It seems appropriate to finish up our summer retrospective series with one of the earliest (and perennially most popular) posts. Whether it’s a back-to-basics refresher for you or an answer to the question you’ve been asking yourself, Deciphering Signature Marks is a must-read for all of our followers.
We hope you’ve enjoyed this foray into some of our previous posts. There is so much great content on this blog, the results of hundreds of hours of research and writing by our staff and guest authors, and we hope you’ll keep exploring it on your own, as well as enjoying the new content we continue to post.… Continue Reading
It seems fitting that with last week’s retrospective post being all about paper, this week we should turn to the age-old question: just what do you call it when a book still has pages joined together (aside from “difficult to read”)?
Learn the answer in Uncut, unopened, untrimmed, uh-oh.… Continue Reading
A guest post by Ruma Chopra
It took the English doctor Thomas Short eighteen years to publish his nearly 1000-page assessment of the relationship between climates and diseases. Published in 1749, his two-volume history, A general chronological history of the air, weather, seasons, meteors, &c. in sundry places and different times, more particularly for the space of 250 years, together with some of their most remarkable effects on animal (especially human) bodies, and vegetables (Folger 203- 254q) correlates astronomical and climatic conditions to a variety of distempers and diseases in various parts of the world by placing hundreds of scattered episodes in one chronological sequence.… Continue Reading
One of the most important physical aspects of our collection is the very paper on which the books, manuscripts, and drawings were created. Unsurprisingly, we’ve had quite a few posts on this topic! This week, we invite you to take a look at some of them:
Learning to “Read” Old Paper—what’s the difference between laid and woven paper anyway? Find out!… Continue Reading
A guest post by Stephen Grant
My first descent into the underground vault took place in 2007 during a short-term Folger fellowship. Since a Summer Retrospective is the order of the day with The Collation, I should like to acknowledge the Feb. 16, 2012 post honoring fellowship administrator, Carol Brobeck. With a tape measure stuffed into a side pocket, I trailed Betsy Walsh, head of reader services, as she led me to yards of shelving supporting dozens of gray archival boxes 10 x 13 x 4” laid out horizontally that formed the Folger Collection she called “Folger Coll.” The Sept.… Continue Reading
Eyebrow shaping has been a thing for a long time. Including in the early modern period. Another one of our favorite posts from the past comes from the time when Heather Wolfe found a whole section on eyebrows in one of our manuscripts. Curious to learn more? Read all about it in Early modern eyebrow interpretation, or what it means to have a unibrow… Continue Reading
