHeartsWereYoungandGaySM

Program for Philadelphia premiere of Our Hearts Were Young and Gay

For the past several months, I have been privileged enough to work with the Bryn Mawr oral histories as part of my work for The Albert M. Greenfield Digital Center for the History of Women’s Education. The oral histories are comprised of hundreds of old cassette tapes, containing interviews, speeches, and lectures with Bryn Mawr alumnae, professors, staff, and other members of the college community. Although they are not available to the public at the moment, my job includes listening to the tapes and digitizing them. The long-term goal is that they will one day be a part of a public digital archive. In the meantime, I want to share some of the fun, surprising, and enlightening facts I have learned about Bryn Mawr through my work.

Today, I listened to a speech by Emily Kimbrough, Class of 1921, which she delivered at the Senior Dinner for the Class of 1973. Her speech was riotously funny, and after I finished listening, I decided to look up her alumna file. It turns out that Emily Kimbrough was a very accomplished writer, known for her humorous memoirs and short stories. As if that weren’t fun enough, her breakthrough novel, entitled Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, was co-written with Cornelia Otis Skinner, Class of 1922, a famous writer and actress. The book, published in 1942, is an account of their wild and hilarious trip to Europe when they were fresh out of Bryn Mawr. The book was made into a movie of the same name in 1944, a play dramatized by Jean Kerr, and a short-lived TV show as well. Throughout this process, the book and movie stayed close to their Bryn Mawr roots, with Paramount holding a special Philadelphia premiere of the movie for the Bryn Mawr College Special Scholarship Fund. Special Collections has the program for this premiere, which provides a great glimpse of Bryn Mawr in the 1940’s, as well as the strong associations between Our Hearts Were Young and Gay and the college.

Having discovered this treasure trove of forgotten Bryn Mawr hilarity, I immediately chased down the book and movie for myself. The movie appears to be available in full on Youtube. The book was in Canaday, and I can’t wait to start reading it. Even glancing through it, I can see that it is full of the kinds of Bryn Mawr stories that every Mawrter should adopt into their personal collection of college trivia. I hope that this post can revive the popularity of the book and movie at Bryn Mawr, and perhaps Our Hearts Were Young and Gay will become the new craze to sweep the campus. Such works are invaluable to every Mawrter, since they provide fun glimpses into the lives of our predecessors outside of the classroom. While I get to hear such stories frequently through the oral histories, other students can pick up Our Hearts Were Young and Gay and learn a bit more of the Mawrters of days past, and the mischief they got up to over 90 years ago.

Zoe Fox, 2014

Welcome to Bryn Mawr…in 1951!

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Judith Kate Haywood Jacoby (photograph) Judith Kate Haywood at a party at Bryn Mawr.

Gift of Karl Haywood Jacoby.

At the end of the summer of 1951, Judith Kate Haywood (later Jacoby) (1934-1997) was making preparations to attend Bryn Mawr College for the first time. She had just returned from a tour of Europe, a trip that was a high school graduation gift from her parents, when she received a welcome letter in the mail from a returning Bryn Mawr student. The author of the letter was a rising junior, Barbara Pennypacker (Class of 1953). The tradition of an upperclasswoman sending a letter to a freshman still exists at Bryn Mawr today, but with a couple of modifications. Freshmen today receive welcoming correspondence from sophomores designated “Customs People,” and this correspondence comes by way of email rather than the post.          

A couple pieces of advice Judith received in the letter in 1951, however, may be still relevant for students today. For example, Barbara wrote, “The most important advice I have is to arrive early. The halls open at 8 in the morning and it is wise to arrive then, and I think you’ll understand why.” And, “Try not to make a lot of outside engagements during the first few days as things will be very confusing and you will be very busy.”

