photo album with soiled, cream colored leather cover with "Photo Album" on front and a sticker that reads "Holidays 1939-1949'; black paper pages; photographs and postcards, most adhered to page using black photo corners; travel to florida, new york; beach; Belonged to Patricia Anne Cohen, formerly actor Patricia English
light green bound photograph album with black paper pages; "Photographs" printed in dark green on front cover and "Holidays 1954-1955" written on a sticker on front of spine; black and white photographs and postcards from travels around United States, Canada and Europe; four blank pages at end of album; Belonged to Patricia Anne Cohen, formerly actor Patricia English
blue satin cloth bound album with gold embellishments; "Holidays 1950-1953" handwritten on sticket on front of spine; bound with a single black string; black paper pages; one blank page at end of album; Belonged to Patricia Anne Cohen, formerly actor Patricia English
black bound photograph album with gold embellishment on cover; back cover has separated from remainder of album; plastic covered pages with color photographs; map of Epcot Center at Walt Disney World loose in album; brochure for Universal Studios loose in album; map of Sea World loose in album; Belonged to Patricia Anne Cohen, formerly actor Patricia English
green bound album with gold writing on front cover and spine that reads "Family Album 1910-1948"; black paper pages; photograph album containing photos of kids, kids with toys, kids on bicycles, families on vacation, kids in a classroom, automobiles; Belonged to Patricia Anne Cohen, formerly actor Patricia English
Yearbook; 1943 Rohwer Center High School Yearbook which belonged to Mitsuye Ito. Ito and her family were among the many Japanese Americans who were forcibly removed from their homes and business on the west coast and incarcerated in relocation camps during World War II. The yearbook was made by the staff and the foreword states that the faculty hopes the students have pleasant memories of school and to remember their theme, the Mississippi River, as a symbol of life and perpetual forward motion. They remind the students that they are important to the Nation. Yearbook is signed by numerous students and teachers. The high school was at the Rohwer Relocation Center which was located in Desha County, Arkansas. This camp was one of the two incarceration camps built in Arkansas to house Japanese Americans from the West Coast. The camp was active from September 18, 1942, to November 30, 1945. Yearbook is in fragile condition and no longer has its cover.
Album of photographs taken by Harry A. Spencer during his tour of service in the United States Army during World War I. The album has a black leather cover stamped with the word "Photographs" that has separated from the spine. A gelatin silver photograph of a piece of artillery is attached to the front below the title. The album is composed of fifty black paper pages on which silver gelatin photographs have been mounted with hand-written captions beneath. The pages are tied together near the spine with a black woven shoelace. The album details Spencer's life while he served in the military during the war, including his time at Camp Greene in North Carolina, and travels through Memphis, Tennessee, New York City, England, France, Belgium, Germany, and Colorado. See accession file for reference reproduction of Spencer's album created by the donor, Spencer's grand-daughter Kathi Wong.
photograph album with green, leather cover with gold writing that reads "Family Album 1949-1956" on the front cover and spine; black, paper pages; mostly black and white photographs, some in color; Belonged to Patricia Anne Cohen, formerly actor Patricia English
This pieced-work example is one of three late-eighteenth-and-early nineteenth-century quilts that were donated in the 1890s by John Brenton Copp of Stonington, Connecticut. All are a part of an extensive gift of household textiles, costume items, furniture and other objects that belonged to his family from 1750 to 1850. The Copp Collection continues to provide insights into New England family life of that period.
The arrangement of the pattern of this quilt is one found frequently in eighteenth-century and early-nineteenth-century quilts, a succession of borders framing a center panel of pieced work. A view of the pieced center of this quilt seen from the right side, suggests the shape of a tree, and the printed fabrics repeat in mirror fashion in each row about ninety percent of the time. Perhaps the center was erroneously placed in this direction, or it was meant to be viewed from the bedside. The lining is pieced of much-mended linen and cotton fabrics that originally were probably sheets. On one piece, the initials “HV” are cross-stitched in tan silk thread. It is quilted in an overall herringbone pattern, 5 or 6 stitches per inch.
The clothing and furnishing fabrics used in the quilt top span a period of about forty years. This, and the fact that the Copp family was in the dry goods business, may explain why the quilt includes more than one hundred and fifty different printed, woven-patterned, and plain fabrics of cotton, linen and silk. Although the array of fabrics is extravagant, economy is evident in the use of even the smallest scraps. Many blocks in the quilt pattern are composed of several smaller, irregularly shaped pieces. Two dresses, in the Copp Collection, one from about 1800 and the other from about 1815, are made of fabrics that appear in the quilt.
An analysis of the household textile collection donated by John Brenton Copp can be found in the Copp Family Textiles by Grace Rogers Cooper (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1971). In the book the author summarizes the family background. “The first Copp to reach America was William, a 26-year-old London shoemaker who in 1635 set out for the Massachusetts Colony on the good ship Blessing. He landed east of Boston and became the first owner of Copp’s Hill in north Boston . . . . William’s son Jonathan established the Connecticut branch of the family around Stonington later in the seventeenth century. Many of his male descendents gained comfortable prosperity as merchants and businessmen, while their wives and daughters led full lives as mothers of the large families in which education and refinement were encouraged . . . . The long succession of Jonathans, Samuels, Catherines, Esters, Marys, and Sarahs makes it rather difficult to set in order the generations and their contributions to the collection.” The exact maker of this quilt is unidentified, but it was probably made by one or more members of the Copp household.
