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Baltimore Pride: Highlighting Our LGBTQ+ Collections
June 22nd 2022
June is celebrated nationwide as Pride Month. To celebrate this year’s Pride Month, we showcase some of the LGBTQ+ materials found within the Maryland Center for History and Culture’s Museum and Library collections.
Together Again: Reuniting the Silver Tureens of Judge George Washington Dobbin
December 17th 2021
By Harrison S. Van Waes, Director of CollectionsPost published December 17, 2021 and Updated April 14, 2022 When an individual…
A Tribute to Annie
May 9th 2021
Museum Volunteer Barbara Meger writes about how she was inspired by the expert craftsmanship of quilter Annie G. Dunton (1833-1893).
From Slave to "Self-Taught Genius": Joshua Johnson at the Maryland Center for History and Culture
April 21st 2021
Often considered the first professional African American artist, Joshua Johnson was a freed slave who achieved a remarkable degree of success as a portraitist in his lifetime by painting affluent patrons in his native Baltimore.
Losing Winter: New Participatory Exhibition Opening in July 2021
March 11th 2021
Lynn Cazabon, a Baltimore-based artist and professor, is the artist behind Losing Winter, an upcoming exhibition. Learn more about the participatory art project and sharing memories of winter.
Spinning the Fabric of a Nation: A Nineteenth-Century Spinning Wheel and Early Linen Production in Maryland
November 20th 2020
From getting dressed in the morning to curling up under a cozy blanket, we interact with fabrics every day. But how well do we really understand how those fabrics were made...
Buttons and Badges: Rediscovering the Museum's Political Ephemera Collection
November 5th 2020
In case you have not heard, we just held an election in the United States. Buttons, badges, hats, T-shirts, and…
Quilt Blocks, Drunk Raccoons, and Political Campaigns
July 17th 2020
Baltimore album quilts, a popular quilting style between 1845 and 1855, inherently hold a trove of historical documentation. These quilts…
Hutzler’s Art Deco Medallion
July 9th 2020
Marylanders over the age of forty smile brightly and recall fond memories whenever the name “Hutzler’s” is mentioned. Hutzler Brothers…
Truth is Stranger than Fictional Characters: Dolly Varden in the 1870s
August 30th 2019
During the mid-nineteenth century, people fell in love with Dolly Varden. She became so popular that suddenly anything and everything was named after her, including various types of music, a fish (the Dolly Varden Trout, specifically), a hat, and a style of dress.
If Clothes Could Talk: The Social History of the Tea Gown
August 18th 2019
The tea gown has had many influences and inspirations. While the tea gown is very much a Victorian-era creation and a response to late nineteenth century culture, the tea gown also largely influenced fashion well into the twentieth century.
Exhibiting Costume at the Maryland Historical Society, 1970 and Now
August 17th 2019
In the 1970s, the Maryland Historical Society (MdHS) began a practice of showcasing costume from its Fashion Archives using common exhibition practices for the period. The Fashion Archives includes over 14,000 garments and accessories dating from 1724 to the present. Curatorial staff preserved the legacies of these exhibitions through meticulous…
Forgotten Furs: Collections Care Strategies for Fur Garments in the Maryland Historical Society's Fashion Archives
August 16th 2019
Fur fashions seem to transcend time and space. They have appeared in numerous cultures across the world throughout the last few thousand years for both functional and aesthetic reasons. While the 1980s and 1990s saw a decline in the desire for fur coats that required the inhumane treatment of animals…
Archiving Accessories: How to Mount a Fan for Storage
August 8th 2019
The Maryland Historical Society’s Fashion Archives holds more than dresses and garments. It also contains a multitude of fashionable accessories from hats to shoes, parasols to gloves, fans to stockings, and everything else in between. Fans were often both functional and decorative. Women in the 19th century kept cool on…
Making a Mend: Historic Repair Techniques for Costume
August 2nd 2019
What do you do when your favorite jeans wear out? Or you lose a button on your favorite blouse? Today’s fast fashion practices encourage consumers to replace garments that are torn, faded, or out of style, but in many costumes in the Fashion Archives at MdHS, evidence of repair means…