Historic Share Available: #14 First Issued in 1731

From The Book of trades, or Library of the useful arts. Part I.  Published by Jacob Johnson, and for sale at his book-store in Philadelphia, and in Richmond Virginia.  1807

Learning the unique history associated with a particular share is one of the more exciting aspects of becoming a shareholder in the Library Company. Consider the biography of Share 14, first issued to Junto member Richard Standley, a successful potter by trade whose business was housed on Market Street.  In 1731, he appears in the Pennsylvania Gazette with an advertisement seeking to recover a crooked servant who had absconded with a black horse.  Standley would lose everything when his pottery burnt to the ground, but the tragedy would inspire his brother, and next holder of the share, Valentine Standley to purchase some of the colony’s earliest available fire insurance in 1753.  By trade Valentine was a brewer, and on the eve of the American Revolution he advertised that he made a “good Sixpenny Beer . . . [and] the best middling and Fourpenny Beer.”

Next, Share 14 transferred to Samuel Anderson, a military officer, physician, and politician.  Anderson had an illustrious career in the navy, where he was named assistant surgeon in 1799 by President Adams and then saw promotion to full surgeon a year later.  During the War of 1812 he formed the all-volunteer Mifflin Guards and ultimately rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel.  Not one to settle for a single occupation, Anderson began serving as surgeon on the famous USS Hornet in 1824, at the same time that he was serving as a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives!  He would ascend to the position of Speaker of the House by 1833 and later find employment as Sheriff of Delaware County, customs inspector, and justice of the peace.

Share 14 is available for purchase, as are a wealth of other shares each with its distinctive company of past shareholders.  If you are considering becoming a shareholder of the Library Company or giving a share as a gift, let us help you find the perfect share.  Take your place in the rich tradition of Library Company shareholding today!

LCP IT Manager Nicole Scalessa at Knitting Symposium

Nicole Scalessa, Library Company IT Manager, needlework historian, and author attended the Knitting and Crochet Heritage Museum: Work in Progress Symposium last week.  Symposium Chair Karen Kendrick-Hands brought together experts in material culture, women’s history, digitization, museum studies, the fiber industry, and of course knitting and crochet on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. This created a perfect storm for exploring the feasibility of establishing an international center for knitting and crochet. Keynote speaker Susan Strawn kicked off the event with a wonderful presentation on the visual culture of knitting in America based on her book Knitting America: A Glorious Heritage from Warm Socks to High Art (Minneapolis:  Voyageur Press, 2007).

Over the course of two and half days of presentations, it became clear that with tactile arts such as knitting and crochet both a physical and a digital space are needed to make the impact desired by those most passionate on the subject. A strategic planning boot camp of sorts ensued and ultimately yielded a name and tagline for this venture:  The Center for Knit and Crochet: To Preserve and Promote Art, Craft, and Scholarship.

Ms. Scalessa was nominated to the Advisory Board created to help plan for the formation of this organization. It is her hope that the Center can provide the digital resource museums and libraries need to share their often hidden collections of knitting and crochet internationally.  The Library Company has an extensive collection of rare crochet and knitting patterns and instruction guides, accompanied by a treasure trove of supporting material in all areas of American history. 

Ms. Scalessa is the author of Historic Reflections in Crochet (Library Company, 2001) and several articles in serials, including Piece-Work, Piece-Work’s Crochet Traditions and Chain Link, and is a contributor to the historical introduction in Donna Kooler’s Encyclopedia of Sewing (Little Rock, Arkansas: Leisure Arts, 2009). Many of these works feature Library Company collections.

Cassatt House Furnished with Stiefel Family Heirlooms

Thanks to the generosity of Jay Robert Stiefel, long-time Library Company shareholder, the Cassatt House residential research center is furnished with four exquisite pieces of furniture belonging to the Stiefel and Orleans families. 

In the corner of the front room is a Renaissance Revival acanthus-carved, figured walnut desk and mahogany armchair, American, ca. 1870, owned by the donor’s father, Israel Stiefel (1898-1966).  The desk and chair had been used by him in his office as Chairman of the Caucus of Democratic Senators during his tenure as a Pennsylvania State Senator (1936-1964).  In addition to his Senate career, Israel Stiefel was a scholar of the bible and Semitic languages and a widely acclaimed philanthropist.  He also taught political science at the Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania.

The centerpiece of the front room is a walnut and satinwood double-pedestal, three-leaved dining table with a matching sideboard, made by Zonin of New York, c. 1958. These were part of a suite of furniture made for the donor’s mother, Beverly Ruth Stiefel Orleans (1910-1986), and her second husband, Alfred P. Orleans (1888-1981), for use in their dining room.  Alfred Orleans was a noted real-estate developer and both he and Beverly Stiefel Orleans were active philanthropists, she as president of her Hadassah chapter and he as, among other works, founder of the non-profit Orleans Vocational Center.