But, much of her advice would not help members of the soon-to-arrive Class of 2017: they will not be expected to take a voice test, undergo a physical, or “sign a contagion card” (a card on which each student listed the contagious diseases she had had. Barbara also gave advice to Judith about what she should bring with her. She told her that trunks often got lost and that packing a suitcase with clothing was a good idea

“As for clothes—bring a suitcase with shirts, shorts, sweater, blue jeans, a dress or two and something you can wear to a combination square dance and ballroom dance….College wear is just what you’ve been wearing at school. Don’t believe all that Junior Bazaar or the College Shop at Lord and Taylor’s tells you. We are individuals trying to be comfortable and neat, and we don’t spend hours at our wardrobe. Anything respectable will do nicely…If you find that you are naked or have forgotten something, there are excellent stores nearby…”

(Letter dated August 20, 1951)

Students today seldom fret about lost trunks or bringing a “combination square dance and ballroom” dress, but they can still take the advice that designer fashion and accessories are not necessary for sitting in class. More than sixty years later, it remains true that there is great shopping nearby in case someone should find herself naked!

In her first semester at college, Judith was required to pass a Self-Governance exam. Students got an up-to-date booklet of the constitution and resolutions of the Bryn Mawr Students Association. At exam time, the college provided one of those familiar (and dreaded)  blue books in which students answered, in essay form, questions about specific rules. Here are two pages from Judith’s 1951-1952 Self-Government booklet.

Rules Book 3

Unlike students in the Class of 1955, students in the Class of 2017 will not have to take an exam about rules. They do have rules, but infinitely less restrictive ones. Today, Bryn Mawrters can leave the college campus without getting permission from “Permission Givers,” stay in hotels, wear shorts to class, wear trousers “on main roads or in the village,” and sunbathe pretty much anywhere they please (like on Merion Green with speakers blaring before finals week in Spring). Smoking in Taylor Hall in the “Water-Cooler corridor” or in any other building, for that matter, is no longer allowed.

Regardless of whether it is the 1890s, the 1950s, or the late 2010s, all freshmen are bound to experience the excitement and anxieties that come with starting a new chapter of life.

Jennifer Hoit Dawson
Ph.D. Candidate in Greek, Latin & Classical Studies

The Judith Kate Haywood Jacoby papers offer unique insight into what it was like to be a student at Bryn Mawr in the 1950s. The papers date from Judith’s college years and include correspondence from her parents, academic course work, notes on extracurricular activities, appointment books, a diary, some photographs, and ephemera.

Marianne Moore: College Education to Professional Career

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MMoore Senior PictureBryn Mawr College Special Collections is in the final stages of reorganizing and cataloging the papers of one of the college’s most cherished alumnae, the poet Marianne Craig Moore (Class of 1909). The Marianne Craig Moore Papers consist of 23 boxes of correspondence, photographs, audio recordings, manuscripts, news clippings, and ephemera. We can also boast that we have in our collection one of Marianne Moore’s cloaks, her briefcase with the monogram “M.M.,” and one of her iconic tricorner hats! These materials were given to Bryn Mawr by many donors including Hildegarde and J. Sibley Watson, Jr., Sallie Moore and Marianne Craig “Bee” Moore, Mary Woodworth, Anna Marcet Haldeman-Julius, K. Laurence Stapleton, and many Bryn Mawr alumnae. The collection reveals unique aspects of Marianne Moore’s education at Bryn Mawr.

At the time of her death in 1972, Marianne Moore was well-known as an innovative and witty modernist poet. She won multiple awards for her books of poetry including the Pulitzer Prize, the Bollingen Prize, The National Book Award, The National Medal for Literature, France’s Croix de Chevalier, and sixteen honorary degrees. Until the time of her final illness in 1969, Moore participated in numerous speaking engagements and graciously gave critical advice to young and upcoming poets. Success had not come quickly or easily for Marianne, however. She faced many challenges in acquiring a college education, being professionally published, and finding a professional position as an editor and writer.

Marianne Moore was born to Mary Warner Moore and John Milton Moore in Kirkwood, Missouri in 1887. Because John Moore suffered a nervous breakdown and was institutionalized before she was born, the poetess never knew her father. Marianne, with her mother and her older brother, moved to Pennsylvania in 1894. While living in Carlisle, PA, Mary Moore worked as an English teacher. A single mother, Mary would continue to hold this job so that both of her children could attend college—John at Yale and Marianne at Bryn Mawr. Details of the financial burden of putting two children through college emerge in the letters Mary wrote to Bryn Mawr. In a letter dated May 2, 1904, Mary Warner Moore wrote: “In replying for my daughter to your announcement that an increase of fifty dollars in the yearly tuition is to be made, I should say that her application still remains good. I am sorry however, that an increase in tuition is necessary. I have been teaching for four years in order to make college education possible for my two children—a son and a daughter, and of course under the new arrangement, the weight is greater…”

