After a long winter, we all naturally welcome the signs of spring! I've selected these greeting cards and photographs from our collections that represent a return to warm weather and new growth in nature.
Easter greeting postcard, circa 1920. Artwork shows biblical story of three women and angel at the tomb of Jesus Christ. The message reads, "May this Easter be for you A time of Joy and Gladness." (THF114197)
Many people celebrate the Easter holiday as a time to attend church followed by a family gathering. Easter, a Christian ceremony observing the resurrection of Jesus Christ, has also become popular as a secular celebration of the arrival of spring.
Trade card advertising Rosenbloom Brothers business establishment of Providence, Rhode Island, 1882. The artwork features children playing around a gigantic egg, decorating it with a flower garland, ribbons and a U.S. flag. (THF114209)
Mailing family and friends Easter greeting cards and children waking up the morning of Easter to eggs and candy brought by a rabbit are two examples of activities that became popular in the United States by the 1880s.
Oval-shaped photographic print mounted onto gray cardboard, circa 1895. The photo depicts two young children, probably a sister and brother, holding Easter baskets full of candy in rabbit and egg forms. (THF114216)
Snapshot photograph printed April 1957. Featuring a man and baby girl, probably dad and daughter, dressed in their Easter best with a fancy Easter basket. They are outdoors in a yard with daffodils in bloom. (THF114228)
Publishers made greeting cards with themes of a religious nature, but many cards reflected less spiritual, earthly themes of flowers, eggs, rabbits, baby animals and birds that signaled the return of spring.
Easter greeting card, used April 12, 1936. Artwork shows a rabbit holding a radio script and talking into a broadcasting microphone. The message (starting on the front and continuing onto the inside) reads, "I'll Tell the World / I'm Wishing You a Real Happy Easter!" (THF114175)
Easter greeting card, made circa 1950. Featuring an Easter basket overflowing with spring flowers and a sleeping kitten, the greeting reads, "From Friend to Friend an Easter Wish." (THF114172)
For more examples of Easter images, go to our online collections and search Easter. I hope this brief journey through time with Easter-related images brings you a breath of springtime!
Cynthia Read Miller is former Curator of Photographs and Prints at The Henry Ford.
Easter, photographs, holidays, correspondence, by Cynthia Read Miller, archives
It’s ironic – like, in the actual “opposite of what you’d expect” way as opposed to the “merely coincidental” way in which the term is often misused. The Ford Mustang is revered as one of the most “American” of all cars. Its name conjures up images of the Wild West. Its early logo incorporated red, white and blue stripes. The car’s very look is based on our country’s obsessions with speed and style. And yet Mustang Serial Number One, sold 50 years ago this month, went to a Canadian. Yeah, that’s irony.
On April 14, 1964, Eastern Provincial Airlines pilot Stanley Tucker walked into George Parsons Ford, a dealership perched on the eastern edge of the continent in St. John’s, Newfoundland. It was love at first sight. The sharp-looking Wimbledon White convertible jumped out at the 33 year-old pilot, and he knew he had to have it. We don’t know the name of the person who sold the car to Tucker – but the pilot must have been quite a salesman himself. Somehow, he convinced Parsons Ford to break street date and sell him the car three days before April 17, when Ford officially released Mustang to the world. He took serial number 5F08F100001 home and, for a short time, was the general public’s only Mustang owner.
Mustang Serial Number One should not have been sold on that early date. In fact, it shouldn’t have been sold at all. The car was one of approximately 180 pre-production cars built at the Rouge between February 10 and March 5, 1964. These initial cars served two purposes: 1.) They eased Ford into full production by familiarizing workers and supervisors with the build process, and 2.) They formed a batch of physical cars that could be shipped to every major Ford dealer in time for the April 17 launch. Logically, the first cars built were sent to the farthest dealers – hence Serial Number One wound up 2,180 miles from Dearborn in St. John’s. (Twelve of these pre-production cars, incidentally, went to the New York World’s Fair for use in Ford’s Magic Skyway ride.)
