Marion Peabody update!

Remember our blog post about Marion Peabody, the binding designer, whom we posted about way back in 2015? If not, go check it out! You can even see the photograph of her that we found in passport records.

Anyway, we have an update thanks to the sleuthing of Linda Obora! I was sitting at my desk in November of 2018 when a manila envelope was handed to me. Intrigued, I immediately opened it and pulled out the enclosed papers and letter. The letter was from Linda Obora, a genealogy researcher, and she had traced information about Marion and found her death date. Not only did she provide this information, but also was able to send us a copy of her death certificate and (drum roll, please) her WILL! How awesome is that? Thank you so much, Linda! 

Luckily, her research helped answer some of the unknowns from the previous post. We had found a tombstone that looked very much like it was Marion's, but we couldn't find that one missing link that definitively said that this was indeed "our" Marion. These documents linked everything together. So without delay, I want to share with you what Linda found. 

Marion Louise Peabody died January 9, 1937 at 6:15 pm in her home at Via Mario del Fiori, 16, Rome, Italy. 

There's just something about being able to see the same cobble stone streets she would have walked, probably the same door that she would have opened day in and day out, the same scenery she would have walked past on the way to pick up some things at the market--it makes her life more "real". Thankfully, Google Maps gives us this ability to see these things without physically being there. Check it out!

She died from cancer of the liver which was certified by her physician, Dr. Giulio Brocchieri. She was cremated and then buried in the Protestant Cemetery in Testaccio, Rome (the resting place of John Keats, Percy Shelley). The death certificate even spells out the exact plot in the cemetery where she was buried

Here is her tombstone, courtesy of Find a Grave.

It reads:

Qui le ceneri

lassu l'anima angelica 

di 

Marion L. Peabody

di Boston, Mass., U.S.A. 

Diletta dal signore

nella bontae nella sofferenza

le sia premio

la vita eterna

Roma 9, Gennaio 1937

(transcription from Find a Grave; "bontae" should read "bonta e")

Her brother in law, Lionel Simeon Marks (husband of Josephine Peabody, the famous author), was notified of her death by a telegraph sent to Harvard University, where he was employed, on January 9, 1937 and January 10, 1937. Josephine had died in 1922, so it's telling that her brother-in-law was the one notified. Marion's passport was destroyed on January 11, 1937, a scant two days after she passed. J. Wesley Jones, the vice consul of the United States of America, signed off on her death certificate which was officially filed February 5, 1937.  Her effects were left in the care of a Mr. Luigi Trombetti, the executor of the will. 

It never ceases to amaze me that you can find so much information on a death certificate. 

But now I was curious about Mr. Luigi Trombetti. Who was he--a friend? Simply her lawyer? My attention turned to the translated three page copy of the will that Linda included with the death certificate and letter. You can glean so much information from a will. You find out who was most important or closest to the deceased--well, important enough to warrant leaving them something at any rate. You can peer into their personal lives a little more and find out what things were dear enough to them to want the items to go to someone instead of just being disposed of.

Remember, Marion never married and was a self-sufficient woman who was living in Italy in 1937. Why is that important? Italy was living under the rule of Benito Mussolini. The Rome-Berlin Axis was established in 1936, but Italy had been living under a fascist government long before that. What was that like for her? 

Anyway, back to the will. 

Marion made her will on December 31, 1936, which, as the document points out, is the 15th year of the Fascist Era, at her home on the second floor of number 16, Via Mario del Fiori. Five people, in addition to Marion, were present to serve as witnesses while the will was created:

-Igino Clementi, an Italian notary; 

-John Wesley Jones, who we've already established was the Vice Consul of the United States of America and signed her death certificate; 

-Graham Erskine, an American architect;

-Giovanni Bizzarri, an Italian clerk;

-Pasquale Blasi, an Italian clerk.

The will identifies Marion as "Miss Marion Louise Peabody, daughter of the late Carlo". We learned in the first blog post that she was, in fact, the daughter of Charles (thus Carlo) K. Peabody who died in 1884 when Marion was 15. The will states that she's "ill in bed", so we know the cancer was debilitating at this point, and that Marion died just over a week later. 

The will starts with her niece Alison Peabody Marks, daughter of her sister Josephine Peabody Marks and Lionel Marks. Marion left her several rings (which were thoroughly described), a heart studded with diamonds, silver spoons, and a color picture of Josephine. 

Lionel Peabody Marks, her nephew, was left four decanters with a stand which belonged to her great, great grandmother 

Miss Dora Ohlfsen received two furs and 5000 lire. Say what?! Dora Ohlfsen-Bagge was a fascinating character who was a pianist, sculptor, painter, medallist, and had a brief stint (that we know of) as a spy. A spy, y'all! She and her lifelong companion met an untimely death in 1948 when they were found in their gas filled studio. Police ruled it accidental deaths, but some suspect it was a suicide pact.