And on January 18, 1906, she wrote, “That [Marianne’s] brother is in College, and she likewise, and that I am teaching in order to keep them there, may make apparent the reason of a somewhat frugal ordering of her affairs on Marianne’s part while she is in College, and also of her application for scholarships. The circumstances of our lives have been unusual…”

Their “unusual” family circumstances also made other aspects of attending college difficult for Marianne. In a letter dated September 4, 1905, Mary wrote to Bryn Mawr to ask whether there was any way Marianne could take her English examination on a Monday afternoon rather than in the morning so that Marianne’s brother could escort her to Bryn Mawr. This way, Mary would not have to take off work. Marianne’s mother ended the letter,

“[Marianne] has never traveled alone, however, and I am not willing to have her make the journey, and its several changes, alone.”

Unfortunately, her request was not granted. In the next letter dated September 11, 1905, Marianne’s mother thanked Bryn Mawr for refusing her request politely. Seeming thoroughly embarrassed, she replied, “That I, a teacher, should be guilty of proposing a disorderly act, seems most reprehensible.”

In Fall of 1905 Marianne arrived at Bryn Mawr. She wanted to be an English major; her love of reading and writing had started at a young age. She was thwarted, however, by her English professors who said that she was obscure and unclear in her writing and that she often disregarded rules of grammar and language. Ironically, these characteristics would be hallmarks of her famous, modernist poetry. Marianne continued to write while at Bryn Mawr, publishing short stories and poems in Tipyn O’Bob and The Lantern. She also wanted to major in biology but was apparently discouraged by her mother who thought that being a biologist was no profession for a lady. Nevertheless, flora, fauna, and the sea were frequent subjects of her poetry.

Marianne graduated from Bryn Mawr with a B.A. in history, economics, and politics in 1909. It took six years after graduating Bryn Mawr before she was published professionally. After moving to New York with her mother, she befriended J. Sibley Watson, Jr. and Scofield Thayer, owners of The Dial, a popular magazine which served as an outlet for modernist thought, art, and literature. Watson and Thayer were so impressed with Marianne Moore that they made her acting editor of their magazine in 1925 and editor-in-chief in 1926. She was editor until 1929 when The Dial ceased publication.

Jennifer Hoit Dawson
Ph.D. Candidate in Greek, Latin & Classical Studies

Students and Alumnae Meet, in Special Collections

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Dr. Jeannette Ridlon Piccard was a pioneer on several fronts in her lifetime. She became the first woman to reach the stratosphere with her husband, Dr. Jean Felix Piccard, in a high-altitude balloon in 1934. In 1974, she became one of the first women ordained as priests by the Episcopal Church. Although she professed little talent for academics, Piccard was a dedicated student. In a letter composed in 1942 as a supplement to a job application, Piccard claimed to have chosen Bryn Mawr College because her high school diploma decreed that she could go to any college in the country except for Bryn Mawr. She wrote, “So I decided to take Bryn Mawr exams so that no one could say there was any college to which I could not go.” Piccard graduated from Bryn Mawr in 1918 with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and psychology, and went on to earn a master’s degree in organic chemistry from the University of Chicago in 1919, finally receiving her Ph.D. in education from the University of Minnesota in 1942.tag1

The task of organizing her papers, which were donated to Bryn Mawr College by her granddaughter Ruth Elizabeth Piccard, has occupied the bulk of my summer in Special Collections. When I began sorting through the five boxes, I found Piccard’s extensive correspondence mixed with receipts and travel vouchers from her time as a Special Consultant for NASA; drafts of essays on topics ranging from the significance of head covering in various religious denominations to the ethics of modern medicine; evidence of her decades-long campaign for the ordination of women jumbled up with the original research for her Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Minnesota; and even a rough copy of the first few chapters of her unfinished autobiography. The collection was disorganized, to say the least. However, over the past several weeks, I have managed to consolidate the assorted papers into a formal structure that will guide the more complete organization and description of the collection in the future.

