Communications - Overview
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.
"Communications - Overview" showing 22 items.
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North African Pirate
- Description
- Deeply impressed by the art of Mariano Fortuny, Stephen Ferris etched reproductions of Fortuny’s paintings and a few of his prints. Ferris made this etching, Riff Pirate, after a painting dated 1871. These pirates preyed on shipping off the North African coast. The Philadelphia Museum of Art owns a related painting, which may be seen on its website.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1871
- original artist
- Fortuny y Carbo, Mariano
- graphic artist
- Ferris, Stephen James
- ID Number
- GA*14379.01
- accession number
- 94830
- catalog number
- 14379.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Ferris's Daughter May
- Description
- Stephen James Ferris etched an undated portrait of his daughter, May, in the costume of a bull fighter, and dedicated this impression to her. May Electa Ferris was born in 1871, eight years after her brother, Jean Leon Gerome Ferris. Like her father and brother, she was an artist. She learned to etch from her father and became known as an etcher and landscape painter, exhibiting in the 1880s and 1890s. Her paintings were reproduced as calendar artwork into the 1920s under her married name, May Ferris Smith.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- c. 1890
- graphic artist
- Ferris, Stephen James
- ID Number
- GA*14405.01
- accession number
- 94830
- catalog number
- 14405.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Barbizon School Artists
- Description
- Stephen James Ferris etched this group portrait The Barbizon School: Seven French Artists as a frontispiece for the auction catalog of works from the J. C. Runkle collection, sold in New York in March 1883. Artists of the Barbizon School, named after a rural village in France near which many of them worked outdoors, specialized in realistic landscapes and animal paintings. Samuel P. Avery had arranged the sale and the catalog, which was illustrated with fifteen etchings by four American etchers. This print marks the first time that an auction catalog contained an original etching, as opposed to the usual reproductive etchings. The New York Times gave a favorable review of Ferris’s print.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1883
- publisher
- Avery, Samuel Putnam
- graphic artist
- Ferris, Stephen James
- ID Number
- GA*14508
- accession number
- 94830
- catalog number
- 14508
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Portrait of Abraham Lincoln
- Description
- Stephen J. Ferris, a Philadelphia painter and etcher, specialized in portraiture. He etched this portrait of Abraham Lincoln in 1881, noting in pencil at the lower right that this print was the earliest proof he took from the plate. Ferris etched many subjects for a variety of publications, including art periodicals and special editions of etchings. He made both original prints and reproductive etchings after works by other artists in other media.
- This image, like several other portrait prints of Lincoln, is based on the popular photograph made by the Mathew Brady studio in 1864. Ferris collected prints and photographs to aid him in his work, and his print collection came to the Smithsonian as a gift from the Ferris family.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1881
- depicted
- Lincoln, Abraham
- graphic artist
- Ferris, Stephen James
- ID Number
- GA*14531
- catalog number
- 14531
- accession number
- 94830
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
View in the Alhambra, Spain
- Description
- Stephen Ferris sketched and painted this pencil and watercolor view of buildings in the Alhambra complex of Granada, Spain, in 1881. This is not a finished view but a work in progress. The people rendered in pencil outline have not been colored, and there are many second thoughts like the tree at left, which has been enlarged. While in Granada, Ferris wrote a friend that he and his son were busy making sketches “much in memorandum for future use in pictures.” So captivated were they by the city that they spent more than half their Spanish visit there.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1881
- graphic artist
- Ferris, Stephen James
- ID Number
- GA*14545
- catalog number
- 14545
- accession number
- 94830
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Moorish Gate, Granada
- Description
- Stephen Ferris’s watercolor view Justicia, Granada shows the Alhambra’s Gate of Justice (Puerta de la Justicia) painted during the artist’s 1881 visit to Spain. In a letter to Sylvester R. Koehler, later Curator of Graphic Arts at the Smithsonian, Ferris, deeply moved by his experiences, observed: “‘See the Alhambra and die’ seems a very appropriate expression. I feel it and have more reverence for the Arabs [sic] art than any other school.”
