Historical Whatsits

Weird, interesting and little-known historical facts, events, and people.

[armthearmour]

A Spring-Loaded Triple-Bladed Parrying Dagger, Western Europe, late 16th century, housed at the Château d'Écouen.

[whencyclopedia]

Roman spherical perfume containers in coloured glass. 1st-2nd century CE. Provenance unknown. (Archaeological Museum of Pavia, Italy).

[nemfrog]

Circles indicate the total and partial range of a solar eclipse in North and Central America. Magnificent Eclipse of the Sun, April 25th, 1846. Broadside, detail.

Library of Congress

[nemfrog]

Life story. The Book of Knowledge. v.5. 1927.

Internet Archive

[memories-of-ancients]

Ceremonial mace of the Guild of Masons, Bricklayers, and Carpenters or Krakow, Poland, 17th century

from The Museum of Krakow

[upennmanuscripts]

Sooo I was out of town last week and neglected to queue up social media posts before I left, so in apology for the lack of content I share with you our most recent acquisition: an artist's facsimile of Rosenbach MS 1004/29, a 15th century medical almanac. The original manuscript includes several pages of moon phase charts, a urine wheel, and a bloodletting guide - everything a 15th century medical practitioner would need! The facsimile was made by Bryn Michelson-Ziegler, an artist local to Philadelphia who also works at the Rosenbach Museum and Library. Check out Bryn's website here and her Insta here!

A "bat book" is a specific kind of book, where the pages fold out into full sheets. Bryn played with the term, by creating a leather binding in the outline of a bat with outstretched wings (the binding of the original only partially survives, but it was definitely not in the shape of a bat). We are thrilled to be adding this book to our collection!

If you want to learn more about the original, you can see digital images and read the catalog record here, or you can watch the recording of the Coffee With A Codex that I did with Rosenbach Librarian Elizabeth Fuller.

I promise to queue up some posts, so there should be more new content soon!

[fiery-kitty]

“La Mort est La Solde et le Paiement du Péché / Death is the Balance and the Payment of Sin” – Michel Mosin after Jean-Baptiste Corneille (1680)

[wandering-italy]

Nymphaeum, a shrine to nymphs

Casa di Nettuno e Anfitrite, Herculaneum

[uwmspeccoll]

Manuscript Monday

Today’s staff pick is a rare facsimile edition of the Kyiv Psalter, published in Moscow by the Russian art magazine Iskusstvo in 1978. The original manuscript, created in 1397, is one of the most important surviving works of medieval Ukrainian culture. Commissioned by Bishop Mykhail and written by the Kyiv archdeacon Spyrydonii, it consists of 228 parchment folios and nearly 300 richly detailed miniatures. 

The illuminator of the manuscript remains unknown; however, the style and visual characteristics of the miniatures show strong similarities to the frescoes and mosaics of Saint Sophia of Kyiv (1037) and St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery (1108). These connections point to a continuity of local artistic traditions associated with Kyivan Rus’. 

The manuscript’s later history reflects the movement of cultural objects across political boundaries. It remained within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth for centuries, passing through Lithuanian noble collections, before being acquired in the nineteenth century by the Russian count Sergey Sheremetev. Today, the original is preserved in the Saltykov-Shchedrin State Public Library in Saint Petersburg. 

Scholarly interpretations have often attempted to place the Kyiv Psalter within a broad “Byzantine” framework or to connect it to Moscow-based traditions, sometimes downplaying its Kyiv origins. In contrast, its visual language and historical context point to a strong continuity with earlier artistic traditions of Kyiv. 

This facsimile edition allows us to engage with a manuscript that is both a masterpiece of medieval art and a reminder of how cultural heritage is preserved, interpreted, and, at times, contested. 

-- Kate, Special Collections Graduate Art History Fieldworker

View more posts with manuscripts.

[newyorkthegoldenage]

An NYPL bookmobile, 1924.

Photo: Alamy

[hellenicgoddess]

Bronze Age Greek (Mycenaean) sword & dagger, 15th century BC

[baebeylik]

Illuminated opening with chapter Al-Fatiha. Cairo, Egypt, 1372-1376.

