School is back in session. Summer vacations are over. However, if you lived in 1892 and had the means to afford it, your vacation might have just started. And it might have lasted 72 days!
Category: History and Culture
This post was written by Olivia Robertson, summer intern at the Smithsonian Libraries Research Annex and student at Goucher College. As an intern at the Smithsonian Libraries Research Annex (SLRA), more »
The Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Library owns over 4,000 photographs by American photographer and journalist Thérèse Bonney, (1894-1978), who documented life in Paris from 1925-35. In 1929, she and her more »
What do you imagine a vacation might have been like over a hundred years ago? This brochure from the Trade Literature Collection gives us a glimpse into what some people might have done on their summer vacation in 1909.
Explore one of our newest collections in our digital library containing books, catalogs and ephemera from 19th and 20th century World’s Fairs and Expositions. The majority of the items in this collection were digitized by an outside vendor as part of a special project. Pieces in this collection date from the mid 1800’s to the early 1900’s, highlighting experiences from different fairs that took place all over the world, from America to Europe and more. Many of these pieces contain wonderful images and illustrations of the actual fairs, giving us a look into our world’s history. Here you can find and learn more detailed information about fairs like the The Great Exhibition, which was showcased in the Crystal Palace in London, England, and the Exposition Universelle in Paris, France. Below are a few pieces from the collection to give you an idea about what you can find in our new addition to our digital library. Most items are from the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Library.
Obsession is a tricky word. Any bibliophile can sense it coming, when they read a new dealer description or see that perfect binding. We’re using the word in our upcoming more »
They’re all over social media – frames, filters, and special camera effects on Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, and other platforms to help you add pizzazz to your selfies and other photos. But is anything really new these days? We found something that may be the grandfather (or at least great uncle) of social media filters – hand-painted backgrounds for photography studios dating from the early 1900s.