marriage

Lalance & Grosjean

This 1885 trade catalog includes illustrations, descriptions, and prices for hundreds of metal tablewares, kitchen utensils, and plumbing fixtures produced by the New York firm of Lalance & Grosjean Manufacturing Co. The company, started by French immigrants Charles Lalance and Florian Grosjean in Woodhaven, New York in the 1860s, was one of earliest American companies to mass produce enamel covered iron cookware and was well known for innovations in the process of tin stamping. The firm, which employed more than 2,000 workers in factories in New York, Harrisburg, Boston, and Chicago at

Kiki Smith's Dowry Book

Kiki Smith’s Dowry Book is an intimate, palm-sized collection of images, each representing an exhibition Smith had between 1982 and 1995, a time when she was particularly focused on issues of AIDS, gender, and race. The Hirshhorn Library’s copy is from a limited edition of 800 signed copies, issued in a plain, cardboard slipcase, and designed by Smith on a computer. The illustrated cloth boards reproduce Smith’s Dowry Cloth, 1990, made of women’s hair and sheep’s wool felted together.

Matrimonial Advice

“A little book of advice to be given to all those contemplating matrimony, married or engaged.” Embossed gold lettering adorns the linen cover of this charming and humorous book of advice for wedded bliss. The book is divided into two sections: “Advice to the Man” and “Advice to the Woman,” in which pages alternate between 17 polychromatic drawings on watercolor paper, colored by the author, and black and white pages with sketches and quatrains elaborating on the simple advice.

American Entomology

Thomas Say (1787-1834) was a self-taught naturalist who has come to be considered the Father of American Entomology.  In 1812 he became one of the founding/charter members of the Academy of Natural Sciences at Philadelphia and actually lived at the Academy and tended its small museum for several years.  He also began publishing this book – part 1 came out in 1817 – but his participation in several scientific expeditions delayed its completion until later in the 1820s.  In this and other works he described and named over 1400 species of insects (especially beetles).