March 26, 2026
WWI Dinner Calendar “The Business of Their Lives, That Is To Dine” -Young That line is printed on the cover of a 1916 dinner calendar that […]
March 16, 2026
WWII Ration Books These small booklets, issued by the United States Office of Price Administration, were once the difference between a meal and going without. During […]
March 5, 2026
1890 Standard Diary This might seem kind of odd for someone who spends thousands of dollars on old paper each year (apologies, it’s tax time.). But […]
March 4, 2026
Pre-WWI Tobacco Flannel Quilt Every once in a while an object appears that feels like a small archive disguised as something else. This quilt is one […]
March 4, 2026
1870s French Notarial Folios Sometimes what catches my eye first is not the writing, but the color. That was certainly the case with these nineteenth-century French notarial […]
March 4, 2026
Edo-Period Waka Poetry Manuscripts Clouds gather and scatter across the mountain,yet the mountain remains. Winds rise and fall,yet the river keeps its course. So it is […]
March 4, 2026
Handwritten Musical Notation I’ll be honest, despite many offers from friends to offload their grandparents’ sheet music collections, I have never really had much interest in […]
March 4, 2026
A Workman’s Cypher Some books were meant to be read. Others were meant to be used. This workman’s cypher clearly falls into the second category. Long before […]
March 4, 2026
Pocket Books “A pocket book for your pocketbook!” Pocket-sized books have a long history, but they became especially popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth […]