Manuscripts
William Dethick and the Shakespeare Grants of Arms
A guest post by Nigel Ramsay For many visitors to the Folger’s Heraldry exhibit, “Symbols of Honor,” the stars will be the three original draft grants on paper of Shakespeare’s coats of arms. These belong to the English heralds’ long-established…
Let's make a model!
Co-written by Heather Wolfe and Jana Dambrogio In 2010, Jana Dambrogio and I were thinking independently about slits and stabs in early modern letters. Jana, after having had made many models of the letters of Tomaso di Livieri from the…
Aphorism therapy, or, How to cope with dishonest relatives
Poor Walter Bagot (1557-1622). A busy county official in Staffordshire and head of a large extended family with typically complicated financial arrangements, he was on the receiving end of a constant flow of requests, complaints, and excuses. Occasionally, these letters…
Where do family trees come from?
Why is a tree coming out of this dozing man’s belly, you may ask. When I began working on the Folger’s next exhibition, Symbols of honor: Family history and genealogy in Shakespeare’s England (July 1 to October 26, 2014), I wondered…
An example of early modern English writing paper
The crocodile posted on Friday was correctly identified by Philip Allfrey as a watermark of Queen Elizabeth’s arms encircled by the Garter. In his comments, Mr Allfrey provided a useful account of how he identified the watermark and the letter…
“What manner o’ thing is your crocodile?”: February 2014
Today’s crocodile mystery comes from the manuscript collection. What is it? What does it depict? Why might it be interesting or significant? Answers to any or all of these questions most welcome. What am I? Click to enlarge.
Unbidden guests, moldy pies, and other holiday drama
As we enter the holiday season and look forward to spending time with our families and friends, it is of course always useful to take a moment to reflect upon the antics of other people’s families. Even better if those…
A look back at our 2013
Here on The Collation, it’s been a busy 2013. Today’s post will be our 68th of the year, and as of December 15th, we’d racked up 46,012 visits from 33,411 unique visitors, producing 67,361 pageviews this year. *phew* It’s gratifying that we…
EMMO: Early Modern Manuscripts Online
The Folger is thrilled to share the news that we are the recipient of a generous three year National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to create Early Modern Manuscripts Online (EMMO), an online searchable…
"For a cancer in the brest": early modern recipes
“For a cancer in the brest” The large penstrokes of this title caught my eye as I was cataloging a recently acquired receipt book (a book of culinary and medicinal recipes). In honor of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we…
Pirates, hats, herring, and iron pots! The case of Captain Thomas Hubbard
When we get to “deposition day” in paleography class, one of the manuscripts that the students usually transcribe is Folger MS L.d.673, in which one John Bartholomew confesses to buying six iron pots, but no hats. Bartholomew states that he…
Exploring Bess of Hardwick's letters
As mentioned in a previous post, several online finding aids for manuscript collections at the Folger now include links to digital images of the documents, providing another avenue of access to both onsite and offsite researchers. Finding aids provide detailed…