Dartmouth's Wunderkammer

1. Two Oil Lamps, Date Unknown

Hand oil lamps were some of the most common items of everyday life from ancient times through the medieval period, particularly in the Mediterranean and Mideast, where plant-based oils were in abundance. Handheld lamps were used in a variety of circumstances, including both household and ritualistic settings. They were often made of stone, clay, shell, glass or metal. Clay lamps were the most common and often included a simple decorative motif; while metal oil lamps may have been cast in more intricate molds. Metal lamps, such as those made of bronze, were almost always used as a status symbol due to the expense of the material.

The provenance of the two lamps here remains unknown, though their shapes, materials, and decorations are suggestive of the Byzantine or early Islamic periods. If replicas, however they were likely picked up by a traveler on a “Grand Tour” in a bazaar in Eastern Europe or the Middle East. One lamp is made of clay and is decorated with a simple linear pattern around the circumference of the lamp, and the other is cast in bronze in the shape of a bull’s head and has a small ring for fingers. Each lamp has two holes, one for a fibrous wick and the other for the reservoir of oil.

2. Black Arm Band Worn by Faculty to Protest 16th Street Church Bombings and George Wallace’s Visit to Dartmouth, 1963

Alabama Governor and vocal segregationist George Wallace gave a speech at Dartmouth in 1963, entitled “Brown Vs. School Board and the Law of the Land,” in which he attempted to show that the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 was “based on false testimony.” Twenty faculty members as well as numerous students protested Governor Wallace’s presence on campus that year. A second visit by Wallace, in 1967, drew much larger protests by students and brought the college into the national spotlight. Wallace’s 1967 speech in Webster Hall (now Rauner Library) was interrupted several times by student protests; then, while departing campus, Wallace’s car was encircled by hundreds of students.

3. Fraisse’s Ferruginois Ampoules, c.1920s

An advertisement from the 1920s describes Fraisse’s Ferruginous as used “to repair, tone up, and activate the nervous system.” An intramuscular injection manufactured in Paris, it was prescribed to treat anemia and neurasthenia, a common diagnosis for the symptoms of fatigue, headache, and irritability thought to be brought on by the experience of modern industrialized life.

Interestingly, Fraisse’s Ferruginous Ampoules, are also described in Samuel Beckett’s first published work of fiction, More Pricks than Kicks (1934)—a collection of short stories centered on the misfortunes of Belacqua Shua, a character who would reappear throughout Beckett’s writing. Describing the eventual deterioration of Belacqua’s body and mind in the book’s final story, Beckett writes:

“A little sealed cardboard box lying on the mantelpiece caught his eye. He read the inscription: Fraisse’s Ferruginous Ampoules for the Intensive Treatment of Anaemia by Intramuscular Squirtation. Registered trademark – Mozart. The little Hexenmeiseter of Don Giovanni, now in his narrow cell forever mislaid, dragged into bloodlessness!” (Samuel Beckett, More Pricks Than Kicks, p. 184).

4. John G. Kemeny’s Vanity License Plate - “Basic”, c. 1964 – 1992

John Kemeny, a Dartmouth mathematics professor and the College’s thirteenth president, was a central figure in the history of computing. In 1964, in the basement of Dartmouth Hall, Kemeny, along with fellow math professor Thomas Kurtz and a group of undergraduate students, built a time-sharing system to open computer access to everyone at Dartmouth. They also simultaneously developed a new programming language: Beginner’s All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, or BASIC. BASIC was designed to be easy to learn and applicable on any computer, and made the practice of computer programming broadly accessible for the first time. Well before such notions would become commonplace, BASIC’s inventors envisioned a Dartmouth in which “every student on campus should have access to a computer, and any faculty member should be able to use a computer in the classroom.” By the 1970s and 1980s BASIC would be found on nearly all minicomputers. While it may no longer be the programming language of choice, the creation of Kemeny and his collaborators played an essential role in the development of modern computing.