Being a pre-production or, if you will, “practice” car, Serial Number One has a few quirks not seen in regular Mustangs. Careful observers will notice that the hood’s fit is a little crooked. The door lock knobs have no grommets at their bases. The front grille’s color tends more toward gray than the bluish hue seen on regular production cars. The engine block is painted gray instead of the black on later Mustangs. Little details like these changed after full production began on March 9.
Not long after Capt. Tucker made his purchase, Ford tracked him down and asked to have Serial Number One back. Not surprisingly, Tucker declined the request. He spent the next two years putting some 10,000 miles on his pony car. By early 1966, when nearly one million Mustangs had been sold and the car’s status as a Ford landmark was secure, the Blue Oval called again. This time, Ford offered Tucker a worthy trade: in exchange for returning Serial Number One, he could have the One Millionth Mustang, equipped to his specifications. Tucker agreed and, when filling out the order, covered the entire option sheet with single large “X.” The only extra he didn’t take was the High Performance 289 engine – it carried a shorter warranty period.
Tucker came to Dearborn on March 2, 1966, met Ford vice-president (and Mustang father) Lee Iacocca, and posed for photos with his new Silver Frost 1966 Mustang convertible. Meanwhile, Ford reclaimed Tucker’s much-loved Serial Number One and soon donated it to The Henry Ford. Seventeen years after the trade, when Mustang Monthly magazine caught up with Tucker, the pilot expressed some understandable regret that he’d let go of Serial Number One. As we celebrate 50 years of Mustang, though, we can be grateful that 5F08F100001 is preserved for all to enjoy. Many of our visitors, upon seeing the car in Henry Ford Museum, get that same gleam in their eyes that Stanley Tucker must have gotten all those years ago.
Matt Anderson is Curator of Transportation at The Henry Ford
Driving America, Henry Ford Museum, Canada, 20th century, 1960s, shopping, Mustangs, Ford Motor Company, convertibles, cars, by Matt Anderson, aviators
Jens Jensen (1860–1951) was a Danish-born landscape architect who did a large amount of design work for the Ford family and Ford Motor Company. This included Ford Motor Company pavilion landscaping for the 1933–34 Chicago World’s Fair, landscape design for multiple residences of Edsel Ford, and complete landscaping for Fair Lane, the Dearborn estate of Henry and Clara Ford. We’ve just digitized 29 blueprints from the Jens Jensen Drawings Series showing planting plans, grading and topographical plans, and water feature plans for the Fair Lane estate, such as this one for a bird pool. View all related material in our digital collections.
Ellice Engdahl is Digital Collections & Content Manager at The Henry Ford.
Michigan, Dearborn, Ford family, Clara Ford, home life, 20th century, 1920s, 1910s, Henry Ford, drawings, digital collections, design, by Ellice Engdahl
The Henry Ford, like other older, long-established museums, can only display a very small percentage of its artifacts at any given time. The remainder is kept in storage for future generations. In recent years, The Henry Ford has begun to digitize its collections, and put them online. This effort has helped expand what we can say about what is on exhibit, and importantly, has made it so that people don’t have to wait decades to be able to find out about artifacts that are in storage.
Thanks to a grant from the Institute for Museum and Library Services’ (IMLS) “Museums for America” program, The Henry Ford has an opportunity to digitize over 1,000 artifacts that tell the story of changing communications technologies from the late 1800s to the late 1990s. The project is focused on communications collections that are stored in a large, tightly-packed warehouse on The Henry Ford campus. Many of these artifacts have been in this building for many decades, with limited cataloging. This project will inventory, catalog, preserve, re-house and digitize for online access these computers, radios, telephones and televisions, cameras, printing presses, teletype and telegraph machines and other artifacts, making them available to The Henry Ford staff and the public to a degree never before possible.
Our computer collections have been the focus of the early work. This work has reminded us of how rapidly technological change has occurred with computers. Check out the (not so mini) DEC PDP-11/20 Minicomputer, 1970 mini-computer.
The challenges presented by this densely-packed storage area has meant that the project staff has really needed to live up to our mission of innovation. Before any work can be done on the artifacts, decades of accumulated dust, dirt and mold needs to be removed. Collections Specialist (and in-house McGyver) Jake Hildebrandt fashioned a downdraft table, complete with HEPA and charcoal filter, out of a portable ventilator, steel shelves and leftover grid for overhead lights. A downdraft table quickly pulls away dust and dirt as the artifact is cleaned, making the cleaning process faster and more effective.
