Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill Collection provides visitors with the opportunity to view a virtual reconstruction of Walpole's extensive collections--everything from armor to wall hangings--housed in his custom-built Gothic villa,
Strawberry Hill. (For video tours and discussions of its ornamentation, ongoing restoration &c., check out the
Strawberry Hill Youtube Channel.) Objects can be viewed according to maker, type, or room; there's also a virtual tour, based on contemporary paintings and sketches. For more about Walpole, plus links to e-texts of his fiction (most famously, the pioneering Gothic novel
The Castle of Otranto), visit
The Literary Gothic.
posted by thomas j wise
on Jan 21, 2012 -
5 comments
The US Library of Congress
has updated their site to be more user friendly. Collections are now very easy to explore. All of the fun of wandering around a library without leaving your chair.
[more inside]
posted by kensch
on Mar 21, 2011 -
11 comments
"I have been collecting for more than thirty years, and my collecting wanders around the theme of visual entertainment, and almost all of the collection dates from before 1900. Over time you will find
magic lanterns,
peepshows,
shadows,
transparencies,
thaumatropes,
phenakistascopes and a variety of other optical toys. You may find things that seem odd in this collection, however, always remember that collecting is a very personal thing and these items may stretch the boundaries of visual entertainment but nevertheless
have found a place in my collection." Via
@CarinBerger.
posted by brundlefly
on Feb 18, 2011 -
2 comments
Fortepan is a collection of 4973 found amateur photos sourced mainly in Budapest. Pick a year and browse - photos are organized in chronological order from 1900 to 1990, accessible via a slider. "Users are encouraged to use, copy, send to friends, clip or paste the photos, which are
free for they are not our property."
(via Szanalmas, sometimes nsfw)
posted by madamjujujive
on Aug 29, 2010 -
19 comments
I'm like a character in a dystopian science-fiction novel, holed up in a cave full of cultural artefacts, waiting for the young Jenny Agutter to arrive in a tinfoil miniskirt, fleeing a poisonous cloud on the surface, to check out my stash and ask me: "Who exactly was the Quicksilver Messenger Service? Who was this Virginia Woolf? What kind of man was Jonah Hex?" - Stewart Lee on
comics, books, CDs and shelves. Many, many feet of shelves.
posted by Artw
on Aug 1, 2010 -
26 comments
Mag3737 (Tom Magliery) is a prolific flickr user with over 19,444 items uploaded. He
categorized his photographs into sets (right now there are about
350 of them), and into larger collections. See for example, the
Squircles (squared circle), the
Monochromatic squircles, the
Backsides and underthings page,
numbers,
letters,
colors, many more. Since he once heard that there were
37 holes in the mouthpiece of the old-fashion telephone, he used to collect fascinating factoids about the
number 37. Numerous other detours inside,
Flower genitelia,
Paul Bunyan's balls, etc. His
old-fashioned website is here.
posted by growabrain
on May 25, 2010 -
21 comments
The American Image: The Photographs of John Collier Jr. at the University of New Mexico. "
In 1941 to 1943, Collier worked as a photographer with the Farm Securities Administration and the Office of War Information under Roy Stryker and documented many areas around the eastern U.S and northern New Mexico." The full photoset is at flickr
here.
posted by dersins
on Nov 11, 2009 -
2 comments
There was a typewriter repairman in North Hollywood, California. He couldn’t believe it when all of a sudden someone deposited 24 vintage typewriters on his doorstep and said, “Make them look new.” He probably hadn’t had that much work in the last 25 years. He was probably just about ready to hang up the “Going out of business” sign and cursing the arrival of the laptop computer when all of a sudden here I come with 24 typewriters. The Collectors Weekly interviews Scott Buckwald, propmaster for Mad Men.
posted by dersins
on Oct 18, 2009 -
44 comments
"
QSL cards confirm either a two-way radiocommunication between two amateur radio stations or a one-way reception of a signal from an AM radio, FM radio, television or shortwave broadcasting station. They can also confirm the reception of a two-way radiocommunication by a third party listener. A typical QSL card is the same size and made from the same material as a typical postcard, and most are sent through the mail as such."
Here's a substantial collection of them.
posted by dersins
on Oct 7, 2009 -
43 comments
"The
What Cheer House catered to men only, permitted no liquor on the premises, and housed San Francisco's first free library and first museum." Opened in 1852 by
Robert B. Woodward it became immensely popular. "[S]ailors enjoyed staying there... [he] was such a well-liked man that they would often bring him trinkets from around the world when they’d come to town. For Woodward, these gifts were the beginning of what would become a life-long obsession with collecting." He moved the collection and opened
Woodward's Gardens in 1866 between Mission and Valencia at 13th-15th streets. Called the
Central Park of the West, it was San Francisco's most famous public resort.
[more inside]
posted by jessamyn
on Oct 4, 2009 -
23 comments
Public Collectors is an eclectic archive of off-line and on-line collections to which anyone can contribute. It is "founded upon the concern that there are many types of cultural artifacts that public libraries, museums and other institutions and archives either do not collect or do not make freely accessible."
[more inside]
posted by stbalbach
on Apr 27, 2009 -
9 comments
Two historic photography collections from Sydney's Powerhouse Museum:
The Tyrell Collection - glass plate negatives from the Sydney studios of Charles Kerry and Henry King from 1884-1917 depicting a local record of the times; and the
Hedda Morrison Collection - photographs from China, 1933-1946. The collection also includes personal papers and objects, such as Chinese papercuts, belt toggles, and photos from a 1930s-era folk festival in Germany.
posted by madamjujujive
on Mar 16, 2008 -
4 comments
Morbid Anatomy - an excellent blog with a focus on art, medicine, death, and culture. Great viewing anytime, but it might also be a good reference source for any macabre seasonal celebrations!
posted by madamjujujive
on Oct 8, 2007 -
5 comments
The King's Kunstkammer - en vogue in Renaissance Europe, kunstkammers were status symbols of kings, vast collections of art, curiosities, and scientific and natural objects. This is a partial reconstruction of the Royal Danish Kunstkammer, established by King Frederik III in the mid-1600s. Exploring the collection's 250 objects offers insight into princely preoccupations of the era.
posted by madamjujujive
on Nov 22, 2006 -
13 comments
2-inch books (flash) is a delightful exhibit of tiny hand-crafted books. The
2005 winners (pdf) of the Miniature Book Society's annual competition offers a sampling of little books that have been published. Tiny tomes have been delighting readers and collectors
for 4,000 years. If these tiny treasures intrigue you, perhaps you'd like to collect your own
vintage or
contemporary library.
posted by madamjujujive
on Mar 18, 2006 -
11 comments
