#lcpprints

Clearly we've got the Olympics on our mind. Is the ladder an Olympic sport? Can it be?

This tiny color wood engraving is from a collection of letter seals, all about the size of a postage stamp.

#ForgetMeNotDay

During WWI the U. S. Food Administration encouraged Americans to change their eating habits in order to save food for our military and allies in Europe.

It's National Library Workers Day and we're honoring the important role that library staff plays in running our beloved institution!

The Graphic Arts Collection is home to a large collection of posters from World War I, the provenance of which is largely unknown since most of them are backed with linen. However, this poster provides curators with clues on the collection's origins.

A manuscript note on the back of the poster, which is not backed by linen, indicates that it was brought by Corinne Keen Freeman in 1919 for display at LCP's Juniper Street building.

Freeman was the chairperson of the South Philadelphia Women's Auxiliary Liberty Loan Committee, which worked to get community members signed up for loan subscriptions that helped the U.S. pay for the war effort.

It wasn't until 1980, however, that our more than 300 WWI posters were formally added into the collection.

Parlor Gallery opened in the 1880s and was operated by Lewis Horning. The photography studio was located in the on South 9th Street in Philadelphia and situated in the 7th Ward, which was the subject of a seminal study by sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois titled, "The Philadelphia Negro." 

Many of members of Philadelphia's Black middle and upper middle class visited Parlor Gallery to commission portraits that became family keepsakes. The portraits also served to counter the proliferation of racist caricatures in popular U.S. visual culture during the late nineteenth century. 

1st image: Parlor Gallery, Unidentified young African American woman, ca. 1891. Gelatin silver on cabinet card. 

2nd image: Parlor Gallery, Taylor Aldridge, 1883. In Portrait album of well known 19th-century African American men of Philadelphia. 

3rd image: Parlor Gallery, Unidentified young African American woman, ca. 1891. Gelatin silver on cabinet card. 

In honor of Juneteenth.

On June 19, 1865, federal orders were read in Galveston, Texas announcing the emancipation of all remaining enslaved persons in the confederacy. Though formally freed two years earlier by the emancipation proclamation of 1863, word didn't reach Texas due in part to its remote location, and by the lack of Union troops present to enforce the proclamation. This image by artist Thomas Nast was originally published in "Harper's Weekly" on January 24, 1863 and depicts a series of scenes contrasting African American life before and after emancipation.