We look forward to highlighting some of our exciting “re-discoveries” as we work on this project; collections digitization projects in museums around the world have led to new “re-discoveries.” We expect to add the tremendous collections of The Henry Ford to this ever-expanding resource of artifacts online.
Mary Fahey is Chief Conservator at The Henry Ford.
communication, IMLS grant, digitization, #Behind The Scenes @ The Henry Ford, collections care, conservation, by Mary Fahey
Those of us who work at The Henry Ford often remark that our collections are so vast that we surely must have something relevant to almost every topic. For example, while we might not be the first place that would jump to your mind for the topic of tattooing, we’ve just digitized a couple dozen tattoo flash, sketches, stencils, and related materials, some of it with Detroit-area connections. This sheet of stencils, dating between 1910-1950, displays a variety of tattoo designs. Watch for an upcoming post about this material by Kristen Gallerneaux, Curator of Communication & Information Technology, elsewhere on our blog, but in the meantime, you can view this material in our digital collections.
Ellice Engdahl is Digital Collections & Content Manager at The Henry Ford.
Spring means many things to many people: an end to cabin fever, swapping the snow blower for the lawn mower, or getting the car out of winter storage and ready for the summer cruising season. For car museum folks, though, spring means the annual conference of the National Association of Automobile Museums. This year’s meeting, hosted by the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, California, was particularly special. For the first time in many years, it was a joint conference with the World Forum for Motor Museums.
NAAM conferences traditionally provide three important opportunities. First, there is the chance to network with auto museum colleagues from around the country (or, this year, the globe). You find that many of us share the same joys – the thrill of sharing our collections with the public, the fun in working with incredible automobiles – and the same challenges, like the long-term preservation of complex machines, or writing informative but engaging label text with a limit of 60-odd words.
Second, and central to the NAAM conference, is the chance to hear presentations from curators, archivists, conservators and administrators from the car museum world. Standout sessions this year included a talk on the peculiarities of corporate car collections and museums; strategies for dealing with the media (this session included comments from Wendell Strode of the National Corvette Museum, who worked masterfully with the press during that museum’s recent sinkhole crisis); and ideas on incorporating “visible storage” into your museum’s plan, in which visitors are able to view cars “behind the scenes” as a part of special tours. I should note that Robert Coyle, our Conservation Specialist for Automobiles, Gary Martin, of Dan Gurney’s All American Racers, and I spoke together about our project to conserve the 1967 Le Mans-winning Ford Mark IV.
Finally, NAAM brings the chance for special tours of public and private collections near the host institution. This year’s itinerary did not disappoint. Attendees were treated to tours of the Mullin Automotive Museum, the Toyota USA Automobile Museum, the Nethercutt Collection, and the Pasadena-based Art Center College of Design. It should be no surprise that Southern California, nexus of American car culture, is home to so many incredible automobile and auto-related collections.
There is one additional NAAM highlight: the annual NAAMY awards! These prizes, given at each conference, honor the best in publications, exhibits, programs and events at nonprofit automotive museums. I’m pleased to report that our new book, Driving America: The Henry Ford Automotive Collection, took first place in our division for books and exhibit catalogs. Accolades are always special, but particularly so when they come from your colleagues in the field. With the 2014 meeting barely over, I’m already looking forward to next year’s conference.
Matt Anderson is Curator of Transportation at The Henry Ford
21st century, 2010s, California, cars, by Matt Anderson, #Behind The Scenes @ The Henry Ford
In February I took my first visit to the Pottery to learn about the studio challenge our potters were given at the beginning of the year. It’s been a few busy weeks for the team as they work on both their challenge pieces and get ready for the opening of Greenfield Village on April 15.
It should come as no surprise that the pieces are all looking fantastic and completely different from one another, as they should be. Vessels now look like teapots, hand-crafted stamps have been busy stamping and over-the-top sculptures continue to be developed. For anyone who enjoys art and design, it’s a welcomed sight.
