Communications

Tools of communication have transformed American society time and again over the past two centuries. The Museum has preserved many instruments of these changes, from printing presses to personal digital assistants.

The collections include hundreds of artifacts from the printing trade and related fields, including papermaking equipment, wood and metal type collections, bookbinding tools, and typesetting machines. Benjamin Franklin is said to have used one of the printing presses in the collection in 1726.

More than 7,000 objects chart the evolution of electronic communications, including the original telegraph of Samuel Morse and Alexander Graham Bell's early telephones. Radios, televisions, tape recorders, and the tools of the computer age are part of the collections, along with wireless phones and a satellite tracking system.

Thomas Sinclair (ca 1805-1881) of Philadelphia produced this chromolithographic print of "Phalacrocorax brasilianus [GM]" or Neotropic cormorant, from an original illustration by William Dreser (ca 1820, fl. 1849-1860).
Description (Brief)
Thomas Sinclair (ca 1805-1881) of Philadelphia produced this chromolithographic print of "Phalacrocorax brasilianus [GM]" or Neotropic cormorant, from an original illustration by William Dreser (ca 1820, fl. 1849-1860). The image was published as Plate XXVIII in Volume 2, following page 204 of Appendix F (Zoology-Birds) by John Cassin (1813-1869) in the report describing "The U.S. Naval Astronomical Expedition to the Southern Hemisphere during the Years 1849, 1850, 1851, and 1852" by James M. Gillis (1811-1865). The volume was printed in 1855 by A. O. P. Nicholson (1808-1876) of Washington, D.C.
Location
Currently not on view
date of book publication
1855
graphic artist
Sinclair, Thomas
original artist
Dreser, William
publisher
United States Navy
printer
Nicholson, A. O. P.
author
Cassin, John
Gilliss, James Melville
ID Number
2008.0175.02
accession number
2008.0175
catalog number
2008.0175.02
Henrietta Shore (1880-1963) was an early pioneer of the Modernism movement of art on the West Coast. She discovered lithography while traveling in Mexico, and took inspiration from the southern landscape and indigenous traditions.
Description (Brief)
Henrietta Shore (1880-1963) was an early pioneer of the Modernism movement of art on the West Coast. She discovered lithography while traveling in Mexico, and took inspiration from the southern landscape and indigenous traditions. On returning to California in 1928, Shore began working in the Los Angeles lithography workshop of master printer Lynton Kistler making her one of the first women lithographers working in California. "Water Carrier" was one of the prints produced during her time there.
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
ca 1928
original artist
Shore, Henrietta
graphic artist
Kistler, Lynton R.
ID Number
1978.0650.1746
accession number
1978.0650
catalog number
1978.0650.1746
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1996
maker
Sanchez, Emilio
ID Number
2012.0031.07
accession number
2012.0031
catalog number
2012.0031.07
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1968-1970
author
Waters, Alice
ID Number
2016.0085.20
accession number
2016.0085
catalog number
2016.0085.20
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1968-1970
author
Waters, Alice
ID Number
2016.0085.12
accession number
2016.0085
catalog number
2016.0085.12
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1820s
depicted (sitter)
Louis Philippe King of France
maker
Mauzaisse, Jean-Baptiste
ID Number
2014.0250.51
accession number
2014.0250
catalog number
2014.0250.51
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1968-1970
author
Waters, Alice
ID Number
2016.0085.09
accession number
2016.0085
catalog number
2016.0085.09
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1820s
original artist
Gérard, François Pascal Simon
publisher
Quenot, J. P.
ID Number
2014.0250.50
accession number
2014.0250
catalog number
2014.0250.50
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1968-1970
author
Waters, Alice
ID Number
2016.0085.01
accession number
2016.0085
catalog number
2016.0085.01
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1968-1970
author
Waters, Alice
ID Number
2016.0085.30
accession number
2016.0085
catalog number
2016.0085.30
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1968-1970
author
Waters, Alice
ID Number
2016.0085.23
accession number
2016.0085
catalog number
2016.0085.23
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1968-1970
author
Waters, Alice
ID Number
2016.0085.14
accession number
2016.0085
catalog number
2016.0085.14
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1968-1970
author
Waters, Alice
ID Number
2016.0085.03
accession number
2016.0085
catalog number
2016.0085.03
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1831
depicted (sitter)
Marshall, John
designer
Newsam, Albert