Baroness Hélène de Kuegelgen, the companion of Dora Ohlfsen-Bagge and the individual who died with her, was left 5000 lire. 

Marion left Countess Frances du Besse two writing desks.

Mrs. Lia Trombetti Lardel received  a table from the drawing room and an ornate piece of furniture from the hallway.

The Reverend of the American church in Rome, Samuel Tyler, was left Marion's copies of books written by her sister, Josephine.  

The owner of the "Felix" library, Mr. Michele _________ was left the rest of her book collection. 

Mr. Alfredo Cifani was left a writing desk, his choice of chest of drawers or writing desk, and a bureau with the American coat of arms on it. 

Marion remembered her maids in her will as well. To Firmina Ferrari, "Irma" she left all of the kitchen contents including the furniture and utensils, all the contents of the entrance hall, the wardrobe in her bedroom, half of the table service, and half of her clothes and underclothes, though she did specify that Irma couldn't have the silk underclothes. She additionally left her 800 lire. To her other maid, Elvira Ruggieri, she left the other half of her clothes and underclothes (specifying again to not touch the silk) and 800 lire. 

Then, finally, we discover a little bit more about Mr. Luigi Trombetti. Marion left twenty-five lire apiece to Maria Letizia and Maria Immacoleta Trombetti, daughters of Avvocato Luigi Trombetti. So he definitely was a lawyer, but Marion goes on to give hints to their relationship later on in the paragraph saying, "as a token of gratitude for the brotherly and disinterested assistance their father has given me during the last seven years and of the esteem and friendship which I have felt and always shall feel for him." So in answer to my earlier questions, we now know he was both a lawyer and a friend. 

She closed her will with "I remember with affection all my relatives and friends." 

Marion was truly an interesting and fascinating character. She kept company with countesses, baronesses, painters, sculptures, lawyers, and most interestingly to me, a spy. We know her best here at Jackson Library as an accomplished binding designer and didn't want to end this post without a look at some of her work. 

Thanks again to Linda Obera, who did the leg work which offered us a glimpse into Marion Peabody's personal life. I love the fact that we can connect with people we otherwise wouldn't have through this blog. 

Paris and the social revolution : a study of the revolutionary elements in the various classes of Parisian society

Published by Small, Maynard & Company in 1905.

Caleb Trench

Published by Little, Brown, and Company in 1910.

Little Brother o' Dreams 

Published by Houghton, Mifflin Co. in 1910.

Appropriately, we'll end this post with a binding she created for her beloved sister, Josephine Preston Peabody's, book The Wayfarerers.  Published by Copeland and Day, 1898.

Researching without the resources : Bruce Rogers

I probably have mentioned this several times by now, but it's worth mentioning again (and in all likelihood you will hear it again), I love to do research. There's just something about rediscovering information that you didn't know was there to begin with.

I'm in the middle of doing something exciting that I will hopefully get to share with you guys soon. I'm combing through book advertisements to see if there is any mention of who the book cover designer was. So far I've checked out some key phrases in the New York Times and now I'm moving on to Google Books.

A while back, I stumbled on a perfect ad that showcases just how awesome book advertisements were back in the day. They were so detailed--well, some of them. Let me say that there are a lot of good bibliographies out there that will help you find the same information. Some libraries are smaller than others and have limited access to those resources, however, so being able to do it a free (well semi-free) way is always a positive. You'll still have to pay for your own internet, but you know what I mean. The main purpose of this post is to show you how you can utilize free resources on the internet when doing your binding research. Most of you probably already know how to do this, but it never hurts to see someone else's process, right? I was perusing Google Books and I stumbled across The book buyer. Here's the title page of the one I was looking at:

(You can click on the image and it will take you to the book in Google Books)

Super helpful publication, I must say. I searched within this publication for, "book cover designed by" and ta-da I got got some hits. Will this method pick up everything in the book? No. It depends on how good the OCR was of the image but it'll definitely get you started... hopefully.

Here were my results:

The first image had the words highlighted as well; they just weren't highlighted anymore when I captured the screen shot. As you can see these advertisements were pretty informative. They offer the title, author, publisher, amount to purchase the book, all things you would expect to see; but then some go on to list illustrators and, at times, cover designers which is just what I'm looking for. Stone & Kimball and Copeland & Day were really good about informing their public about cover designers. The first image shows 3 books that had binding designers attributed to them, which is awesome since I couldn't find a signed binding of those in the Internet Archive (fyi: if you haven't used Internet Archive, you are missing out! I cannot tell you how much I love this site. Check it out when you get a moment. I promise, you will not regret it.). 

The second page had bindings by Bruce Rogers. Now some of you book enthusiasts probably have heard of him. I'm still new to the binding game so I don't have a lot of knowledge stored up about every binding design...yet. Slowly but surely, my friends. Doing a quick search in our CONTENTdm site shows me that we do have bindings by him (See). None of the bindings are signed, so how did we attribute them to Bruce Rogers? For that I had to go to our catalog (this makes me wonder if we should put references in our CONTENTdm records, probably wouldn't hurt anything but I'll have to think more on that later. Would you guys like it if we had our references in the CONTENTdm record?).

