The beginning of Birthday Kid Poem by Simon J. Ortiz, from a broadside published by Zephyrus Image in the 1970s. Part of our Native American Literature collection.
While our cuneiform tablet's status as our smallest item remains secure, serious questions have been raised about whether or not it is the oldest.
Color day! Some remarkable pulp paper works of art, from The Art of Pulp Painting, in our special collections. These are just four of seventeen works in this folio published by Hand Papermaking in 2005. From top to bottom: Kathryn Clark; Peggy Prentice; Shannon Brock; and Bobbie Lippman...
We're currently processing a collection containing 200-300 photographs from the U.S. Signal Corps during World War II, including this image in Europe which looks way too much like what's in today's sad news from Ukraine...
We in the special collections love ephemera. Especially when it’s so closely related to what we do. Here, for example, are five 19th-century calling cards in our collections from our benefactor and namesake, John Wilson (c. 1826-1900). Come get your yankee notions now!
Artist Sonia Delaunay (1885-1979) is considered a French artist but she was born Sonia Illinitchna Stern in Odessa, Ukraine. Raised later in St. Petersburg, Russia, her childhood memories of Ukraine remained with her and she often referred back to the ‘pure’ colour and bright costumes of the Ukrainian peasant weddings. These two images are pochoir on paper from her folio Tapis et Tissus (Carpets and Fabrics), written and designed by her in 1929 and in our special collections.
Portland had a rare dusting of snow this morning, almost as rare as this lovely Japanese edition of Ezra Jack Keats’s The Snowy Day (Yuki no hi) which is in our special collections awaiting your visit (by appointment only)...
Today’s global conflicts show up in rare books from the 17th century, like our Blaeu Atlas, aka, Atlas maior, sive, Cosmographia BlavianaAtlas maior, sive, Cosmographia Blavianaqua solum, salum, coelum, accuratissime describuntur (Amsterdam, 1662). Here are three images from one of our 11 volumes showing Ukraine, including Kyiv (Kiow, on our hand-colored engraving) along with two title plates having soldiers with arrows drawn revealing that violent confrontations in this tumultuous region have been longstanding.
Behold, it’s painting Friday (is that a thing?). Anyway, we have a few paintings in our special collections including this beauty: “Circus Day at Dosewallips” (1953) by Mr. Otis. Mr. Otis has been rumored--although he repeatedly denied it--to be author Stewart Holbrook (1893-1964), one of Oregon’s most prolific authors and popular historians in the mid-twentieth century. Adding to the evidence of the Holbrook/Otis connection, the painting was a gift to our collection from his daughter, Sibyl.
We recently discovered a photo album in our collection having some large and beautiful photographs, mostly of travel images from around the world. The album was once in the possession of an important library benefactor and board director, Mary Failing (1862-1947). This beautiful image is the right half of diptych, a chilly water scene, late 19th century, likely off the coast of Alaska. If you recognize this locale, please let us know.
In 1982, Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000) was commissioned to make eight paintings to accompany John Hersey’s devastating book Hiroshima first published in 1946 shortly after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city. The paintings are at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts, but the Limited Editions Club book, which has eight original silkscreens printed in eleven colors, signed by Hersey and Lawrence (and Robert Penn Warren who wrote a poem for this edition), is in our special collections.
Errol Garner in Portland, Oregon, ca. 1954 (photograph by Carl J. Henniger), one of 30 photographs of jazz musicians from a recent gift to our special collections, currently on exhibit in our library’s Collins Gallery until March 31
It’s Haturday in the special collections! Wait, what? Oh. Well, no cats here. But this week we ran across the House Wren in our double-elephant folio of Audubon’s Birds of America and were reminded to remind you that you can visit the special collections by making an appointment, and you can view the volume where this hat resides or any of the other 12,000 books in the collection. More info? Click here.
This year we lost so many wonderful folks, including Norton Juster, best known for his 1961 classic, The Phantom Tollbooth illustrated by Jules Feiffer. As much as we enjoy that great book, we also love the beautiful illustrations -- including these three -- found in another Juster title, Alberic The Wise and Other Journeys. These were done by Italian artist Domenico Gnoli who died so young at age 36 just a few years after this book was published.
How you build ships to help with the war effort in 1918, from our photographs of Peninsula Shipbuilding Company taken in 1918 during the first world war.
It may be Caturday but Dr. Doolittle appreciates, at least here, other kinds of animals as these endpapers suggest in Hugh Lofting’s Dr. Doolittle’s Return (1933)...
One of our favorite artist's books: Volcano Blue, a celebration of the centennial of Mt. Rainier National Park, designed and printed by Catherine Alice Michaelis at her May Day Press in 1998.