original artist
Inman, Henry
ID Number
2014.0250.45
accession number
2014.0250
catalog number
2014.0250.45
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1870s
graphic artist
Evert, Louis H.
ID Number
GA.69.181
catalog number
69.181
accession number
282174
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1968-1970
author
Waters, Alice
ID Number
2016.0085.26
accession number
2016.0085
catalog number
2016.0085.26
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1968-1970
author
Waters, Alice
ID Number
2016.0085.25
accession number
2016.0085
catalog number
2016.0085.25
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1826
maker
Quenot, J. P.
original artist
Vernet, Horace
ID Number
2014.0250.52
accession number
2014.0250
catalog number
2014.0250.52
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
maker
Armstrong and Company
ID Number
2014.0250.02
accession number
2014.0250
catalog number
2014.0250.02
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1968-1970
author
Waters, Alice
ID Number
2016.0085.19
accession number
2016.0085
catalog number
2016.0085.19
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1968-1970
author
Waters, Alice
ID Number
2016.0085.28
accession number
2016.0085
catalog number
2016.0085.28
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1968-1970
author
Waters, Alice
ID Number
2016.0085.02
accession number
2016.0085
catalog number
2016.0085.02
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1968-1970
author
Waters, Alice
ID Number
2016.0085.27
accession number
2016.0085
catalog number
2016.0085.27
David Lance Goines is known as a writer and lecturer as well as an illustrator and printer of both letterpress and offset lithography, his work much exhibited and collected throughout the country.
Description
David Lance Goines is known as a writer and lecturer as well as an illustrator and printer of both letterpress and offset lithography, his work much exhibited and collected throughout the country. But his Arts and Crafts influenced design is best known on his posters and in books. Goines was a recognized activist in Berkeley, associated with the Free Speech and Anti-War movements, and he did poster and book work for these movements.
Alice Waters, who founded the Berkeley restaurant, Chez Panisse, was a founding inspiration of the fresh, local, and organic food movement. She met David Goines in the Berkeley Free Speech movement. They began to collaborate on a column, “Alice’s Restaurant” for the local alternative paper. She wrote the recipes and he provided the artwork. He collected and printed each column as Thirty Recipes for Framing and the entire set and individual prints from the set began to appear on Berkeley walls and beyond, establishing him with enough profits to buy the Berkeley Free Press, rechristened the St. Hieronymus Press.
He issued his first Chez Panisse poster, "Red-Haired Lady," in 1972 and his most recent, "41st Anniversary," in 2012. In between is a series of anniversary posters, plus occasional others celebrating the restaurant's book releases, such as the Chez Panisse Café Cookbook, and other ventures. These works established his place as the primary artist associated with food and wine in the so-called Gourmet Ghetto. His early posters for Chez Panisse were soon followed by requests from other food and wine related sites and events, as well as from many other commercial entities.
The design for this 1987 poster by David Lance Goines was first commissioned as a bottle label by Corti Brothers Grocery in Sacramento to note the introduction of some of the first extra-virgin olive oil made in the United States. According to Corti, the labels were originally made for Antinori, the great Italian wine (and olive oil) producer, but a freeze knocked out the olive crop. Antinori returned the labels to Corti, whose grocery was to carry the Antinori oil. Corti got Goines to re-do the labels for the Pallido and Verdesco oils, “Extra Virgin Olive Oil from Spring Harvest Mission Olives,” simultaneously requesting a large number of the 4 color posters (unsigned, number130 in the Goines repertory) which he (Corti) could sell in the store. He also obtained the progressives from Goines, eventually giving the set of progressives and several of the posters to the National Museum of American History in 2012. The poster documents the arrival in the U.S. of the first wave of soon-to-be well known and much favored California-produced olive oils.
Many credit Darrell Corti for introducing chefs, food writers, and food critics to some of the high grades of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, American wines such as Zinfandel, and other foods that have become staples across America.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1987
maker
Goines, David Lance
ID Number
2011.0252.04
accession number
2011.0252
catalog number
2011.0252.04

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