When you look in our catalog, you find this note:

This means that we found the information that Bruce Rogers was the binding designer in two places: Frederic Warde's Bruce Rogers : designer of books, and Sidney Kramer's A history of Stone & Kimball and Herbert S. Stone & Company. Luckily, we have these references in our collection so it was just a matter of looking up the particular book. For those of you who don't have these resources, you will have to stick with the first way I demonstrated of finding the information (a.k.a. the free way).  I stumbled across the information but you can do a keyword search for the book title and it should still come up. (Side note: sometimes we don't have time to do in-depth research of every book we get, so we'll just add it to the collection and make changes if we find more information later). 

The researcher in me was curious, though. Who was Bruce Rogers? Quick Google search brought up a Wikipedia page on him. Now we all know that Wikipedia sometimes isn't reliable, but I will say, they often have an awesome reference list that will link you to some pretty cool information. Like this book, for example, that was linked on Wikipedia to a book on the Internet Archive (here's Internet Archive again). Honestly, I love Wikipedia. You might have to be cautious when using the information, but we always have to be cautious with any information we find. It's definitely a great place to start for binding research in my opinion.  While we have this book in our collection as well, it's nice sometimes to just be able to make a quick reference to it at my desk and get on with my work, so I'm really glad it's digitized. You can flip through the book below if you like.

You can click the link or hit the expand button and you'll be able to view it in an larger version.

But getting back to the question at hand, who was Bruce Rogers? This book gives his full name as Albert Bruce Rogers. Evidently he went through three forms of his names which will be how you can tell the time period of his work. He started out as "Bert", then he went by "Albert Bruce Rogers" (he evidently substituted the u in Bruce with a v), and then finally he settled on "Bruce Rogers" (Work, 1939, p. xxii).

From the research I have done, he's a big fish and I'm slightly embarrassed that I didn't know who he was, but that's the joy of researching. Did you know that he created the Centaur font? Pretty awesome guy if you ask me.

So recap on free resources:

Internet Archive: Place where you can find books digitized. Usually they are before 1921 but there are some stragglers like the one above that are digitized later. It's a great resource to look at different book covers or for finding early bibliographies.

Google Books: Google books has so many resources in one place. You can check out titles such as Publisher's Weekly, The book buyer, The dial, and others that are fabulous resources. Love Google Books and the fact that they are keyword searchable.

Interlibrary Loan: This one I didn't mention above but it's a  really good resource if your library has it. Some public libraries charges a small fee for this and some academic libraries may as well. UNCG does not charge for it. Interlibrary Loan is borrowing books from another institution. If your library doesn't have it but the university down the road (or farther away) does, you can ILL the book and the institution that does hold the book will mail it to your institution (or scan it and email the selection you want if it's allowable and passes all the copyright laws and regulations). If you have this at your library, it's a great resource to take advantage of.

Binding research

It's been a while since we last posted. Our holiday break has come and gone and we are FINALLY getting back into the swing of things in the cataloging department.

I have been working on these lovelies, also known as government documents. They can be kind of dry sometimes and since we aren't having a lot coming down from Special Collections, they have been filling my time nicely. 

Sometimes they can be a little...what's the word....monotonous, so I've been doing a little research. Call it a filler project or what have you, but it's been so much fun and interesting. I've been doing a little binding research. By research I mean going through the New York Times and Publisher's Weekly advertisements looking for the phrases: "cover design by", "cover designed by", "binding design by", "binding designed by", etc... So far I have nine pages of identified binding designers paired with their work, which is going to be so helpful down the line. I made sure to save a copy of the advertisement too, so I can go back and verify my information any time I want. This will be helpful to researchers with their binding identifications and research on their favorite artist. 

I'm very glad to say that the research has already paid off (I mean, there does need to be some purpose to this project, right?). 

The beauty shown above didn't have a binding designer listed, no signature or attribution whatsoever. During our busy times, we don't really have a lot of time to go out and research to get ALL the information on a binding. We generally just take what we see and go on (for the most part anyway. If we suspect the binding is from a specific artist we might check the key websites for more information, but that's about it). The other day I stumbled across an advertisement that identified Julia Ward Richards as being responsible for this binding. We have other designs by her which can be viewed here (that link doesn't include the one above because I haven't fixed the CONTENTdm record yet--this is hot off the press!). It was so nice to have spelled out, black and white proof that she did the binding, especially since it wasn't signed. 

Thank goodness for digitized resources (in this case the digital copies of Publisher's Weekly) that help make more information available at just a few clicks of a button (I promise you, this will not be the last time I make this statement, either). A few years ago, not many people would have sat at a microfilm reader (or with the actual volumes themselves) to find this information. The internet has made it possible for us to give more detailed and useful cataloging records for all our patrons, which this cataloger thinks is pretty awesome.