Full-size patent model (U.S. Patent No. 75,802) of a combination sad iron heater, nurse lamp and foot warmer or stove, made by Eleazer Small of Dennis Port, MA, and patented on March 24, 1868. Consists of a diamond-perforated, square, brass box on four, cast paw feet fitted with a strap-handled sliding door on one side, two oval ring handles on two other sides, and a friction-fit, flat, copper cover, also with oval ring handle. Contains a removable, pivoting, vertical divider, and a D- or ear-shaped, strap-handled tray with six, single-wick burners. Pierced flat bottom. Copper rivets. No marks.
Can also be used as a travelling cook stove and food warmer.
Colored print of sailor with his arm around a young crying woman holding a handkerchief to her face. He wears a seaman's uniform of the period; she is in a simple white laced trimmed dress. They both wear rings. The print is from a daguerreotype by Ives.
Colored print depicting the famous folktale of the Arkansas Traveler, Col. Sandy C. Faulkner. In this scene, Col. Faulkner, on horseback, encounters a family outside a broken-down log cabin. A man sits in front of the cabin playing a fiddle. Other family members are gathered in the doorway, with one boy sitting outside.
Black & white print; oval bust portrait of a man (Charles Sumner).
Description
On May 22, 1856, during the Bleeding Kansas crisis, Massachusetts Republican Senator, Charles Sumner, delivered a speech to Congress in which he denounced the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 and demanded that Kansas be admitted to the Union as a free state. In his oration, he verbally attacked the pro-slavery South Carolina Senator, Andrew Butler. Two days later, Preston Brooks, a South Carolina Congressman and also Butler’s cousin, nearly beat Sumner to death on the Senate floor with a cane. Responses to the attack in the North and the South further polarized the people of the nation, leading it further down the path to war. Even before he had gained renown as the victim of “Bleeding Sumner,” the Senator had been a strong proponent of abolition and civil rights for African Americans. In 1848, the city of Boston denied Sarah Robert, a five-year-old black girl, enrollment at a white-only school. Sumner represented the Roberts in front of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, challenging the racial segregation of Boston schools in the state. Although the Court ruled in favor of Boston, deeming that racial segregation was not unconstitutional, Sumner’s argument was cited in Brown v. Board of Education, which prohibited segregated schools nationwide.
This portrait of Sumner was produced sometime during the Civil War, between 1861 and 1863. It was drawn by Alfred A. Kipps, an English painter and photographer who settled in California in the mid-1860s. It was printed and published by L. Prang and Company. Louis Prang (1824-1910) was born in Breslau, Prussian Silesia, and immigrated to America in 1850. Settling in Boston, he began his lithographic career in 1856, partnering with Julius Mayer. In 1860, he established his own firm, which grew to become one of the largest producers of American colored lithographs during the 19th century. The company’s first lithographic prints were Civil war battle scenes, maps, and portraits of military and political leaders. Louis Prang & Co. remained in operation until 1898, producing greeting cards, facsimiles of American and European paintings, and natural history prints.
Black and white print of a mother cat and three kittens sitting in a bed of straw. One kitten plays with a carrot, another drinks from a bowl of milk. Basket and shawl in right background. Mouse trap (?) in left background. Brick wall behind them.
Large, slant-top, rectangular wood-frame foot warmer or stove, with four slats on the fixed top and two on front and back; one hinged end. Contains a perforated tin box with ring-handled, hinged door that holds a rectangular, wire-rimmed, two-piece, folded and riveted brazier or pan for the heat source. Box top has five perforated bands; its two ends and three sections on front and back all have club- and diamond-shaped punches inside punchwork diamonds, circles and ovals. Brass post-and-bail handle at top center; two H-hinges and a hook-and-eye closure on hinged end of frame. Lapped and "T" joints secured with nails. No marks.
This print is one of fifteen chromolithographs that were included in the 1889-1890 folio "Sport or Fishing and Shooting" published by Bradlee Whidden of Boston and edited by A.C. Gould. These prints are based on watercolors that were commissioned for the publication, and illustrated by prominent American artists. Each folio illustration was accompanied by a single leaf of descriptive text followed by an account of the depicted sporting scene. The publication was advertised as having been reviewed for accuracy by a renowned group of anglers and hunters prior to printing.