Taking my tour through the shop I visited Alex’s station first. He’s experimenting with some special stains for his collection. These pieces are covered in wax and when fired the wax burns away to reveal the true colors. Like the other potters, Alex isn’t worried about uniformity this time around.
“It’s been really interesting to work outside my comfort zone,” he said. “This is a learning process, but I’m feeling really optimistic about it.”
Melinda Mercer has been focusing on incorporating bold patterns and textures to her pieces, which is a new creative direction for her work. She’s also been focusing part of her project on hand building, a technique that’s a bit different for her.
To create her patterns and textures, Melinda decided to make her own custom stamps. To achieve the look she was going for she hand carved the designs into porcelain and then fired them in a kiln to make them permanent.
John Ahearn has added a few additional pieces to his artistic roundup of work for the challenge since I saw him last. While his pieces aren’t meant to be functional, he did create a cake stand that you can’t help but imagine holding a delicious, huge cake in the coming weeks.
“This project, in whole, has made me realize the power of art,” John said. “Doing something over and over is how we show guests what the production techniques from the past were. But the power of art is more than just production work. Now I understand what potters during this movement were doing at the time. They were being different on purpose.”
As the team agrees across the board, it’s been a lot of fun to see how their individual projects have been developing; and that includes being very different in size, scale and approach, which is the complete opposite direction of their daily production work and responsibilities. While initial sketches helped define the origins of each of their pieces, they haven’t kept themselves too married to those original ideas as the project takes shape.
“These pieces allow our personalities to come through,” Melinda said.
John agreed.
“These pieces really reflect who we are as people. Our styles have really influences our interpretations of the challenge.”
Check back soon for a final update from the team as they show off their finished pieces.
Lish Dorset is social media manager at The Henry Ford.
#Behind The Scenes @ The Henry Ford, art, design, ceramics, by Lish Dorset, making, Greenfield Village
Longer days make us think of spring. And spring makes us think of…laundry. Laundry? (Well, along with things like trees leafing out in a delicate green and daffodils blooming.) Yes, laundry gently hanging to dry in the warm breeze.
Before the automatic clothes dryer became common in American homes in the years following World War II, housewives hung their laundry out to dry—either indoors or outdoors, depending on the weather. Clotheslines stretched across farmyards, out the windows of tall, closely-built apartment buildings in the city, or in suburban backyards or basements. What kept the clothes, sheets, towels from leaving the clothesline and taking flight in the breeze? Clothespins.
In the 1950s, though many households had an automatic washing machine, some might not yet have owned an automatic dryer. Housewives still hung their wet laundry to dry on clotheslines stretched across basements or backyards, as weather permitted. “Sunny Days” were best for hanging laundry outside: clothing and household linens acquired a fresh, outdoorsy scent that automatic dryers—though more convenient—couldn’t duplicate.
Munising “Sunny Day” Clothespins, 1953-1955 (Object ID 2012.88.380).
Child’s play has often involved learning grownup roles. In an era when most girls anticipated futures as housewives, toys for girls included miniatures of mother’s work. Appropriately sized for little hands and doll clothing, colorful toy clothespins like these gave little girls a chance to practice hanging out the laundry.
“My Doll” Toy Clothespins, 1958-1962 (Object ID 2012.88.384).
These Klose Klip brand clothespins promised “no tearing, no soiling, no freezing to line.” No freezing? Before automatic clothes dryers became common, many housewives hung their wet laundry on a clothesline outdoors—even in cold weather. Suspended from a metal clip, Klose Klip clothespins assured that clean laundry wouldn’t be soiled by contact with any dirt found on a cotton clothesline that hung continually outdoors.
“Klose Klips” Clothespins, 1930-1940 (Object ID 2012.88.401).
Before automatic clothes dryers came on the market after World War II, housewives hung their wet laundry to dry on clotheslines stretched across basements or backyards. Whether lightweight hosiery or heavy blankets, these Sure Grip clothespins promised to keep clean clothes and household linens from falling to the ground—and perhaps having to be washed all over again.
