#benslibrary

[oneterabyteofkilobyteage]

original url http://www.geocities.com/benslibrary/ last modified 2006-01-17 20:33:52

#vanity #2006 #Explorer6 #WindowsXP #800x600

[librarycompany]

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

Prof. Hillebrand & Lewis' Gymnasium. [Philadelphia, ca. 1863]. Lithograph; 31 x 41 cm

#Olympics #gymnastics #pommelhorse #riflery #fencing #ladder #table #exercise #LCPprints #lithograph #benslibrary

[librarycompany]

"This is a very fierce, mischievous animal, the scourge of every country he inhabits...riots in carnage...wallows in blood"

I mean c'mon, just look at that face. FIERCE.

Happy International Tiger Day!

(But seriously, don't get too close.)

From: Tommy Trip. The natural history of four footed beasts. Hudson: Ashbel Stoddard, 1795.

#Tyger #tiger #fierce #18thcentury #childrensbooks #rarebooks #benslibrary #woodcut

[librarycompany]

Have you seen any shooting stars lately? The Perseids meteor shower is at its peak this week, get those wishes ready!

Rambosson, J. Astronomy. New York: D. Appleton and Co., [187-?]

#shootingstars #astronomy #meteorshower #publishersbindingthursday #benslibrary #perseids

[librarycompany]

The language of flowers, or floriography, is a form of cryptology in which flowers and floral arrangements are used to communicate sentiments and send messages. Floral dictionaries, which sought to help readers interpret the language of flowers, reached peak popularity in the mid-19th century, riding the waves of the gift book market between the 1820s and the 1860s.

This poem is from Charlotte de laTour's Langage des Fleur, one of the first floral dictionaries, originally published in 1819.

#languageofflowers #floriography #flowers #botany #floralsentiments #poetry #rarebooks #specialcollections #benslibrary

[librarycompany]

The tiniest little binding with the tiniest little gold stamped decoration for today's #PublishersBindingThursday!

Pearls. Boston: American Tract Society, between 1842-1986.

#miniaturebooks #bookbinding #publishersbinding #benslibrary #19th century #rarebooks

[librarycompany]

Today is our 290th birthday, and to celebrate we would like some ice cream and cakes, please!

Not that you need a reason to have ice cream and cakes, because you don't, but, still, 290 years seems like something to celebrate.

Ice-cream and cakes. New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1907.

#publishersbindingthursday #bookcovers #HBD #benslibrary #icecream #cakes

[librarycompany]

We don't remember our physics class being this fun but...it has been a while, we could be misremembering. Fairly certain there were no dogs though.

Happy back to school season! Here's hoping the semester brings some fun!

From: Tom Telescope. The Newtonian system of philosophy. (London, 1794)

#back to school #school #lectures #physics #motion #rarebooks #benslibrary #textbooks

[librarycompany]

Which letter are you today?

We're kinda feeling like that 'W'...

From a Collection of designs for letters and monograms, by J.M. Bergling.

#typetuesday #tattoo tuesday #typo #initials #monograms #specialcollections #mood #benslibrary

[librarycompany]

A Monday morning #shelfie to get the week started off on the right foot.

We're working our way through a collection of books related to the history of medicine, and are excited to share some of these with you down the road. Watch out for #PopMedMondays!

#HistoryofMedicine #librariesofinstagram #popularMedicine #rarebooks #specialcollections #benslibrary #spinetingling #popmedmonday

[librarycompany]

Now what kind of game do you play with cards like this?

These curious playing cards, though perhaps once used for rousing games of whist, were repurposed for use as insulators in Ben Franklin's electrical machine.

#CuriousCollections, indeed!

#curiouscollections #playingcards #scientificexperiments #electricity #innovation #benslibrary

[librarycompany]

Happy Birthday to Mary Shelley, English novelist and author of Frankenstein.

Frankenstein came out of a contest. Stuck indoors during a rainy vacation to Lake Geneva with Mary, Percy Shelley, and John William Polidori, Lord Byron proposed they each write a ghost story. Frankenstein was published two years later in 1818.

That same contest also gave us Polidori's The Vampyre in 1819.

Image: Mary Shelley. Frankenstein; or, The modern Prometheus. (Boston, 1869).

#FrankensteinDay #HBD #MaryShelley #publishersbindingthursday #benslibrary #book covers #science fiction

[librarycompany]

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

Photograph taken at the Ridgway branch of the Library Company, from LCP's archives.

#NLWD21 #LCPprints #BensLibrary #SpecialCollections #iglibraries #librariesofinstagram

[librarycompany]

Did you catch a glimpse of the solar eclipse this morning?

This illustration is from the 1806 publication Darkness at Noon, which documented the total eclipse over New England on June 16, 1806.

Darkness at noon, or, The great solar eclipse of the 16th of June, 1806. Boston: D. Carlisle & A. Newell, 1806.

#solareclipse #darknessatnoon #rarebooks #specialcollections #astronomy #19th century #benslibrary

[librarycompany]

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. 

4th image: Parlor Gallery, Unidentified African American man with a dog, ca. 1880. Albumen on cabinet card.

#LCPprints #BlackHistory #BensLibrary #PhillyPhotographer #iglibraries #librariesofinstagram #SpecialCollections

[librarycompany]

We don't usually keep this many duplicate copies of a book but...

In 1869 James Rush died, leaving an estate of nearly a million dollars to the Library Company—under certain conditions. One of the codicils in Rush's will gave the Library copyright to his works, provided we "always have on hand a number sufficient to supply any demand which maybe be made for any or either of them."

If anyone would like a copy of "Brief Outline of an Analysis of the Human Intellect" of "Philosophy of the Human Voice" just let us know.

#benslibrary #librarycompanyofphiladelphia #curiouscollections