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ACQUISITIONS
The Historic New Orleans Collection encourages research in the Williams Research Center at 410 Chartres Street from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday (except holidays). Cataloged materials available to researchers include books, manuscripts, paintings, prints, drawings, maps, photographs, and artifacts about the history and culture of New Orleans, Louisiana, and the Gulf South. Each year The Collection adds thousands of items to its holdings. Though only selected gifts are mentioned here, the importance of all gifts cannot be overstated. Prospective donors are invited to contact the authors of the acquisitions columns.
Curatorial
For the third quarter of 2011 (July-September), there were 37 acquisitions, totaling approximately 8000 items.
I The Collection acquired a set of six sterling silver mint julep cups manufactured between 1964 and 1967 by the William Spratling Company. Although the company was located in Taxco de Alarcon, Mexico, its founder, William Spratling (1900-1967), had an important earlier connection with New Orleans. Born in Sonyea, New York, raised near Auburn, Alabama, and trained in architecture at the Alabama Polytechnic Institute (now Auburn University), he moved to New Orleans in 1921 as an instructor at Tulane University’s School of Architecture. He shared an apartment with writer William Faulkner at 625 Pirate’s Alley, and together in 1926 they published Sherwood Anderson and Other Famous Creoles, a satire of Bohemian life in the French Quarter illustrated with caricatures drawn by Spratling. Beginning in 1926 Spratling started teaching summer classes in Mexico City and in
Mint julep cups by the William Spratling Company, between 1964 and 1967 (2011.0279.1-6)
1929 settled in Taxco. Though the town had silver mining, it lacked silver manufacturing. Spratling began to design silver pieces based on pre-Columbian patterns, employing local goldsmiths to manufacture them from locally mined silver. He opened his silverworks in 1931, adding an apprenticeship program and expanding the business as his work gained a following.
Spratling later moved his studio to a ranch at nearby Taxco el Viejo, and over the years a number of old friends and colleagues from New Orleans visited him there. By the 1940s Spratling’s silver was being marketed throughout Mexico and the United States. His success prompted the US Department of the Interior to launch an exchange program between Spratling’s Mexican studio and Alaska, hoping to establish a similar manufacturing endeavor there, but the project was not, in the end, fruitful. Spratling was killed in an automobile accident near his home in Taxco on August 7, 1967. (2011.0279.1-6)
H A recently obtained collection of 13 35mm black-and-white photographic negatives and 16 prints by an unknown photographer—probably a visitor to New Orleans—presents an appealing glimpse of the Crescent City, and especially the French Quarter, in 1939. Though the negatives and prints are undated, visual clues reveal the year of their creation: a year on an automobile license plate in one image, and an advertising poster for the film Gunga Din, which opened in New Orleans on February 5, 1939.
The five French Quarter images document the neighborhood when much of it was in a dilapidated condition. One view of the 500 block of Chartres Street shows a portion of the Dufilho House, which Mayor Robert S. Maestri purchased in 1937 and donated to the city with the stipulation that it be used as a museum. The site today houses the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum. Another view, in marked contrast with today’s gentrified and touristy French Quarter, shows a rundown counvard with chickens scratching about on the ground. Ironwork galleries are visible in an image of Royal Street near its intersection with Governor Nich-olls; the galleries remain today, but the Desire streetcar, seen in the distance, is now only a memory. A view of Chartres Street in front of the C't" " * and St. Louis Cathedral recalls a dine rrhen
500 block of Chartres Street i top - sttd /100 Uodt of
Royal Street (bottom), 1939 (2011.0180)
automobiles were still allowed to drive and park around Jackson Square. Other sites depicted in the collection include City Park and St. Vincent de Paul Cemetery, where an unidentified woman stands in front of one of the wall vaults.
16 Volume XXIX, Number 1 — Winter 2012