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Rare Books
A cookbook of invisible writing, by Dutch artist, designer and teacher Amy Wu, is an introduction to analog steganography--a type of secret writing that is hidden in plain sight. This book serves as a starter pack to run workshops with groups who are interested in alternative forms of communication. It contains invisible ink recipes and other invisible communication techniques that may be used to subvert surveillance and bypass censorship, but also inspire your community to develop poetic and playful forms of communication to nurture social bonds. In the tradition of esoteric manuals published on secret writing, this cookbook also channels the spirit of everyday access and the easy distribution and sharing of practical knowledge. Following Giambattista della Porta's 1558 popular science book Natural Magic--one of the first major publications that detailed simple but diverse recipes of invisible inks for public consumption--this cookbook aims to bring this obscure field to a wider audience. The publication includes a critical essay about the history of surveillance through a feminist and postcolonial lens. The last chapter presents Wu's own body of work that aims to revive analog techniques as a counter to today's digitally surveilled mediascape.
647700
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Rare Books
Briefly discusses light as one form of energy and describes the kinds of light, its composition, and the uses to which man has put it.
710062
Visual Materials
Image of a broadside describing prizes offered in a lottery drawing that took place in Paris, France on February 15th, 1866. Tickets were sold for one dollar, and orders were to be addressed to "Jules Mackron, Hughesville, Penn." Print describes the method of drawing, lists the prize money amounts, and includes background on the history of the drawing. Multiple typography fonts are used throughout the print.
priJLC_SPO_004326
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Manuscripts
A handwritten letter (ink on paper) by Jacob Waldsmith to his father John Waldsmith, conveying news from Waldsmith's travels through the Midwest and Great Plains in the autumn of 1857, visiting Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska territories. In the letter, he comments upon the agricultural and economic potential of the region and the turbulent political condition following the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. While in Missouri, he describes "The land is rich and productive...This I verily believe would soon be one of the foremost states in our union for agriculture if it was not for the damnable curse called slavery, the agitation of which has been rageing in this part of the country..."
mssHM 75847
![Autobiography of Edward Walker Clark [microform] : c.1820-1904](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Frail.huntington.org%2FIIIF3%2FImage%2F22APN45HHDDG%2Ffull%2F%5E360%2C%2F0%2Fdefault.jpg&w=750&q=75)
Manuscripts
Microfilm of Edward Walker Clark's autobiography, kept through 1904. Clark begins with describing his young adulthood in England, including working as an attendant for a wealthy family and as an apprentice carpenter. He traveled to London in 1840 and describes his conversion to Mormonism in 1847. He mentions working at a furniture store in 1848 before he and his family sailed to the United States on the ship Ellen. Clark arrived in Council Bluffs in 1851 and worked as a coffin maker for emigrants to the gold fields until 1852, when the Clarks traveled to Utah with the Henry Miller company (Clark's eldest daughter was killed by a wagon wheel during the trip). The Clarks settled in Provo, and in 1858 Clark was posted at Echo Canyon during the Utah War. He describes his 1874 mission to England, followed by notes on his life in Utah through 1904.
MSS MFilm 00094
Visual Materials
One flyer entitled Class in Drawing and Painting From Nature; Composition and Design, by A.G. Randall, Commonwealth School of Art and Industry, Fitchburg, Massachusetts, 1906. The subtitle reads: "At Boothbay Harbor, Maine, from July 9th to August 11th, 1906." This brochure is 4 unnumbered pages in length, and describes the classes offered, as well as the housing costs, terms and location of the summer program. The school logo, centered on the first page, features an outline view of the eastern half of Massachusetts; Cape Cod is represented by a human arm holding artists' implements. "3-" is written in ms., in pencil, in the upper right-hand corner of the first page.
ephKAEE