Adopt a Book, Manuscript, or Print

Below are descriptions of 11 books and manuscripts that the library has recently acquired through purchase, ranging in price from less than $100 to $2,400. We would appreciate it very much if you would consider “adopting” one of them. If you cannot contribute the full purchase price, please consider making a partial donation towards their purchase. Feel free to contact Emily Guthrie (eguthrie@winterthur.org) with questions about the books and Richard McKinstry (ermcki@winterthur.org) about the manuscripts. Please send your donation to the attention of Richard McKinstry, Winterthur Library, 5105 Kennett Pike, Winterthur, DE 19735. Thank you very much. We look forward to hearing from you.

1. Brandt, Beverly K. The Craftsman and the Critic: Defining Usefulness and Beauty in Arts and Crafts-era Boston. University of Massachusetts Press, 2009.

$58.00

An exploration of the interaction of craft workers and critics as they collaborated to use art and design to improve living and working environments in Boston and across the United States. Multiple topics are examined: the evolution of the profession of design criticism in the 19th century; Boston in the Gilded Age as a center for reform, epitomized by the Aesthetic and the Arts and Crafts movements; the formative years of the Society of Arts and Crafts (1897-1917); key personalities associated with that organization; the theoretical underpinnings of the Arts and Crafts movement; and a diaspora of Boston reformers who left the city to promote usefulness and beauty across the country and abroad.

2. Heuer, Christopher P. The City Rehearsed: the Architectural Worlds of Hans Vredeman de Vries. Routledge, 2008.

$100.00

The City Rehearsed offers a new perspective on printed architecture in early modern Europe through the lens of Hans Vredeman de Vries (1527-ca. 1604). Painter, architect, rhetorician, perspective theorist, festival designer, and draughtsman, Vredeman was active in Antwerp, Amsterdam, and Prague, where he designed a mysterious body of architectural prints. By the seventeenth century, his works had influenced buildings from Tallinn to Peru. Including Scenographiae (1560), and Perspective (1604-5), Vredeman’s strange publications were among the most widely-distributed "Renaissance" books on building and vision, shipped to England, Spain and even Mexico by 1600. The Winterthur Library owns a 1639 edition of La Perspective, as well as Different Pourtraicts de Menuiserie, a series of designs for furniture and millwork published by Vredeman in 1588. 

3. Olmert, Michael. Kitchens, Smokehouses and Privies: Outbuildings and the Architecture of Daily Life in the Eighteenth-Century Mid-Atlantic. Cornell University Press, 2009.

$25.00

In Kitchens, Smokehouses, and Privies, Michael Olmert takes us into the eighteenth-century backyards of colonial America through exploration of outbuildings found at obscure rural farmsteads throughout the Tidewater and greater mid-Atlantic. Each type of structure was designed to support the performance of a single task: cooking food; washing clothes; smoking meat; storing last winter's ice; or keeping milk, cheese, and cream fresh. Olmert explains how these buildings actually functioned. He is riveted by the history of outbuildings: their architecture, patterns of use, folklore, and even their literary presence.

4. Thornton, Dora and Timothy Wilson. Italian Renaissance Ceramics: a Catalogue of the British Museum Collection. (2 vols.)

$300.00

The collection of Italian Renaissance ceramics at the British Museum is one of the most important and most comprehensive anywhere in the world; 495 detailed catalogue entries cover the period from 1400 to 1700 and include maiolica, incised slipware and the rare 'Medici porcelain'. Incorporating the results of a long program of scientific analysis of the clays used by Renaissance potters, the book also contains the fullest bibliography of the subject ever published.

5. Wergland, Glendyne R. Visiting the Shakers, 1778-1849: Watervliet, Hancock, Tyringham, New Lebanon. Couper, 2007.

$35.00

A work bringing together 98 accounts of visits to four Shaker villages. These accounts, originally written between 1778 and 1849, reflect a wide spectrum of views, gleaned from diary accounts, periodical articles, and other sources. Most of these accounts have not been seen in print for over 150 years, and some have never been published, existing only in manuscript form.

6. Estate Inventory of Oliver Mowry, Smithfield, RI, 1756.

$400.00

This list of possessions includes a wide variety of household items, including plain chests, a loom, “18 chears,” looking glasses, bottles, woolen and cotton yarn, a coffee mill, earthenware, etc. In addition, at his death, Mowry owned a grind stone, a cider press, old barrels, sythes, and Indian corn. Mowry’s wife’s maiden name was Dorcas Whipple, and his ancestry is traced back several generations to Roger Mowry, who was born in 1605 in Drimpton, Eng. Estate inventories are indispensable for recreating past households, and those from the 1750s are becoming increasingly difficult to find.

7. “The Scholar’s Friend.” 1862.

$170.00

Manuscript newspapers, which have not survived the years in great numbers, offer a glimpse into the practice of education, what youngsters were thinking and writing about, and penmanship practices. R.E.G. Thompson edited “The Scholar’s Friend.” She, as well as her fellow contributors, boys and girls alike, lived in or near Middleborough, Mass. Article topics included thoughts about honesty, the local schoolhouse, writing compositions, and “The Life of a Broom.”

8. Muhlenberg Family Papers, 19th century.

$2,400.00

This collection includes 47 manuscript letters from 1832; almost all are addressed to Hiester Henry Muhlenberg (1812-1886) by various family members. Muhlenberg received them while attending medical school at the University of Pennsylvania. Approximately half of the letters are from his father, A.P., a member of Congress. Together with extracts from the diary of Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, a family genealogy, and a letter from Henry A. to Gov. Joseph Hiester, his father-in-law. Members of the Muhlenberg family, from Montgomery County, Pa., were important in the development of the Lutheran Church in America and served in various elected positions at least into the mid-19th century.

9. Comic Picture Book. Printed by Charles Magnus, New York City, ca. 1858-1861.

$190.00

Charles Magnus was a prolific printer during the last half of the 19th century. He is most known for his work during the Civil War, including song sheets, illustrated letterheads, and patriotic envelopes. Few imprints from his press have come to us today. This one, a children’s ABC book, features comical drawings—all hand colored—of animals in various human attire. The library has a collection of approximately 275 Magnus items that this book joins.

10. Jesse Patchen Account Book. 1771-1780.

$845.00

Jesse Patchen was as a tailor in New Lebanon, NY. His account book records the kind of work associated with his occupation, making and mending clothing for men. Interestingly enough, a number of his customers eventually became members of the Shaker religious sect, which established its main community in New Lebanon. Counted among them were Joseph Meacham, who succeeded Ann Lee as a Shaker leader, and David Darrow, who donated land he owned for the community and whose signature appears in the account book.

11. Marshall Pepoon Diary. 1874.

$1,500.00

Marshall Pepoon, a New Yorker, traveled to Europe with his wife, Charlotte, from August 18 to December 27, 1874. They spent most of their time in Paris, but took opportunities to travel to Brussels, Geneva, Florence, Rome, and other cities. Pepoon writes in his diary about his purchases of men’s jewelry and his visits to art museums and commercial galleries, as well as his busy social life. He also records some nuts and bolts particulars having to do with visiting Europe, including banking transactions, transportation arrangements, and hotel details. This 159 page manuscript is a fine example of what a late 19th century American traveling abroad would write of his experiences.