We're extending a hearty welcome and thank you today for all of our friends who have followed the Hagley Vault over from its old home on Tumblr to its new location here on our website. The homepage of our Digital Archive will continue to feature images and links to the day’s posts, all of which will be available right here. We’ll also be followable via this RSS feed. You’ll also continue to be able to find images and links to new posts, as well as additional bonus content, on our Twitter feed, @Hagley_Library.
This ca. 1880(?) tradecard for Welcome brand soap is from Curtis David & Co. of Boston, Massachusetts. It is part of Hagley Library's collection of Carter Litchfield photographs and ephemera on the history of fatty materials (Accession 2007.227). As an organic chemist, Carter Litchfield (1932-2007) studied and specialized in edible fats. Over the course of his career, Litchfield built an important collection about the history of fats and fatty materials.
This collection, which now resides at Hagley, has not been digitized in its entirety, but our Digital Archive does offer a curated selection of items from this collection, which primarily includes paper ephemera such as ration stamps, tax stamps, trade cards, pamphlets, and trade catalogs. There are also items relating to the Prussian chemist, Julius Lewkowitsch (1857-1913), whose collection Litchfield acquired. Click here to visit its page in our Digital Archive now.