By her own account, Piccard lived an eventful and unconventional life. Born in Chicago, Illinois, on January 5, 1895, she was the next-to-youngest of nine children. At three, she watched her twin sister accidentally set herself aflame and burn to death. By the time she was eleven, Piccard had resolved to become a priest, even though at the time there were no female priests in the Episcopal Church. She was also deeply invested in the sciences; even though her majors were philosophy and psychology, she took all the college courses in physics and chemistry she could. Upon entering graduate school at the University of Chicago during the First World War, Piccard chose to pursue a master’s degree in chemistry, partly to “replace a man for the front,” but also because she believed her degree might lead to permanent employment after the war, as opposed to the temporary positions most of her fellow female students expected. It was as a graduate student that Jeannette met her future husband, Swiss national Dr. Jean Felix Piccard. “We were drawn to each other the first time we met. We had the same name. We were [identical] twins.” They married shortly after Jeannette received her degree and promptly left for Switzerland.

Drawn into aeronautics by her brother-in-law Auguste, Piccard qualified as a pilot in 1934. In October of the same year, she and Jean ascended by balloon to an altitude of 57,559 ft, reaching the stratosphere through a layer of clouds. Contemporary accounts hailed Piccard as the first woman in space. She and her husband became popular lecturers as a result of their successful flight and toured for many years, until Jean secured a teaching position at the University of Minnesota, one of the first universities to have a department devoted to aeronautical engineering.

A year after Jean’s death in 1963, the director of NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center hired Jeannette as a consultant. She held the position until it was eliminated for reasons of economy in 1970, the same year the General Convention of the Episcopal Church opened the Diaconate to women. From that point onwards, Piccard devoted herself to becoming a priest, a vocation she had never abandoned. She was finally ordained in 1974 alongside ten other women, who together formed the “Philadelphia Eleven”, the first female priests “irregularly” ordained by the Episcopal Church. After extensive debate, the ordinations were regularized on January 1, 1977.

Although Piccard dedicated her life to two fields in which I otherwise have little interest, I have found a great deal to admire in this woman whom I came to know through the papers she left behind. Piccard was a life-long advocate for gender equality in two areas traditionally closed to women: the church and aerospace. Unapologetically committed to eradicating institutionalized sexism in both space exploration and the church that was so dear to her, Piccard was one of those fortunate people who actually managed to make something of her ambitions, making significant progress in both arenas during her lifetime.

In a letter to a colleague dated March 30, 1970, Piccard noted that she had a number of badges from her time as a Special Consultant for NASA that no longer held any value following the expiration date. “I’ll stick them in the file to edify future generations!” she wrote.

Consider me edified, Reverend Dr. Piccard.

Eileen Morgan, class of 2015Eileen

Joseph W. Taylor’s Books – From the Library of our Founder

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Four of Dr. Taylor's booksBryn Mawr’s Special Collections  holds a number of books previously owned by Dr. Joseph W. Taylor, the founder of the college. In a recent reexamination of some of these—in my case, a first viewing—we were excited to find a group of four books which illuminate the background of Dr. Taylor’s personal education and his beliefs on the place of women in American society. Taylor carefully signed and dated each of his books, which allows us to attach them to known periods of his life. Three are dated to the mid-1820s, when he was in his early teenage years.[i] His age, coupled with the subjects of these books (Euclidean geometry and Latin commentaries on the works of Julius Caesar and Ovid), suggest that these may have been his own schoolbooks. If this is so, their content shows his early education to have been erudite and classically-focused.

The fourth book, Woman, Her Station Providentially Appointed…, by Margaret Coxe, discusses the role of women in American society in general and, more pointedly, argues for women’s intellectual aptitude and the importance of women as teachers.[ii] It came into Dr. Taylor’s collection while living in the Philadelphia area in 1853, one year before he became a member of the Board of Haverford College. It is attractive to imagine this book as one of many which spurred Dr. Taylor’s dream of a women’s college whose academic standards equaled those of institutions like those where he had.

Together, these books serve as a reflection of a man who was well-educated from a young age; a man who valued his school books, and by extension education, enough to keep them throughout his life; and a man who as a rising professional took an interest in questions of the social and intellectual life of American women. Luckily they stayed together in order to support this portrait. What kept them together and how did they come into our collections?

