Today we’re talking about another surprising Brattle find: a fairly nondescript album that turned out to contain photos of prominent 1800s abolitionists. The collection includes small, sepia-toned portraits of Charles Sumner, Phillips Brooks, and even Sojourner Truth. We’ll also discuss other historical photos that have arrived at the shop, and the way that studio photography democratized image-making during the Civil War era, offering life-like portraits for a fraction of the cost of a commissioned painting. It all comes into focus on a flashy new #brattlecast.
Brattlecast #80 - Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend
An antique publicity photograph of ‘Young Ladies’ Baseball Club No. 1’ serves as a jumping off point for our look at the rugged, revolutionary women athletes of the late 1800’s. Decades before A League of Their Own, professional women’s baseball teams, in controversial uniforms and against the prevailing medical advice of the times, played for crowds of thousands. In this episode we celebrate these often overlooked sporting pioneers, and attempt to answer the age old question: is there crying in baseball?
Bonus Brattlecast - Social Distancing in the Brattle’s Basement
Like many of us, Ken is spending some time doing some long-delayed housekeeping and organizing: finding things he’d forgotten he has, and things he thought he’d lost. But, unlike many of us, he’s tidying up a basement in which 40 years of boxes containing possibly rare books have accumulated. We’ll talk about some of the treasures he’s unearthed during his Covid cleanup, and about his hopes for his most frequent customers: now that they’ve been forced to stop shopping for books, maybe they can stay home and read some of the books they already have.
