Posts Tagged by ellice engdahl
A couple of weeks ago on the blog, we shared slides from the John Margolies Roadside America collection, newly digitized in anticipation of a Margolies exhibit coming to The Henry Ford later this year. However, John Margolies did not only take photographs of interesting places he encountered on the road; he also collected related items. We’ve just digitized about 300 pennants Margolies collected, representing various cities, states, parks, zoos, circuses, beaches, landmarks, and intriguing roadside attractions. On this colorful example, Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox invite you to visit the Trees of Mystery along the Redwood Highway, California. To find out if your hometown or favorite childhood attraction is represented, visit our collections website and peruse all the digitized pennants—and see if you can spot any of them in the exhibit later this year!
Ellice Engdahl is Digital Collections & Content Manager at The Henry Ford.
popular culture, roads and road trips, by Ellice Engdahl, John Margolies, Roadside America
The Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit exhibit will be on display at the Detroit Institute of Arts from March 15, 2015 through July 12, 2015. As a community partner for the exhibit, The Henry Ford has been digitizing selections from our collection that document Diego Rivera’s creation of the Detroit Industry frescoes and Diego and Frida’s time in Detroit. Below are links to six sets within our digital collections that bring some additional context to the exhibition.
Detroit Industry Frescoes: The Backstory
Edsel Ford funded the Detroit Industry frescoes, and Diego Rivera was inspired by the Ford Rouge Factory. As a result, Ford Motor Company, Edsel, Diego, and Frida became intertwined during the artists’ time in Detroit. This set features behind-the-scenes photographs of Diego, Frida, and others involved in the project; photos of Diego’s original drawings for the murals; a photograph taken by Ford Motor Company at Diego’s request; and correspondence between the DIA and Ford Motor Company about supplying glass and sand for the work.
20th century, 1930s, Michigan, Detroit, Ford Rouge Factory Complex, Ford Motor Company, Ford family, Edsel Ford, Detroit Institute of Arts, by Ellice Engdahl, art
The John Clark Racing Photographs collection at The Henry Ford is made up of 35mm color slides taken by John Clark between 1994 and 2000, and covers a number of types of racing, including Indy cars, stock cars, off-road trucks, and motocross motorcycles. Digital Processing Archivist Janice Unger updated and published the finding aid for this archival collection last year, and as part of that effort, selected some representative images from the collection for digitization. One particularly dramatic example is this photo of Rod Millen driving a Toyota Tacoma during the 1998 Pikes Peak Hill Climb. To see some of the other highlights from the John Clark collection, visit our collection website.
Ellice Engdahl is Digital Collections & Content Manager at The Henry Ford.
race cars, archives, by Ellice Engdahl, racing, photographs, digital collections, cars
John Margolies spent decades traveling the United States and photographing roadside attractions, restaurants, shops, and motels, with a particular focus on interesting or quirky shapes and signage. Many of the places he photographed are in varying states of abandonment and decline, but harken back to the excitement of the golden era of road trips and the unique commercial designs they spawned. Last year, The Henry Ford acquired about 1500 slides by John Margolies, and a little later this year, we will be putting on an exhibit of selected material, transformed from 35mm slide format into art prints. If you’d like to get a jump on the exhibit, you can currently view over 120 recently digitized Margolies slides on our collections website (including, in most cases, the slide mounts with John Margolies’s hand-written notes). Some of these images—perhaps this dinosaur offering up live music and a really good deal on a large t-bone—will be featured within the exhibit.
Ellice Engdahl is Digital Collections & Content Manager at The Henry Ford.
digital collections, photographs, photography, popular culture, John Margolies, roads and road trips, Roadside America, by Ellice Engdahl
Just Added to Our Digital Collections: Henry Carter Johnson Glass Figures
Henry Carter Johnson (1908–96) created tiny glass animals and other figures in western Michigan, on and off from the 1950s through the 1990s. His business was officially called “Fine Miniatures in Glass,” but many of his young fans, who could watch him shape the glass into his creations, knew it better as “The Glass Menagerie.” If you’ve looked in the cases that line the Promenade of the Henry Ford Museum, you’ve seen some of this collection, but we’ve just digitized close to 140 of these unique and charming figurines, such as the crane shown here. If you’d like to browse the whole menagerie, including (among many others!) fish, walruses, bears, mice, and rabbits, visit our digital collections.