After Taylor’s death in 1880, the books stayed in the Taylor family, passing to Joseph’s sister, thence to her children, and finally to Margaret Taylor MacIntosh. Margaret was a Bryn Mawr alumna (Class of ’21) and took a keen interest in her great uncle—she wrote and published his biography in 1932.[iii] It is no wonder that she realized that these heirlooms would be treasured by Bryn Mawr as they had been by Taylor’s family. She donated many of the volumes to the library in 1955, but some, including that on women’s place in society—in a pleasantly decorative, but subdued, early-Victorian binding—only came to us in 1965. Although the books each have their own distinct origin and history, their individual stories very quickly coincide; they remained together in in the Thomas family libraries until they came into our possession. Here in Special Collections we can preserve not only their individual content, but also their constellation, offering us tantalizing insights into the background and character of the man who collected them—and who founded Bryn Mawr College.

[i] Aulus Hirtius, Jean Godouin, and Thomas Clark, ed. 1824. C. Julii Cæsaris, quæ extant. Philadelphia: J. Grigg. (http://tripod.brynmawr.edu/find/Record/.b3895809); Playfair, John ed.. 1819. Elements of geometry: containing the first six books of Euclid : with a supplement on the quadrature of the circle, and the geometry of solids : to which are added elements of plane and spherical trigonometry. New York: Collins and Hanny. (http://tripod.brynmawr.edu/find/Record/.b3895808); Jan Minell, and Nathan Bailey ed. 1815. Ovid’s Metamorphoses, in fifteen books. Dublin: printed by Brett Smith. (http://tripod.brynmawr.edu/find/Record/.b3895805)

[ii] Coxe, Margaret. 1848. Woman, her station providentially appointed: and the duties assigned to a woman in her station. Columbus [Ohio]: Isaac N. Whiting. (http://tripod.brynmawr.edu/find/Record/.b3895810)

[iii] MacIntosh, Margaret Taylor. 1936. Joseph Wright Taylor, founder of Bryn Mawr College. Haverford, Pa: C.S. Taylor. (http://tripod.brynmawr.edu/find/Record/.b1450995)

 

Bryn Mawr College’s Single Leaf Manuscripts Collection and The Last Will and Testament of Finas de Sancto Cirico

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Bryn Mawr College’s Special Collections holds nearly two hundred manuscripts written on single leaves of parchment, paper, or papyrus. Many of these leaves are merely a portion of a whole work from which they were separated at an earlier time. Others are complete documents. We are excited to announce that our effort to add the Single Leaf Manuscripts Collection to our online database is now nearly complete. Previously, records of our manuscripts existed only on paper, making it difficult for scholars and researchers to access the unique information contained in each manuscript. Now, scholars and researchers can search for manuscripts and view information about each document or text online. What is more, we have created high-quality digital images of these manuscripts to allow them to be viewed online and ensure their survival in the event that they deteriorate further or are destroyed by the malice of time. The database will be made public next week.

The Single Leaf Manuscripts Collection consists of diverse manuscript leaves in a variety of languages. They were given to the library by a number of generous donors including Sigmund Harrison, Felix Usis, Howard Lehman Goodhart, Phyllis Goodhart Gordan, Doreen Canaday Spitzer, and Miriam Coffin Canady. Most of the manuscripts are medieval (1100-1500 CE), originated in Europe, and concern religious or legal subjects. But the collection also contains Greek, Arabic, and Coptic papyrus fragments, some of which may date to as early as the first and second century CE, and French, English, and American documents that date from the sixteenth to the twentieth century CE.

The Single Leaf Manuscripts Collection features papal bulls sealed by Popes Clement VII, Sixtus V, Innocent XI, and Innocent XII; a legal document with the seal of Queen Elizabeth I and another with the seal of King Edward VII; two letters, one signed by King Henry IV of France and the other by King Philip III of Spain; and grants of nobility sealed by Holy Roman Emperors Leopold II and Francis II. The documents in the collection associated with well-known historical figures are certainly special. Perhaps more extraordinary, however, are documents connected with unknown individuals, because documents relating to these people may well not exist anywhere else in the world.