“Sure Grip” Clothespins, ca. 1945 (Object ID 2012.88.405).
Now it is considered “green” to hang laundry outdoors, avoiding wasting energy by drying clothes in an automatic dryer. And the warm sun provides a fresh, clean smell that is unbeatable—along with a little spring pollen.
Jeanine Head Miller is Curator of Domestic Life at The Henry Ford.
The collections of The Henry Ford include many artifacts related to famous innovators and revolutionary inventions, but we also include humbler artifacts that tell the story of day-to-day life in America. With the Easter holiday approaching, we’ve just digitized a number of related items, as selected by Cynthia R. Miller, Curator of Photographs and Prints. Her choices include this 1973 photograph of young boys wearing bunny ears, as well as additional photographs, greeting cards and postcards, advertisements, and other items. View all of this newly digitized material by visiting our digital collections.
Ellice Engdahl is Digital Collections & Content Manager at The Henry Ford.
Can a car built in a vegetable stand be a national treasure? It can if it is packed with ingenious engineering ideas, set a world speed record, and embodies important national characteristics.
The long, low, slim car called Goldenrod is all these things, and is a national treasure.
Goldenrod was built by a pair of California hot rodders, brothers Bill and Bob Summers. For years they participated in the annual Speed Weeks competition at Utah’s vast Bonneville Salt Flats, where they went as fast as 323 miles per hour in a car they built themselves. In 1963 they decided to go after the absolute land speed record of 394.196 mph, set by John Cobb in 1947. Cobb was one of a succession of wealthy Englishmen who had held the record over the years, driving well-financed cars powered by huge airplane engines.
Before Bob and Bill could get started, another Englishman, Donald Campbell, broke Cobb’s record with a speed of 403.10 mph. In 1964 and 1965 other American hot rodders used cars powered by jet aircraft engines to push the record to over 600 mph. But many people, like the Summers brothers, thought using jet engines wasn’t quite fair—they believed that real cars were driven by friction between tires and the ground. So no jet engines for Bob and Bill.
The Summers brothers believed that the key to a successful car was minimizing the resistance of air flowing over the moving car--and that the best way to do this was to make the car as small as possible. To put it simply: it is easier to punch a small hole through the air than a large hole. After testing models in a California Institute of Technology wind tunnel, they designed a car lower and narrower than any land speed record contender in history—48 inches wide, 42 inches high at the top of the tail fin, and only 28 inches high at the engine covers. Into this slim space they packed a quartet of 426 cubic inch Chrysler “hemi” V8 engines and the machinery necessary to power all four wheels. At the extreme rear sat the driver, Bob Summers. It was an amazing feat of engineering, and was so logical and successful that it set the paradigm for future Bonneville streamliner racers. Over 40 years later, long and slim is still the way these cars are built.
Financing Goldenrod was as big a challenge as actually building it. As land speed record cars go, Goldenrod was an economy car. Its $250,000 cost was well below the $3,000,000 Donald Campbell needed to build the car whose record Goldenrod broke. But $250,000 was far more than the Summers brothers had. So they beat the bushes searching for companies who would help pay the costs in exchange for having their corporate name on the car. The turning point came when George Hurst, maker of specialty gear shifting mechanisms and forged wheels, agreed to be a sponsor. Firestone Tire & Rubber then signed on to make the special low profile tires and wheels needed to fit inside the narrow envelope of the body. Chrysler Corporation agreed to loan the brothers four “hemi” engines, while Mobil Oil provided fuel and funding.
Construction on Goldenrod began in January 1965 in a shop that had once been a vegetable stand. By August the machine was done, and in September the brothers were at Bonneville working out the bugs that were inevitable in a car this innovative and complex. After two months of testing and modification all was ready. On November 12, Bob Summers blasted down the Bonneville salt with a run of 417 mph. International rules required two runs, in opposite directions, within one hour. After the car was thoroughly inspected, he set off on his return run with only five minutes to spare. His second run was good enough for a two-way average of 409.277 mph.
The brothers had their record. It would stand for over 25 years.
Utah, racing, race cars, race car drivers, making, Henry Ford Museum, Driven to Win, cars, California, 20th century, 1960s