Around 1820 Thomas Jefferson cut and pasted verses from the New Testament to create this work, The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, Extracted textually from the Gospels in Greek, Latin, French, & English. His purpose was to distill Jesus' ethical teachings from accounts of miracles and other elements that he considered distortions of Jesus' history and thought. Jefferson was a Deist--he believed in a Creator but did not believe in the divinity of Jesus. He thought he could distinguish between Jesus' true message and the apostles' later additions or misunderstandings by using reason as a guide.
Jefferson created this book for his own reading and reflection. He used texts in four different languages and placed them side-by-side so that he could compare which version seemed to him to express Jesus's moral views most clearly. He believed that those views provided "the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man."
Jefferson made no plans to publish this work. He knew that his beliefs were unorthodox and that they offended both religious authorities and political opponents. He considered his own and others' religious beliefs to be a matter of private conscience and thought they should not be subjected to public scrutiny or governmental regulation. "I not only write nothing on religion, but rarely permit myself to speak on it," he told a friend.
The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth descended in Jefferson's family until late in the 19th century, when it came to the National Museum. The U.S. Congress first provided for the publication of the book in 1904. Since then, many editions have appeared in print. Some of them carry a title that Jefferson himself never used: "The Jefferson Bible"
This beige metal cabinet is an expansion to Phyllis Diller’s gag file (Catalog Number 2003.0289.01.01), a categorized archive of the jokes Diller used in her stand-up comedy routines throughout her half-century long career. The 3 drawers of this expansion, along with the 48 drawers in the main cabinet, contain a total of 52,569 3-by-5 inch index cards, each holding a typewritten joke or gag. These index cards are organized alphabetically by subject ranging from accessories to world affairs and covering almost everything in between.
Phyllis Diller (1917-2012) began her comedy career in the 1950s at the age of 37 and broke barriers in the comedy world to become the first solo female comic to be a household name. She developed a stage persona of an incompetent housewife and dressed in outlandish outfits with wild hair. Her material focused on self-deprecating jokes that tackled the idealized image of American mothers and homemakers. She also created many mythical personas for her stage act including her “husband” Fang, her “neighbor” Mrs. Clean, and her “mother-in-law” Moby Dick.
Scrapbook of 140 engraved prints from the Marsh Collection. Printmakers whose works are represented are those considered in Marsh's time as German, some of whom were known as the "Little Masters," followers of Durer who worked in Nuremberg and Augsburg, Germany. Others were Flemish or French. Hand-lettered title, "Early German Masters," perhaps taken from earlier portfolio, is pasted onto the first sheet of the album.
The prints are mounted four or five per page, with ink ruled borders and Bartsch numbers in Marsh's hand. A few larger prints are mounted as single sheets toward the back of the album. In discussions between Janice Ellis, Senior Paper Conservator, and curator Helena Wright, we speculated that Marsh might have mounted the prints on folded sheets of paper, and added the borders and numbers prior to having the sheets bound. While the binding appears to be from the middle of the 19th-century, it does not look like something Marsh himself would have ordered, so the album may have been bound after it arrived at SI or during its years of deposit at the Library of Congress, between 1865 and 1888.
A pdf showing the entire album is available on the Marsh Collection web page at http://marshcollection.si.edu.
Michael Hays, manager of Michigan’s Modern Skate and Surf Company, created this scrapbook consisting of photographs, publicity flyers and news articles related to Skate-A-Thons from the mid-1980s. These benefits were held annually for the Michigan School for the Blind in East Lansing, Michigan. The scrapbook depicts the process of building ramps and includes photographs of a young Bill Danforth and Tony Hawk.
This beige metal cabinet is Phyllis Diller’s gag file, a categorized archive of the jokes Diller used in her stand-up comedy routines throughout her half-century long career. A small three drawer expansion of the gag file is also in NMAH’s collection (Catalog Number 2003.0289.01.02). The 48 drawers of the gag file, along with the 3 drawer expansion, contain a total of 52,569 3-by-5 inch index cards, each holding a typewritten joke or gag. These index cards are organized alphabetically by subject ranging from accessories to world affairs and covering almost everything in between.
Phyllis Diller (1917-2012) began her comedy career in the 1950s at the age of 37 and broke barriers in the comedy world to become the first solo female comic to be a household name. She developed a stage persona of an incompetent housewife and dressed in outlandish outfits with wild hair. Her material focused on self-deprecating jokes that tackled the idealized image of American mothers and homemakers. She also created many mythical personas for her stage act including her “husband” Fang, her “neighbor” Mrs. Clean, and her “mother-in-law” Moby Dick.