Cataloging Manuscript Pages – A Highlight: Pope Clement VII’s ruling on the Marriage of the de Herreras

Posted on June 4, 2012 by mweldon

Papal Bull of Clement VII

Bryn Mawr’s Special Collections hold a number of remarkable medieval and early modern manuscript pages that are currently cataloged only in paper records. In order to make these documents and their unique information available to scholars and researchers, we have expanded our efforts to add information about these materials to our online resources. The records will include high quality digital images of these manuscripts. These images will not only allow researchers to view the manuscripts in their entirety, but also ensure the information in them survives in the event that they deteriorate further, or become lost or destroyed in the future.

Since January, we have cataloged a wide range of single page and other short manuscripts which are diverse with respect to their provenance, date, language, and content. The earliest manuscripts that we have, though few, are not even medieval – they are Greek papyrus fragments which date to the 1^st and 2^nd century CE, and likely come from Egypt. In a collection of fifty-nine medieval manuscripts donated by Sigmund Harrison in the 1980’s, we have pages of religious texts such as breviaries, missals, and copies of the bible. These are written in Latin and are dated from the 11^th century CE to the 16^th century. Additionally, the Harrison collection contains a medical text on the common cold written in Latin, a liturgical calendar with the names of local saints, a page from a German accounting book, four pages from an Italian accounting book index, and French legal documents.

Currently we are cataloguing manuscripts in the Felix J. Usis collection. Six papal bulls comprise only a part of this extraordinary collection. A papal bull, a legal document issued by a pope, is named after the bulla by which the document is sealed. Originally, bullae were made of clay or wax, but in time, the definition was extended to refer to pendent metal seals.

Two of these papal bulls date to 1529 CE and were issued by Pope Clement VII (born Giulio de’ Medici). Clement VII, known for refusing to annul King Henry VIII’s marriage to Queen Catherine, here played a role in the marriage of another couple. This time, however, his permission to marry was requested and granted. The documents connected with the two papal bulls suggest that a local clergyman wrote to the pope on behalf of Antonio de Herrera and Barbara de Herrera to see if it would be alright if they married one another. Why did they need permission? They were cousins.

The papal bull contains Clement’s response. Typically it was not permitted for blood relations to be united (copulari) in marriage. In this case, however, the cousins were related only in the third and fourth steps of blood relation (tertio…et quarto…consanguinitatis gradibus). Therefore, these two de Herreras might marry one another. The Pope added that anyone petitioning him for a similar reason should receive the same answer.

Jennifer Hoit

Greek, Latin & Classical Studies

Searching the M. Carey Thomas Papers online

Posted on May 30, 2012 by Jennifer Redmond

Many people are interested in the papers of M. Carey Thomas, not just to explore the details of her own life, but because of the numerous famous people she hosted at the college and her voluminous correspondence with notables of her day. The above photograph shows Thomas standing on the verandah of the Deanery, her home for over five decades of her life. A history and guide to the Deanery has been digitized and can be found in Bryn Mawr College’s new institutional repository by clicking here.

The index or finding aid to her papers at Bryn Mawr College Special Collections was created when this archival material was committed to microfilm, and we have now digitized the index to make it even easier to search her correspondence. Although this collection is relatively well known, we hope it will become even more so now that you can search the descriptions of the materials online.

Using Triptych, you can now perform word searches of the many letters she wrote and received and which can be viewed either in their original form by coming to the Special Collections Reading Room or you may view them on the microfilm machines in Canaday Library or through ILL. To request material, just pay attention to what Reel Number is indicated as this corresponds with the relevant box of original material.

The M. Carey Thomas index can be found in the ‘Finding Aids’ section of the Triptych site and there are three different listings by which entries can be searched: the Author Index, the Reel Listings and the Author/Recipient Index.

Mary Garrett at May Day celebrations

The Author Index details the correspondence Thomas had with others and gives descriptions of the letters in the folders, such as the below screenshot describing correspondence with Mary Garrett in 1894-5 regarding her health and financial matters. Searching this way will allow you to pinpoint more specifically what letters you may wish to view; Thomas’ correspondence with certain people is extensive and this will assist you if you wish to focus just on a certain period of letters or those from a particular person. As part of our work we have been digitizing and transcribing the letters between Mary Garrett and Thomas and this will form part of the digital collections of The Albert M. Greenfield Digital Center for the History of Women’s Education site (see previous post by Amanda Fernandez ’14 on the Educating Women blog, ‘From frustration to fascination’ which describes her work on this part of the project).

The Reel Listings are in chronological order and begin with material relating to Thomas’ early life as a child and include letters and materials related to her family.

For those interested in her formative years, this material includes papers from her mother, Mary Whitall Thomas, describing her personal reflections on religion and women’s place in society, and her journal detailing the Baltimore life of the Thomas household. This material gives us a glimpse into her personality and helps us to understand somewhat where Carey Thomas received her belief in women’s independence and the possibilities for a woman’s role outside domestic concerns.

