The word “ballot” is derived from the Italian word “ballotta,” meaning little ball. The artifact here is a Civil War-era ballot box with 14 black and 25 white clay balls or marbles. Well before the American Revolution, fraternal clubs such as the Masons were using similar boxes to decide elections. Marbles or balls were dropped…
Author: adminx
Humor
Where’s My Date? by Charlie Dye (American, 1906-1972)20 X 18 inches, oil on board The writer James Thurber once observed that “Humor is a serious thing. . . one of our greatest, earliest natural resources, which must be preserved at all costs.” Charlie Dye was a western artist who created this droll cover for The…
Buffalo Bill
There were many books written about Buffalo Bill and his life in the American West Early in his life (age 14) Bill rode for the Pony Express, carrying mail across the American midwest and the Kansas Territory in the years before the Civil War. This book, BUFFALO BILL AND THE PONY EXPRESS, is an illustrated…
Medicine
Throughout the American Civil War in the South, the “pestilential atmosphere” produced high volumes of sickness associated with warmer climates, including malaria, typhoid, yellow fever, and other maladies. The “miracle drug” for Civil War physicians was quinine, used to fight malarial diseases. Among the thousands of Civil War objects within the Pamplin Collection is this…
Civil Unrest
Wei Dynasty Armored Horse and Rider. 386–534 CE. Civil unrest is nothing new or unique. By 386 CE, China was deeply divided by multiple warring territories. All had broken away from the previous governmental leadership and had declared their independence. This exodus shattered a nearly four hundred years-long peace in which philosophy and artistic expansion had been fostered. This new era continued…
Voting
This is a page of a lithograph from the June 4, 1870, edition of Harper’s Weekly showing black men lining up to register to vote in the first municipal elections in Richmond, Virginia, since the end of the Civil War. Subtitled “A Journal of Civilization,” Harper’s Weekly was a published out of New York City from 1857 until 1916….
THEME OF THE WEEK: Defense and Protection
Wei Dynasty Soldier 386–535 CE Even fifteen hundred years ago, defense and protection were essential. By 386 CE, China was deeply divided by multiplewarring territories; a nearly four hundred years-long peace was shattered, and the previous period of artistic expansion and philosophy was over. All parties had declared their independence, breaking away—politically and geographically—from China’s unified governmental leadership. The period…
Humor
In these challenging times, we all could use a bit of humor. The Pamplin Collection has many paintings, prints, and posters that illustrate humorous events and lives. Here are just a handful. Boy and Principal Boy and Principal, by Richard Sargent (American, 1911-1978), Saturday Evening Post cover for February 7, 1959. Here, Sargent captures the two sides of a young…