- Today the Gate of Justice is the main entrance to the Alhambra complex, which was completed by the Moors in the fourteenth century. The Spanish, who defeated the Moors in 1492, made later additions.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1881
- graphic artist
- Ferris, Stephen James
- ID Number
- GA*14548
- catalog number
- 14548
- accession number
- 94830
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Portrait of Curator of the Alhambra
- Description
- Stephen Ferris made this pencil sketch of a distinguished, pensive older man he called the “Curator of the Alhambra” during his two-month stay in Granada, Spain, in 1881. A watercolor in the NMAH Ferris Collection of an almost identical gentleman is identified as the “Keeper of the Tore de la Vela,” the watchtower of the fortified citadel in the Alhambra complex. While Ferris, a portrait artist, was exploring the wonders of the Alhambra, he was also busy sketching people he met.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1881
- original artist
- Ferris, Stephen James
- ID Number
- GA*16683
- accession number
- 119780
- catalog number
- GA*16683
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
S. J. Ferris Self-portrait
- Description
- The Philadelphia Society of Etchers commissioned this self-portrait of Stephen James Ferris in 1880. Ferris was a founding member of the society, which formed the same year, three years after the founding of New York Etching Club, the first in the United States. Ferris had seen the etching process demonstrated in 1860 by John Sartain, an engraver. In 1875 Ferris produced one of his earliest etchings to be commercially published in the United States, a portrait of Mariano Fortuny (1838–1874).
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1880
- graphic artist
- Ferris, Stephen James
- ID Number
- GA*14388
- accession number
- 94830
- catalog number
- 14388
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Portrait of Jean-Léon Gérôme
- Description
- Stephen Ferris etched a dapper J. L. Gérôme (1824–1904) in 1899, near the end of Gérôme’s very successful career as painter and sculptor. Ferris had admired the French artist’s work for many years, at least since 1863 when he named his son after him. Although Ferris never actually met Gérôme, the two artists had corresponded. For this print Ferris used a photograph he had received from Gérôme. He then sent Gérôme trial proofs for comments and requested a signature to include in the final impressions, which appears here at lower left.
- Gérôme congratulated Ferris on the portrait as “work done with great care and great talent—the effect is very good and very firm. If I had any criticism to make, I would reserve it for the background, which is a little too even, and for the clothing, which has a little softness in the execution.” Gérôme also suggested that the highlight on the order which appears on his left breast and is not particularly noticeable in the photograph, be less bright. The order remains brightly lit, possibly Ferris’s tribute to Gérôme.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1879
- date made
- 1899
- graphic artist
- Ferris, Stephen James
- ID Number
- GA*14396.01
- accession number
- 94830
- catalog number
- 14396.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Spanish Gypsy's Home
- Description
- Stephen Ferris etched Home of Mariano, Gypsy King in Granada, Spain, during his 1881 visit to sites associated with Mariano Fortuny, a Spanish artist he deeply admired. In a letter from Granada to art editor Sylvester R. Koehler, Ferris told of his fascination with gypsy cave dwellings. He described them as “most picturesque and weird, overgrown with vines, cactus, and aloes . . . . I have made several drawings of Gitanos [gypsy] caves and of one especially a favorite model of Fortunys [sic] a Gitano prince in splendid costume. We bought his dress and I intend to paint and etch my picture when I get time.” Ferris etched the gypsy’s portrait in costume separately and included it, slightly altered, on the right in this print showing the family and animals assembled in front of their cave. Ferris noted in pencil on the print that it was etched directly from life.
- Gypsies or gitanos still live in caves in the Sacromonte(Holy Mountain) area of Granada. Today the number of cave dwellers has dwindled, but the area remains famous for flamenco singing and dancing.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1881
- graphic artist
- Ferris, Stephen James
- ID Number
- GA*14404.03
- accession number
- 94830
- catalog number
- 14404.03
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center