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Archive of all 587 Posts

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Bug Story: The Secret of Pre-Modern Colors

Posted by: Neely Tucker

Pre-modern artists used almost anything to create vibrant colors for art and fabrics: bug guts, squid bones, shredded wood, hardened tree sap, walnut rinds, lye, tannic acid, iron sulfate, wine and, um, urine. Today, the Library’s Preservation Research and Testing Division is now recreating those colors the old-fashioned way as part of a newly developing field of preservation science.

Posted in: Preservation and Conservation

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Perry in Edo Bay: The Dawn of the U.S.-Japanese Relationship

Posted by: Neely Tucker

The Library of Congress recently acquired one of the most famous Black Ship scrolls -- "Kinkai kikan" ("Strange View off the Coast of Kanagawa") by Otsuki Bankei, a Japanese artist and scholar -- that depicts the arrival of U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry and his fleet of steamships in Edo Bay in 1854. The gunboat diplomacy established American relations with Japan.

Posted in: Asian American History, History

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Fresh Life (Online) for the epic Shahnamah

Posted by: Neely Tucker

The LIbrary's Rare Persian Manuscript Collection is now online after a four-year digitization project, anchored by three gorgeous manuscript copies of The Shahnamah, or the Persian Book of Kings, a 1,000-year-old epic that is the foundation for the modern language.

Posted in: Events, Manuscripts