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
Reading Anatomy Texts Like Poetry (and why we should do it more often)
A guest post by Whitney Sperrazza Thomas Bartholin, Bartholinus anatomy (London, 1668), page 76. Folger B977, image from Luna. When we look at this page from Thomas Bartholin’s 1668 anatomy text (Folger B977), it’s easy to think of it as…
Decoding Early Modern Gossip
A guest post by Alicia Petersen What comes to mind when you think of a coded letter? Political intrigue? Espionage? As the Folger Shakespeare Library’s 2014-5 exhibition Decoding the Renaissance: 500 Years of Codes and Ciphers highlighted, these guesses are…
Expurgation with decoration: type ornaments as replacement text
Thanks for the great comments on last week’s Crocodile Mystery. Everyone scores ten points, with full marks going to the two commenters who correctly identified the publication.Plus a happy-face sticker on Philip’s comment for the tongue-in-cheek description of the apparent…
“What manner o’thing is your crocodile?”: July 2021
This month’s Crocodile Mystery comes from a 17th-century publication: What’s going on in this photo? Please speculate, elucidate, and/or procrastinate in the “Comments” section. Also, in case you, like I, had misremembered the source of the catchphrase we use for…
New Acquisition: Photographs of an early 20th-century production of Hamlet in Japan
Welcome to a new regular series here on The Collation! Curatorial staff will be writing short pieces focusing on new acquisitions, hopefully giving our readers a glimpse into how we’re building our collections. Today, I’m excited to share a small…
Folger-Penn Press interview and excerpt: Megan Heffernan, Making the Miscellany
In 2015, The Folger Shakespeare Library and the University of Pennsylvania Press established a cooperative agreement to publish volumes emerging from work substantially shaped by engagement with the Folger collections, often under the aegis of Folger Institute funding. Authors published…
Postcards in the (home) archive: Folger postcards, 1935
A guest post by Stephen Grant Editor’s Note: Stephen’s previous post covers postcards of the Folger from 1934. Figure 1. Left: Statue of Puck, Folger Shakespeare Library 1935. Right: Address side of same card. Author’s Collection, photos by Stephen Grant.…
Malicious teaseling: or how a simple reference question got complicated
We had seven excellent answers to the Crocodile, which included an image titled “Malice,” but not the text below it. The general consensus was that the cowering man was winding thread or wool off of a drop spindle. One of…
“What manner o’thing is your crocodile?”: June 2021
We’re back! Whew! After a few technical difficulties last month, we return to bring you another Crocodile Mystery. We’ll pause while the wild cheering dies down. Please consider the image below and tell us, if you can, what’s going on…
A recipe for brioche (knitting)
…a Collation KAL (knit-along). Cast on We built our friendship with knits and purls over coffee in the Folger Tea Room. Sharing patterns, exchanging techniques, and giving fiber recommendations are still staple conversation topics for us seven years after we…
Facial Misrecognition
A guest post by Wan-Chuan Kao Oliver Sacks, who brought to popular awareness many cognitive conditions that are simultaneously debilitating and fascinating—such as visual agnosia, of which face blindness is one type—observes that “our faces bear the stamp of our…
Birds, Beasts, Maps, and Books: The Search for Richard Daniel, Esquire
A guest post by Danielle Skeehan Even before research libraries shut down in March 2020, digitization efforts had already changed how we access archives and how we can do research. From the comfort of my home, I can do a…