Pieces of the Past

We launched the Everything Has a History feature in September to showcase short essays, each about a specific physical item. Since then, historians have written about pieces of the past ranging from bullfrogs to porcelain pigments, espresso machines, and a ship. Dina Kalman Spoerl’s entry in the series, about a clothing scrapbook in the collections of the Naperville Heritage Society, is a fitting conclusion to the first year. She describes a scrapbook that blends fabric scraps and annotations, observing that the creator had a “historian’s desire to get everything recorded that she could recall.” This series has highlighted how, truly, everything has a history..”

Photo courtesy of Naperville Heritage Society

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Perspectives on History May 2021 Cover

Staff

Ashley E. Bowen, editor
Laura Ansley, managing editor
Karen Lou, editorial assistant
Alexandra F. Levy, web and social media coordinator
Liz Townsend, manager, data administration and integrity