Shared by the Redwood Library

In advance of the summer coaching exhibition guest curated by Paul Miller (Rhode Island Coaches/ In the Eye of Thomas Eakins & Contemporaries, opening May 16) select period images from HARPER’S WEEKLY and elsewhere have been purchased for the Library’s image collections, with some, like the two above, to be used as part of the […]

In advance of the summer coaching exhibition guest curated by Paul Miller (Rhode Island Coaches/In the Eye of Thomas Eakins & Contemporaries, opening May 16) select period images have been purchased for the Library’s image collections, with some, like the two above, to be used as part of the gallery presentation. The 1875 founding of […]

Given the importance of the engraved image in the 18c—in illustrated books, suites of prints, pamphlets, broadsides etc., it behooves that the Library, rich in all of the above, should possess some of the key period texts that treat this pivotal medium. In fact, very few sources give a sustained, critical assessment of engraving’s broader […]

Before the web and glossy architectural periodicals that showcase completed projects, architects had few avenues to advertise their work. Enter the self-published trade catalog, as shown above, a book ‘type’ adjacent to pattern books showing individual motifs. The Redwood already holds a world class collection of the latter, and both types offer the most direct […]

In the early modern era the term almanac initially denoted small, yearly calendrical pamphlets containing a range of practical tabular information: tides, astronomical indications, weather and seasonal forecasts etc. Before their eclipse in the mid-19c., every American town with a printer produced an almanac. In Newport, it was Benjamin Franklin’s brother James who printed the […]

Beatrice Greenough, of the prominent Newport family, worked at the Redwood as a librarian, and in 1962 donated her family collection of largely French and Italian seventeenth and eighteenth illustrated books first amassed by her grandfather, the francophile Beaux-Arts architect Whitney Warren. Comprising over 200 titles of the rarest illustrated festival books, custom limited editions, […]

Purchases often satisfy more than one of our collecting areas: here early American architecture and the history of Newport & Rhode Island. The book is a bound compilation of the first two volumes (26 issues) of the periodical The Architectural Sketch Book (Boston: Osgood & Co., 1873-1875). As per its title, the magazine was designed […]

The Redwood’s aim to be a comprehensive resource for researchers in architectural history, colonial to Gilded Age, involves systematic acquisition of period materials that can inform both scholars and craftsmen, and help us–like they did for their original 19th-c. audiences–better appreciate Newport’s many remarkable historic structures. Some early American architectural books as this new purchase […]

With early modern architecture one of the Library’s five key Special Collections areas, the Redwood aims to be an indispensable resource for researchers, historians and restoration architects. This two-leaf pamphlet in its original blue wrappers gives the wholesale pricing in dollars & cents of lumber in Boston for the year 1805, extremely valuable historical information […]

This past Wednesday, February 7th, we held our first Redwood Treasures event of the year. Out on display were books, objects, and manuscripts from all periods, generously given to the library throughout our history. They included examples of the 18th century history of Newport, printing history from the age of incunabulum through the 19th century, […]