More Birch Bark

What is it about these birch bark items in our collections that keeps us blogging them? First, a student blogged our copy of Red Man's Rebuke, then another wrote about our copies of Charles Fletcher Lummis's Birch Bark Poems. So, it is probably a bit redundant to feature our latest acquisition, a playbill for a sacred concert at the Crawford House on September 26th, 1886, in the heart of the White Mountains printed on birch bark. But it is just too cool to resist.

The concert got off to a suitably rustic start with the William Tell Overture, but would any of the other composers dreamed their works would be listed on tree bark? Can't you just picture the concert goers idly fidgeting with the chalky bark playbill during the concert? The temptation to slowly shred it surely overcame many--birch bark just begs to be torn along its grain--but luckily someone had the self restraint to preserve their copy, and it now joins our amazing White Mountains Collection.

It is not cataloged yet, but we will put up a link to the record when it is.