#nmah

Speaking of the National Museum of American History...

Sorry for the wait on part two! Here’s a few more examples of Legos in my workplace, and they all happen to be of the same subject:

This little beauty was a make-and-take activity that we handed out at the National Museum of American History as part of our celebration opening our new second floor west wing exhibitions, “The Nation We Build Together”.

As the activity wound down, I used some of the numerous spare bricks to make my own Statue of Liberty MOC. I’m pretty proud of this, considering the limited parts available and the quick build time. Here’s the two side-by-side:

But both of these compare to the Statue of Liberty on public display:

This beauty stands at 9′ 5″ and is made of- oh, just read the label:

Just launched: The final two E. Howard Clock projects - featuring customer lists, sales, & more - from Archives Center at American History. Jump in now!

Edward Howard established his Business, E. Howard Clock Company, as the premier American watch and clock producer during the last half of the 19th century.  The company was established in Boston in 1842 by Edward Howard. Originally limiting itself to the building of clocks, E. Howard Clock Company soon expanded to luxury watches, and later to high quality tower and street clocks.  In 1881 Howard retired, selling his clock business which continue to maintain the name Howard Watch and Clock company.

The Floyd Levin Jazz Research Collection at the National Museum of American History reflects the lifelong second career of LA textile manufacturer Floyd Levin as a jazz historian, journalist and, above all, avid collector. Along with his wife Lucille, Floyd came to amass an extraordinary amount of photographs and paper ephemera including posters, letters, articles and advertisements, concert programs and tickets-- even obituaries and personal wills-- related to jazz artists both well-known and obscure. As we consolidated these photographic and paper documents, however, we discovered a certain amount of small three-dimensional objects within our boxes of unprocessed materials. Normally, the art and artifacts division of the museum would accession and house these objects in their storage facilities, but apparently several small memorabilia objects such as buttons and pens and even some personal objects belonging to Barney Bigard or Louis Armstrong, did not make their way into the greater museum’s holdings.

The task then fell to us to house these materials by way of the, sometimes intricate, process of creating what’s called a sink mat; a custom-made “well” that secures an object in place. To make our sink mats, we first had to trace around our objects on pieces of blue board and then carefully cut out as many layers of blue board needed to create a “well” level to the height of the object. These “layers” were then glued together and ribbons were attached to the bottom of each “well” to help archivists and researchers lift the objects out. Once a sink mat is complete, it, along with the objects it holds, can be stored along with other archival materials in flat oversize boxes.

Select sink mats and their contents:

Duke Ellington buttons as well as pens from the 1989 Ellington Conference, held in Washington, D.C. from April 26-29.

A plate reading “La 2a Feria Industrial de Asiva a la Embajada Artistica de Louis Armstrong, Valparaiso Junio, 1962” from Valparaiso, Chile; a stamp for the “Louis Armstrong Statue Fund” which Floyd Levin founded; two containers of “Louis Armstrong Lip-Salve,” manufactured in Manheim, Germany and one very curious handkerchief, apparently stolen from Louis Armstrong’s Hollywood Palace on April 11, 1965.

A small box containing Barney Bigard’s clarinet reeds, as well as a clarinet reed case with his name inscribed on it.