Adelphi Custom and Historic Wallpaper Hangings

Today for our Material Cultures class, we visited Adelphi, a reproduction block-printing wallpaper company. It was really interesting seeing how they can take scraps of wallpaper found from the inside of some old walls and turn it into a fully reproduced, vibrantly colored pattern. It is actually quite a small, labor intensive process but it was fascinating to see. We also got the chance to talk to The Anonymous Bookbinder, a man whose office is up one floor from Adelphi who restores the bindings on books. It wasn't a process I had every really thought about, and was absolutely fascinating. I'm really interested to continue my journal for Material Cultures, in which we're examining different printed materials. Tomorrow I'm going to the storage facility to examine some wallpaper remnants. Its really wonderful, and is very interesting to compare to the wallpapers at the Farmer's Museum and back at Living History Farms.

In other news, I have been hired as an Interpreter at the Broom Shop for The Farmer's Museum. Ginny, one of my roommates, and I went in to talk to them about volunteering. Ginny is very interested in textiles, and wants to learn how to spin and weave. They set her up as a volunteer, but they were really in need of a broommaker so they hired me. I spent Monday going through the paperwork and research left from their old broommaker, which was pretty messy. While I was in office, they received unfortunate news that one of their textile interpreters will be unable to come back for the rest of the season due to an injury. While that is horrible news for the poor woman, it is good news for Ginny, who will now join me as a staff member at the Farmer's Museum.

The biggest challenge for me is going to be learning how to make this particular style of brooms. Both museums form the interior of their brooms differently, and the Farmer's Museum brings the top of the broomcorn down to the handle, whereas Living History Farms cuts the top of the broomcorn flat across. I'm really interested to do more research and find out why it is these differences exist. The Farmers Museum is 1840-1860 New York, LHF is 1875 Iowa. Is it time period, is it region? I've got a giant stack of research I'm only a little way through, but maybe the answer is there somewhere!