Ellice Engdahl is Digital Collections & Content Manager at The Henry Ford.
Michigan, making, glass, digital collections, by Ellice Engdahl
Just Added to Our Digital Collections: Logan County Courthouse Artifacts
If you watched Episode 10 of The Henry Ford’s Innovation Nation, you may have learned a bit about the Logan County Courthouse, where a young Abraham Lincoln practiced law. Though the building now resides in Greenfield Village, we’ve just digitized about 70 images of the interior and exterior of the Courthouse on its original site, as well as related people, including this group posed outside the building. Visit our collections website to see all our digitized collections related to the Logan County Courthouse.
Ellice Engdahl is Digital Collections & Content Manager at The Henry Ford.
digital collections, Logan County Courthouse, Abraham Lincoln, Greenfield Village buildings, Greenfield Village, by Ellice Engdahl, The Henry Ford's Innovation Nation
Henry Ford is sometimes referred to as a “folk hero”: he was such a prominent figure in public life during his day, and had such a significant impact on the entire world, that many people felt compelled to send him gifts to show their appreciation. Some of these are machine-made items, but many were laboriously hand-created. We’ve just digitized some staff favorite tributes to Henry from our collection, including this 1935 diorama created in a gallon jug and featuring Henry Ford, Ford V-8 automobiles, young women, flags, flowers, and cotton chicks. Check our blog later this week for a post from Collections Specialist Patrice Fisher highlighting more of these honorifics, or if you can’t wait, you can check out sets on our collections website related to love of Ford automobiles, likenesses of Henry Ford, and awards and trophies—or view all 70+ items.
Ellice Engdahl is Digital Collections & Content Manager at The Henry Ford.
20th century, Henry Ford, digital collections, by Ellice Engdahl
Just Added to Our Digital Collections: E-M-F, Flanders, Studebaker Photographs
We’ve just digitized 238 items comprising the complete “E-M-F, Flanders, and Studebaker photographs, ca. 1910-1914” collection at The Henry Ford. As the description on ArchiveGrid notes, “E-M-F, launched in 1908 with an intent to build a mass produced automobile in a medium price range, was named for its three founders: Barney Everitt, successful Detroit automobile body-builder; William Metzger, premier Cadillac Motor Co. salesman; and Walter Flanders, resigned from the Ford Motor Co. as Henry Ford's first production manager.” Before long, the company partnered with Studebaker (producing at one point a Model T competitor named the Flanders 20), and by 1913, all E-M-F and Flanders vehicles became Studebakers. This image shows one of the cars navigating some tricky terrain as a pathfinder for an AAA Glidden Tour, a grueling event designed to showcase the value of the automobile and point out the need for good roads. See all the digitized E-M-F, Flanders, and Studebaker images by visiting our collections website.
Ellice Engdahl is Digital Collections & Content Manager at The Henry Ford.
20th century, 1910s, Michigan, Detroit, photographs, digital collections, cars, by Ellice Engdahl, archives
The collections of The Henry Ford contain over a thousand examples of footwear of all types: boots, sandals, pumps, slippers, and more. We’ve just digitized another six dozen or so pairs from our collections, in a variety of styles dating from the early 19th century through 2008. One set designed for a very specific purpose is these size 5 1/2 “Nymph” bathing shoes, likely dating from the 1920s. View close to 300 more pairs of shoes and related artifacts by visiting our digital collections!
Ellice Engdahl is Digital Collections & Content Manager at The Henry Ford.
One of the biggest misconceptions people have about The Henry Ford is that we are “a car museum.” Certainly, automobiles and related material form one of our core strengths, but our collections also cover the entire breadth of American history. Our ongoing project to digitize our collection and make it available online really demonstrates both sides of this coin: our vast and deep collections covering autos and auto racing, and then the wide breadth of other material documenting the American experience.
In that vein, instead of doing a typical “year in review” post for our digitization efforts in 2014, I played around with our collections database and came up with some interesting facts and figures about the portions of our collection that we digitized over the last year. I hope you’ll agree that the details below reveal the deep strengths of our collections, as well as their breadth—and that they encourage you to spend some time browsing our digital collections as well! Continue Reading
#Behind The Scenes @ The Henry Ford, by Ellice Engdahl, digital collections, digitization