Single Leaf Manuscripts Collection (2012.11.71). Will of Finas de Sancto Cirico. Parchment. Gothic bastard hand in brown ink. Penwork notarial seal at the bottom. Verso is blank. Approximately 12×12 in.

The last will and testament of Finas de Sancto Cirico, the daughter of Guillelmus de Sancto Cirico, is a good example. Finas de Sancto Cirico was a woman who lived in a time very distant from our own, yet one feels a connection with her while reading her will. The will was penned by a cleric (Latin: clericus) of the Diocese of Cahors in France on the 24th of October in 1288 CE, but is written in the first person voice of Finas. Her testament reveals her religious piety and provides instructions for the disbursement of her property to the church and her heirs, including her son, Arnaldus Bonafos, and her brothers. She entrusts her body and soul “to our lord Jesus Christ, his most glorious mother, and all of the heavens” and her body “to a grave in the cemetery of Sancte Sperie.” At the bottom of the will, the cleric who wrote down the will added a note with his penwork seal affirming that he “faithfully wrote down the words spoken by Finas de Sancto Cirico while in her presence.” In Finas’ own words, she wishes her final arrangements to be recorded for public memory at the present moment “because nothing is more certain than death, and nothing is more uncertain than the hour of death” (Quia nichil cercius morte, et nichil incercius hora morti).

Jennifer Kay Hoit
Greek, Latin & Classical Studies

 

PA Now Papers at Bryn Mawr College

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The Library has a strong collection of items relating to women’s studies and women’s history. A donation from the Pennsylvania branch of the National Organization for Women (PA NOW) this spring doubled our preexisting collection of papers from the group. The earlier donation covered the 1970s through mid-1980s, while the new addition brings the collection up to 2007.

The National Organization for Women was founded in 1966 and is the largest feminist organization in America. Core issues that the group has been active in include abortion/reproductive rights, violence against women, and ending racism and sexism. PA NOW was founded in 1971, and the earliest dated materials in the collection date back to the very beginning.

The PA NOW papers consist of materials saved in the office files of the organization: articles, pamphlets, newsletters, meeting transcripts, convention planning documents, records of the political action committee, and publications from groups other than PA NOW, both for and against various issues.  The collection is substantial, occupying over 15 feet of shelving, and covering a very wide range of topics in addition to the major issues: information on legislators, pornography, disability, aging, child welfare, family medical leave, inequities in health insurance, body image, sexual assault/ abuse, violence against women, equal pay – issues that affect the lives of all women.

The bulk of the collection consists of internal administrative documents. The organization tended to focus on one key issue at a time. The organization’s support for the Equal Rights Amendment during the early 1970s is reflected in the quantity of materials dedicated to the issue. Abortion was a major issue for PA NOW in the 1980s. The papers provide many pro-choice arguments, support the right to abortion under both usual and unusual circumstances, and debate the rights of spouses, partners, family members, and the community to prevent abortions.

Office documents covered state and political news, updates from other women’s organizations, and information about women’s conferences held in other countries, such as China. Legal documents from the Philadelphia region listing PA NOW as amicus curiae demonstrate the organization’s activity and role as an authority on women’s rights in the local area.

The collection also contains a small amount of ephemera, including T-shirts, buttons, and posters, the majority of which focus on LGBT issues, abortion, and racism.

A guide to the collection will soon be publicly available.

More information about PA NOW can be found at: http://www.panow.org/pages/keyissues.htm

Heather Davies is one of two Friends of the Library Undergraduate Interns.

Bryn Mawr student-curated exhibition described in a new book

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Through our Special Collections, Bryn Mawr offers a unique opportunity for students to use great literature in the form in which it first appeared, antique cookbooks, the working papers of important scholars, letters between the earliest administrators of the College, ancient pottery, original Japanese prints, and hundreds of other objects in their classes and research. Every year the curators work with dozens of classes and hundreds of students on projects that range from single classroom visits to semester-long collaborations.
In Fall 2007, fourteen undergraduate students joined a class that gave them a unique opportunity to work with medieval manuscripts for the entire semester, drawing on Bryn Mawr’s substantial collection of these beautiful hand -made volumes. As part of the class, students planned and created an exhibition with the books that ran in the Rare Book Room the following Spring. Marianne Hansen, Curator and Academic Liaison for Rare Books and Manuscripts, worked with the class throughout the semester and through the duration of the show. She spoke on her experience at a professional meeting (Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of the American Library Association), and her paper has just been published in a new book on the use of special collections and archives in undergraduate education.

