Page 79 - The Hunt - Winter 2023/24

Sincerely Yours
Collecting famous autographs remains a quest for both young and old.
Alifelong resident of Bryn Mawr, Marian S. Carson spent much of iher time collecting autographs
of famous people. It’s a hobby she pursued almost until she died in 2004. Today, a small portion of what she amassed—mainly letters written by artists in the 1800s—is housed in two large boxes at Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library in Delaware.
One day recently, library director Rebecca Parmer opened one of those boxes in the reading room and selected a dog-eared letter.
By Roger Morris
It was written in 1853 on light blue paper by Frederic E. Church while the artist was traveling in South America. You may have seen one of his more well-known paintings, “Pichincha,” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. “Paper was expensive then, and Church would sometimes write to more than one person in the same letter,” Parmer says, turning the pages gently.
“No white gloves?” I ask, as Parmer gingerly replaces the letter.
“No, it’s easier to handle documents not
wearing gloves,” she says, noting a change from earlier protocols.
Altogether, there are 256 signed pieces
in the Carson collection. It’s but a small
part of Winterthur’s storehouse of about
1.5 million documents and ephemera. It also represents just a portion of Carson’s lifetime hobby. Her contribution to the Library
of Congress contains more than 10,000 documents, mostly signed, from once-famous people dating from 1656 to 1995. Unlike many autograph and document collectors
VINTAGE
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