The National Library of Egypt.

[hadrian6]

"Satyr's Head with Antlers," 17th-century sculpture by Christof Angermair German 1580-1633. ivory. Bavarian National Museum. http://hadrian6.tumblr.com

[resismedievalmenagerie]

Certified Good Boys spotted in this Bestiary from ~1175. According to the Latin, "Nothing is smarter than dogs, for they have more senses than other animals, for they alone recognize their own names; they love their masters."

[u-mspcoll]

Recipe of the month: Ella Hall's Sweet Pickled Apples (1920s-1940s)

Like April's Corn Bread, this month’s recipe is drawn from Ella Hall’s manuscript cookbook, which will be available to purchase as a facsimile from the University of Michigan Press in June. One of the first recipes that caught my attention when I read through this book was “Sweet Pickled Apples,” credited to "Mrs. Rhea on Ann St." As Dr. Jessica Kenyatta Walker notes in her forward to the new facsimile, Ella Hall’s notebook functions not just as a collection of recipes, but almost as a kind of neighborhood rolodex. 

For many years, Mrs. Hall ran the Fifth Ave. house as a boardinghouse for Black students at the University of Michigan. These lightly pickled apples might well be one of the dishes that students enjoyed at Mrs. Hall’s table. 

1 quart good vinegar 3 lbs sugar A little ground cloves A little gound cinnamon Seven pounds of sweet apples Boil vinegar, sugar and spices for 10 minutes then add apples and boil until tender. If too much vinegar, take apples up and boil vinegar a little longer, then pour over apples. 

Ella Hall's recipe only lists vinegar as the sole liquid in the ingredient list. In doing an internet search of modern pickled apple recipes, I found that the vinegar is most often mixed with an equal portion of water, as in these “Quick Pickled Apples” from Food52. I began to think that Mrs. Hall had probably just left water off her ingredient list because she knew it would be equal in amount to the vinegar and her notebook was just to jog her memory. 

However, when I did a search of historical recipes for “sweet pickled apples” in Hathi Trust, I was surprised to find that recipes from The Orange Judd Cook Book (1914) and The Modern Priscilla Cook Book (1924) are very specific in their ingredient list and instructions, and they do not include water! Now, this is a limited sample, of course, and another near contemporary cookbook, The Barton Cook Book (1913), does include water. But I ultimately decided to prepare Mrs. Hall’s recipe as written, although I did substantially cut it down in size since 7 lbs  would be a couple dozen apples!  

I used apple cider vinegar to complement the taste of apples and regular granulated sugar. I also ended up only using 3 apples instead of 5 because the ones I had on hand were super-sized Pink Ladies and I could tell as I was slicing them that the volume of sliced apples was already going to be exceed the volume of vinegar. I decided to follow The Orange Judd Cook Book’s lead and leave the peels on.

After boiling the vinegar, sugar, and spices for 10 minutes, I added the apple slices and simmered for about another 5 minutes. The results were delicious! The apples don’t taste “pickle-y” at all. Instead, the vinegar adds a nice, tart undertone that complements the sweetness of the apples. If you choose one recipe to prepare for yourself from this monthly recipe series, make Mrs. Hall’s Sweet Pickled Apples. It is definitely going into my own recipe notebook. 

Reduced Recipe for Sweet Pickled Apples 

1 cup vinegar

1 ⅔ cup sugar

¼ tsp ground gloves

½ tsp ground cinnamon

5 apples 

Read more!

(from curator Juli McLoone)

[thatshowthingstarted]

Standing dog with spouted tail,

Colima, Protoclassic, c. 100 BCE-250 CE,

Earthenware,

7 h × 6 w × 12½ d in (18 × 15 × 32 cm)

[solomonsgarden-deactivated20240]

Persian silk carpet from the 19th century. It depicts the Holy Savior Cathedral (also known as the Vank Cathedral or Kelisa-ye Vank), a centuries-old church in the Armenian quarter of Isfahan, central Iran.