You can read the article without borrowing the book by looking it up in the open access repository of the scholarship and publications of the Bryn Mawr community (on Scholarship, Research, and Creative Work at Bryn Mawr College), at http://repository.brynmawr.edu/lib_pubs/11/. Click the download button to read:

Marianne Hansen. “Real Objects, Real Spaces, Real Expertise: An Undergraduate Seminar Curates an Exhibition on the Medieval Book of Hours,” in Past or Portal?: Enhancing Undergraduate Learning Through Special Collections and Archives. Eleanor Mitchell; Peggy Seiden; Suzy Taraba, editors. Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries. 2012.

Lockwood de Forest at Bryn Mawr College

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Among the numerous holdings of the College’s Special Collections is an impressive and historically important assortment of furniture and decorative fixtures designed by the artist Lockwood de Forest. The value of De Forest’s pieces lies not only in their intrinsic beauty and status as fine examples of the East Indian Craft Revival but also in their inextricable link to the history of the College. More than a century has passed since these objects were first incorporated into the fabric of the Bryn Mawr campus and for much of that time many have been used and reused in the capacity for which they were originally intended, namely as furnishings for various public spaces. As a result of their prolonged service to the community and the frequent shifting of their locations on campus, records for many of the De Forest pieces remain incomplete. In an effort to remedy this situation, Special Collections staff and student workers have embarked upon a project to inventory and catalog the College’s holdings of Lockwood de Forest furniture and decorative objects.


Lockwood de Forest Carved Teak Sofa

Born in New York in 1850, De Forest had begun his career as a painter, enjoying some moderate success in academic circles. For his livelihood, however, he relied upon his talents as a decorative artist and dealer in exotic goods. Inspired by the architecture and ornament of Egypt, the Middle East and India, many of De Forest’s interior designs included elaborately carved or painted furniture as well as walls and ceilings embellished with stenciled patterns or pierced brass appliqués.


Lockwood de Forest Pierced Brass Appliqué

De Forest’s relationship with Bryn Mawr College spanned the course of several decades, from the mid-1890s to the mid-1910s. In 1894, M. Carey Thomas, who had served as Dean of the College since 1885, became its second president and her residence, known as the Deanery, underwent significant renovation. The original five-room wooden farmhouse, located on the site now occupied by Canaday Library, was expanded and remodeled in order to meet the growing needs of the new president. Thomas called upon De Forest to decorate the interior spaces of the newly enlarged Deanery.


Deanery Dining Room, 1896

It is likely that she commissioned him to decorate and furnish her offices in Taylor Hall at this time as well. Ten years later, Mary Elizabeth Garrett, a Baltimore railroad heiress and long-time friend of Thomas, came to live at the Deanery, bringing with her many of the furnishings from her Baltimore residence. Garrett too had been a patron of De Forest and among the items she transferred to Bryn Mawr were a number of pieces of his East Indian furniture. The Deanery’s final and most extensive renovation, which transformed it into a palatial forty-six room residence, began in 1908 with De Forest serving once again as the interior design consultant. In addition to his work in the Deanery, he also played a significant role in the design of several other campus buildings, including the entrance vestibule and Great Hall of Thomas Library. As a result of De Forest’s long-term engagement at Bryn Mawr, the College became a repository for a substantial collection of his carved and stenciled furniture as well as for a number of his pierced brass appliqués.


Deanery Sitting Room ca. 1908

M. Carey Thomas retired in 1922 at the age of sixty-five but lived out much of the rest of her life in the Deanery. By 1932, the building and most of its contents had been given to the Alumnae Association for use as a center and inn. Under the Alumnae’s administration, various changes were made to the structure and decoration of the Deanery in order to adapt it to its new, more public role. Serious efforts were, however, made to “preserve the flavor and the atmosphere” of the Thomas era Deanery and many of the De Forest furnishings remained in situ until the Deanery was demolished in 1968.


Deanery Dining Room, 1965

With the destruction of the Deanery came the dispersal of the Lockwood de Forest furniture and decorative items. Some were retained by the College and reused in the new alumnae house at Wydham or in various offices and other public spaces on campus. Several pieces, which had been displayed together in one of De Forest’s original Deanery interiors, were relocated to The Haffner Language and Culture House where a scaled-down version of the De Forest sitting room was reconstructed in an attempt to preserve some sense of the Deanery’s former splendor.


De Forest Swing in the Dorothy Vernon Room, Haffner

Two side chairs went on long-term loan to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. One of these is currently on display in the museum’s American Gallery. Others of the De Forest furnishings were sold.


De Forest Side Chair on Loan to the PMA

Interest in the life and works of Lockwood de Forest is ongoing in both academic and museum circles, with the College’s holdings of De Forest furnishings serving as an important resource for researchers and curators. Roberta Mayer’s 2008 monograph on De Forest, for example, includes an extensive analysis of his relationships with Mary Garrett, M. Carey Thomas and Bryn Mawr College. Several area museums have expressed an interest in borrowing items from the College’s De Forest collection for upcoming exhibitions.

As part of recent endeavors to update and refine records for Special Collections art and artifacts, a new project has been undertaken, the goal of which is to inventory, photograph and catalog all of the Lockwood de Forest pieces remaining on campus. In addition, the conservation needs of individual objects are being assessed and several minor restorations have already been accomplished. It is hoped that the information gained through these efforts will make the De Forest furnishings more accessible to members of the Bryn Mawr College community and to outside scholars alike.

Joelle Collins
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Classical & Near Eastern Archaeology

A link to the History of the Deanery online: http://repository.brynmawr.edu/bmc_books/7/

Three Little Maids

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In my first few weeks of work as a Graduate Assistant in Special Collections this year, I catalogued and accessioned a collection of Gilbert and Sullivan memorabilia donated to the College by Ivy Reade Relkin, ’50. It was easy to date and identify most of the objects based on manufacturers’ markings, but this painted bronze figurine had none; its condition suggested that it might be significantly older than the other objects in the collection. A hand-written note enclosed in the donation file indicated that the figurine was a souvenir given at the opening night of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado, at London’s Savoy Theatre in 1885. The Mikado was an instant success, and remains one of the most popular pieces of musical theater ever written; if this figurine, which depicts the “Three Little Maids,” really was distributed at the play’s very first public performance, it would be an exciting find.

I decided to see whether the assertion in the note could be confirmed. My research led me first to the Harvard Theatre Collection, a department of the Houghton Library of rare books and manuscripts.  The bronze figurine was new to them. “We are in the midst of processing our own sizeable collection of G&S material compiled by our late curator, Frederic Woodbridge Wilson,” a curatorial assistant wrote in response to my inquiry. “[Wilson] was, all kidding aside, quite fond of figurines, and yet I cannot find a single item that would be similar to yours or presented on a similar occasion. In fact, we haven’t any figurines at all…we have cookies, candy bars, playing cards–all manner of souvenirs and memorabilia–and not one figurine!”

At Harvard’s suggestion, however, I began to explore the extensive — and friendly — world of Gilbert and Sullivan aficionados. I discovered a collection of Gilbert and Sullivan-themed ceramics at Cal State Northridge, a web archive with links to G&S “clip art” as well as to librettos and plot summaries, and the website of a group that produces the duo’s comic operas in Central Texas. I contacted various collectors and was referred from enthusiast to enthusiast; finally, one correspondent expressed certainty that the figurine had not, in fact, been distributed at the Savoy Theatre on the Mikado’s opening night.  He added, “I’ve never seen it described as a production souvenir before, though I suppose it’s possible—perhaps in Vienna where Mikado was performed on several occasions, by the D’Oyly Carte and others, in the late 1880s.” A second G&S maven confirmed the opinion: “It was not a first night souvenir [nor was it] ever a D’Oyly Carte souvenir. It’s actually a Vienna bronze made in the mid 90s.”

The Gilbert and Sullivanists had reached a consensus: the “Three Little Maids” figurine was not a memento from Mikado’s opening night. It was however, an early example of the kinds of playful collectibles that continue to circulate among enthusiasts, who form a community that is as vibrant in 2012 as it was in the late nineteenth century.

S. Backer