A selection of this early material from Thomas’ childhood is currently being transcribed by volunteer Joanne Behm, a Bryn Mawr College alum, and a blog post on some of her findings will follow soon on the Educating Women blog so check back for more details. Many of the early letters between Thomas and her cousins are richly illustrated with their childhood drawings and will also be digitized and made available to view online as part of our digitized collections.

Finally, the Author/Recipient Index allows you to search if you know the name of the person corresponding with Thomas, and this will direct you to the reel/box numbers where you can find their letters (note: you will find letters arranged by year and thus correspondence over time from the same person can often be found in multiple boxes)

A note on the limitations of this method of searching: it is often necessary to know the exact name of a person as names of organizations are not always listed, so for example, you may need to know the exact name of the Secretary or Treasurer of an organization in order to find letters relating to them. There are also precautionary tactics needed when searching for correspondents who married whilst Thomas was writing to them as seen in the screen shot below.

Despite these limitations, the possibilities afforded by online searching of this catalog greatly increase the likelihood of you finding the letters that you wish to and it is much easier to use than the hard copy.

Our thanks are due to digital project assistant Jessy Brody for digitizing the materials and digital collections specialist Cheryl Klimaszewski for her work on Triptych.

Bryn Mawr student-curated exhibition described in a new book

Posted on May 21, 2012 by Marianne Hansen

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.

Staff presentation at Association of Academic Museums and Galleries conference

Posted on May 16, 2012 by mweldon

As part of broad efforts by Special Collections to cultivate connections among individuals, disciplines, and institutions, Curator and Academic Liaison for Art and Artifacts Brian Wallace recently traveled to Minneapolis, Minnesota, to present a paper at the Association for Academic Museums and Galleries 2012 conference: http://www.aamg-us.org/conference12.php. In “Town/Gown Connect: Leveraging Community Assets Across the Campus,” Wallace and co-presenter Shari Osborn (Community Activist and Museum Educator at the Locust Grove/Samuel Morse Museum and Mansion in Poughkeepsie, NY) discussed ways campus arts programs can connect campus and community audiences, artists, and other stakeholders.

One of the two case studies Wallace and Osborn used in their presentation, Carrying, a 2010 project by artist collaborators Belshe/Prown (http://www.belsheprown.com/), addresses a topic of great interest to campuses and their surrounding communities – the difficult and all-too-often newsworthy topic of gun violence on campuses. Carrying consists of 50 signs – each bearing the rules governing the carrying of concealed weapons on campuses in each of the fifty states – designed to be temporarily installed across a collaborating campus and an adjoining town, village, or other municipal entity. As presented in New Paltz, New York – by the Village and Town of New Paltz and by the Dorsky Museum at the State University of New York at New Paltz – Carrying served to bring individuals and entities together, to highlight cooperation on a potentially contentious issue, and to galvanize broader public – and campus – awareness of the often-overlooked connections between town and gown.

The images here include digital versions of several of the signs, as well as a photograph of co-presenter Shari Osborn and the University of Minnesota’s Weisman Art Museum curator Diane Mullin with the Minnesota Carrying sign: intrigued by the project as both activism and art, Mullin requested that Wallace and Osborn deposit the sign in the Weisman’s collection, which focuses on public art and the emerging field of social art practice (http://www.weisman.umn.edu/).

ARTISTS (AND STUDENTS) AT WORK

Posted on May 11, 2012 by Brian Wallace

design courtesy Whitman Carroll

Bryn Mawr College Special Collections is hosting four visual artists at the College for 24-hour residencies spanning Commencement and move-out day.

The participating artists are: printmaker and textile artist/sculptor Kay S. Healy (Philadelphia); new/digital media/installation artist James Johnson (Philadelphia); hand-drawn animation artist Jennifer Levonian (Philadelphia); large-format film and digital photographer Gilbert Plantinga (New York).

The artists and a slew of student ambassadors are beginning to make their way across campus today (keep an eye out for t-shirts bearing the project logo); we’ll share some updates, some links, and some images over the course of the weekend.

Selected artworks developed in response to this residency period will be exhibited in the fall of 2012 in the Class of 1912 Rare Book Room in Canaday Library and perhaps – depending upon format, scope, etc. of the works – elsewhere on campus.

Lockwood de Forest at Bryn Mawr College

Posted on May 9, 2012 by Marianne Hansen

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

Posted on May 7, 2012 by Marianne Hansen

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

Crowdsourcing Simon Fokke Prints

Posted on May 4, 2012 by mweldon

Please help us identify the publication in which these Simon Fokke prints were originally published. We believe they were all part of the same publication.

The images can also be found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bmc_art_and_artifacts/sets/72157629599046138/

Special Collections staff at American Association of Museums annual conference

Posted on May 2, 2012 by Cheryl Klimaszewski

This week, Marianne Weldon, Collections Manager for Art & Artifacts, attended the American Association of Museums (AAM) Creative Community in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota. Marianne represented Bryn Mawr in two events: by participating in a panel discussion called “Out from Behind the Scenes: Bringing our Work Forward” and in the Marketplace of Ideas, a poster-type session called Collaboration and Education, where she shared our work on digital workflows and collection documentation using digital photography.

Well done, Marianne!