This print was originally titled and numbered on the text page as 11. Hunting the [Virginia] Deer. A.B. Frost. It depicts a hunter crouched behind a log, aiming a rifle at a stag.
The artist was Arthur Burdette Frost (1851-1928), known for his wildlife and sporting scenes even though he had an aversion to deer hunting. Frost was a noted illustrator (Uncle Remus), even though he was color blind.
Sentimental genre prints documented the social image of Victorian virtue through domestic scenes of courtship, family, home life, and images of the “genteel female.” Children are depicted studying nature or caring for their obedient pets as they learn their place in the greater world. Romantic scenes picture devoted husbands with their contented, dutiful wives. In these prints, young women educated in reading, music, needlework, the arts, the language of flowers, basic math and science are subjugated to their family’s needs.
These prints became popular as lithography was introduced to 19th Century Americans. As a new art form, it was affordable for the masses and provided a means to share visual information by crossing the barriers of race, class and language. Sentimental prints encouraged the artistic endeavors of schoolgirls and promoted the ambitions of amateur artists, while serving as both moral instruction and home or business decoration. They are a pictorial record of our romanticized past.
This colored print is of a woman with a child leading a white horse by its ear down a road. The woman carries a large pan or sieve and is wearing a jacket and apron over a simple dress and a kerchief on her head. The road they are walking on is bordered by a split rail fence.
John Henry Bufford produced the lithograph and published the print from the original painting by Friedrich Wilhelm Keyl. Frederick or Friedrich Wilhelm Keyl (1823-1873) was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. He trained in Brussels and England and became a well known painter of animal scene. He died December 5, 1873 in London and is buried in Kensal Green Cemetery. The printer/publisher John Henry Bufford (1810-1870), was from Portsmouth, Massachusetts. Prior to moving to New York in 1835, Bufford apprenticed under William S. Pendleton. In New York, he worked for George Endicott and later Nathaniel Currier. In 1840, Bufford moved back to Boston and started work for another lithography firm. By 1844 the firm and shop name had changed to J.H. Bufford & Co. In 1867 Bufford became the manager of the New England Steam Lithographic Printing Company. He died three years later in Boston.
Colored print of nine white men led by an American Indian down a path away from the ocean where a ship is anchored. Two stanzas from Longfellow's, "The Courtship of Miles Standish" appear beneath the image on each side of the title.
Colored print of Christopher Columbus standing in a rowboat that is moored near the shoreline. He holds a flag in his left hand, and a hat in his up-raised right hand. Various other figures are standing and/or kneeling around him. A sailing ship is anchored in the waters in the background.
This print was produced by Frederick Gleason (1814-1896). a lithographer and publisher in Boston, Massachusetts. Born in September 1814 in Germany, Gleason moved to the United States in October 1836, and began his career as a bookbinder. He became a citizen in June 1840. He is best known for establishing the popular illustrated weekly Gleason's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion in 1851, modelled on the Illustrated London News. At the time an innovation in American publishing, it brought him considerable success. After the Pictorial, Gleason published Gleason's Literary Companion from 1860–70; Gleason's Home Circle from 1871–90; and Gleason's Monthly Companion from 1872–87. He was married a second time after his first wife died, and he died November 6, 1896 in Boston.
Colored print of a haywagon drawn by a pair of horses preceded by a family of four on foot. Two figures ride atop the hay. A dog, a woman and a child appear in the center foreground. House with picket fence appears in right background, church with steeple in left background.
Full-size patent model (U.S. Patent No. 35,532) of a foot warmer, made by Joseph Merrill and John H. Rowe of Boston, MA, and patented on June 20, 1862. Consists of a black wool-covered wooden box on four, compressed-ball feet containing two, removable, padded and woven fur-lined "foot-cases" or compartments for placing one's feet; springs on sides of compartments for a snug fit. Spring-upholstered top for using as a foot stool or kneeler. No marks.
Colored print of winding brook. Cattle water on the right bank. A man and child are seated nearby with a dog. Two women and a child stand farther back. A large tree and foliage line the left bank.