The Collation
Research and Exploration at the Folger

The Collation is a gathering of useful information and observations from Folger staff and researchers. Read more about this blog

“A smale remembrance”: Elizabethan Posy Rings
A closer look at 17th century engraved rings in the Folger’s collection

North Africa Through the Eyes of England
A look at some of the colonial sources that informed the understanding that 17th century English people had of North Africa.

What of Shakespeare?
Findings from a 1945 survey asking patrons of a library about their experiences reading, watching, and performing Shakespeare.

Conservation Interns at Work
Conservation interns from the Folger and Library of Congress share their experience working across both institutions to learn new techniques for treating materials and for preparing materials for exhibition.

“I have lately been promoted to the ‘big douche’”
Through her correspondence, Delia Salter Bacon reveals what it was like to undergo a 19th century “water-cure”

Performing Race in the London Lord Mayors’ Show, 1660-1708
Fellow Jamie Gemmell explores how race was performed in the annual London Lord Mayor’s Show

Defining Beauty in Text and Image in the late Seventeenth-Century
Fellow Jean Marie Christensen explores beauty standards of the 17th century.

Medicinal Plants, Colonial Weeds, and Biodiversity Loss
Herbarius: A New Herbal for the Anthropocene, by 2024-25 artist research fellow Suzette Marie Martin, is a “deconstructed manuscript” series of paintings that traces the intercontinental dispersal of non-native plant species through formerly valued medicinal herbs, now despised as weeds.

Adages and Annotations
In which a 16th century monk flips Erika off, and we all pick out our next tattoos

Semantics: Ars Minor or Ars Major?
Fellow Layla Zeitouni explains how the Term “Major” Allowed the Gutenberg Bible to Supersede the Donatus

Thomas Nashe’s Almond for a Parrat (1590), corrected by the author
Identifying handwritten corrections by the author Thomas Nashe in his own work, Almond for a Parrat

Color of Character: Racial Cues in the Visual Othello
A participant in the undergraduate seminar, Whose Sovereignty?, explores depictions of Othello in the Folger collection