Jon Crispin's Notebook

This suitcase belonged to Maude K.  There seems to be some question as to her surname; on some of the tags it is spelled differently.

Three of her cases are in the collection and I shot all three but for brevity I am only posting this one.

I am starting to edit a bit more tightly for these posts since some of the cases contain a considerable amount of interesting objects.

Maude was clearly involved in crafts of some sort.

Her tools and materials are beautiful.  I would love to know if there is any record of what she produced with them.  And the question again arises as to whether or not she was able to access her case during her time at Willard.

There is definitely more information about her available through the archives, and once I have finished photographing the cases I’ll make every effort to find out more about her.

This score pad indicates that at one time she probably played bridge.  The design of these objects knocks me out.

There was still glycerine in this bottle.

The inks were mostly dried out as the corks in the tops had deteriorated almost completely.

I would be glad to know if anyone recognizes what these items could have been used for.

I liked these tweezers, and believe that the white bit at the top is ivory.

I think this glass paper-weight came from the “World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893” in Chicago.  /  Maude’s cases were really interesting.  I hope to be back in Albany sometime this week to do some more work.  For those of you seeing this for the first time, here is a link to my Kickstarter project.  Thanks, Jon