5. Polar Exploration Cigarette Cards, c. 1915

Cigarette cards—souvenir trading cards issued by tobacco companies—were devised initially to stiffen packs of cigarettes. Printed in runs of twenty-five or fifty, they often featured figures from popular culture: actors, pin-ups, athletes, military figures, and business men. The two series on display here were produced by Player’s, a British tobacco company started in the nineteenth century, and commemorate European Polar expeditions. The images on view are titled “How Icebergs are Formed” (left) and “An Adélie Penguin and his Mate” (right). A short description and anecdote related to the image on the card is found on the back. About the Adélie Penguin, for example, the anecdote reads: “The little birds waddle and run in a ludicrous fashion, and their hoarse squawk of surprise at seeing a man cause the members of the expedition unbounded amusement.” While these cigarette cards are representative of popular early twentieth-century ephemera, their subject of Polar exploration also fits into an important collecting area for Dartmouth Library.

1. Two Snuff Boxes with Portraits of Daniel Webster, c. 1800 - 1899

Snuff boxes typically contained pulverized tobacco that could be inhaled and were often produced to commemorate special occasions. While many were luxury goods made of expensive materials such as precious metals, gemstones, and pearls, other boxes were made of cheaper and more widely accessible materials, such as potato pulp. In the nineteenth century, circular snuff boxes made of papier-mâché, such as the two here, were very much in vogue.

The same rendering of the antebellum politician and notable Dartmouth alumnus, Daniel Webster can be seen on both boxes here and both are made with wood, papier-mâché, and lacquer. The fact that the Library has two snuff boxes with Webster’s image not only speaks to the popularity of snuff, but perhaps more importantly to the cult of personality that surrounded the senator. During the nineteenth century, Webster’s image could be found on any number of commercial goods well into the twentieth century—from snuff boxes to cigars and even on bags of flour.

2. Webster Golden Wedding Special Selection Cigars, c. 1950

3. Free Nelson Mandela pin – African National Congress, c. 1970 - 1985

In 1964, after several previous arrests, Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life in prison for sabotage and conspiracy to overthrow the ruling apartheid government in South Africa. He would not be released until 1990. From the late 1970s through the 1980s, the anti-apartheid and divestment movements gained significant traction on college campuses across the United Sates. In 1985, a student group known as Dartmouth Community for Divestment (DCD) built a shantytown on the Green to protest the College’s investment in corporations doing business with South Africa. Protestors famously clashed on the Green with students aligned with The Dartmouth Review, who argued that the shantytown was an illegal encampment. In the end, however, the protestors were successful: Dartmouth moved to divest from South Africa in 1989.

4. Eleazar Wheelock’s Conch Shell, c. 1769 - 1799

The conch shell was an iconic object in the early history of Dartmouth. As the story goes, Eleazar Wheelock, founder of Dartmouth College, did not have the funds to purchase a bell for the early campus, and so used his shell as a horn to call students to meetings, prayers, and recitations. In later years this job fell to freshmen or American Indian students. A nineteenth century college song written by E.E. Parker (class of 1869) and Addison Andrews (class of 1878) recounts this distinctly Dartmouth tradition: “It called the students from their play, to work, to prayers, with potent spell; Ill fared he who dared to disobey the summons of the Old Conch shell.”

5. Mourning Ring Belonging to Sarah Olcott Duncan, 1845

The practice of wearing mourning rings in memory of the dead dates back as early as the fourteenth century, and persisted to varying degrees into the twentieth century. The ring here belonged to Sarah Olcott Duncan the daughter of Mills Olcott, a Dartmouth alumnus (class of 1790), long-standing member of the College’s Board of Trustees, and prominent Hanover lawyer. The ring commemorates Olcott’s death with the inscription: “Mills Olcott July 11, 1845 Æ 71 Years.” The orange agate at the ring’s center, which is engraved with Sarah’s initials, is on hinges and can be flipped around to display several locks of the deceased’s hair. The personal significance of this object to Olcott Duncan is self-evident; at the same time, the ring also offers a particularly intimate window into the mourning customs of an earlier period.