Was the 19th century really as dull and drab as the era’s prints and photos might suggest? Far from it! While we might picture early America in black and white, that’s because photographs obscure garish fabric colors, busy wallpaper patterns, and rainbow-hued books. To help you see beyond the gray and sepia tones of the era, Outreach Assistant Sam Huck sat down with Jayne Ptolemy, our Associate Curator of Manuscripts and the main curator of the exhibit, More than Gray: Reimagining Early America in Full Color, for a Q&A. Be sure to check out the exhibit between January 10 and April 4 during our public exhibit hours.
Charles Wesley Howorth, [Studio portrait of a woman in a patterned dress], cabinet card. Edmore, Mich., [ca. 1880-1890]. David V. Tinder Collection of Michigan Photography.
Sam Huck (SH): Could you tell me about the exhibit and its purpose?
Jayne Ptolemy (JP): Growing up, I always thought history was the worst. It was dry, I stunk at memorizing dates, and it felt so irrelevant to my life. The moment I finally fell in love with studying the past was when I realized that at its heart, history was just about people’s stories, which could mean all kinds of foibles and quirks, messiness and joy. This exhibit is meant to nudge us away from those initial assumptions that early America was unsmiling and dull. Through colorful examples, we’re looking to show the vibrancy and personality that’s been there all along but was perhaps muted behind black-and-white photos or textbooks that didn’t spark the imagination.
SH: How were the items in the exhibit chosen/grouped for the exhibit?
JP: Clements’ collections are so colorful that there could be any number of ways to group these materials. We decided that half of the exhibit would pair black-and-white images with physical objects from the collection to show the kinds of colors that might have been present. These cases remind us that there’s often more than meets the eye, and urge us to hold more colorful possibilities in mind when we imagine early America. The exhibit then moves to a more tongue-in-cheek case study which spotlights something many folks might imagine to be very serious and staid—finance and business—and shows that even that had its colorful side. The final case is an opportunity to end with a riot of color, showing the literal rainbow of book bindings you might encounter in the library. We end with this moment of excess intentionally, to be an expression of vibrant joy and an invitation to be excited and joyful about all that you might uncover in the collection.
SH: If a picture’s worth a thousand words, how do you think that “adding” color back to these images and to this era changes how exhibitgoers perceive early America?
JP: There is something quite alienating about a formal black-and-white portrait which makes it easy to distance ourselves from the past or fail to remember that the figures represented were themselves complicated people. By showing how bright the clothing, backgrounds, and items in these images just might have been, the hope is to disrupt that initial impression to allow us to consider how the world was experienced in all its color rather than just how it appears in photographic gray tones. This exhibit encourages us to hold more space for possibilities and pause to wonder what things could have been.
SH: What was your favorite part of designing this exhibit/favorite piece in the exhibit?
JP: I frequently tell students visiting the Clements that the library’s staff are as much a resource for them as the collections are, and the process of pulling this exhibit together underscored that sentiment. I have been drawn to the daguerreotype of the family posing before a richly patterned wallpaper for years, and I knew I wanted to pair that with a sample of actual wallpaper to help us better understand just what it could have looked like. I pulled an example to demonstrate what I was thinking. Our Curator of Books, Emi Hastings, then pointed me to the exquisitely vibrant sample we ended up featuring. Tapping into the collective knowledge of the experts who work here helps you hone in on just the right thing.
SH: Were there any items that really interested you, but didn’t make the final cut?
JP: So many. The Clements’ collections are so rich that there were so many examples we could have pulled. And the collection continues to grow! In the past few months alone, a few beauties have come in that made me wish we could squeeze them into the exhibit. We recently acquired a beautiful advertisement for an optician that is printed in a bright rainbow gradient, and I’m just dying to see it in conversation with our other eye-popping business ephemera. I also just recently processed a scrapbook made by an unidentified artist who repurposed a plain city directory to create exquisite and colorful household scenes. Neon pink and orange backgrounds with snipped images of furniture pasted on them make for a stunning window into just how colorful people imagined the world around them. I hope that in the months to come, I can work with our wonderful digitization team to scan some of these items and expand the online exhibit.
[Portrait of family group with patterned wallpaper], tinted ambrotype with gilt highlights, [ca. 1860].
SH: Why did you decide against trying to colorize some of the black-and-white images currently in the collection?
JP: As much as we want people to imagine what the world might have looked like in color, we want to be faithful to what the records themselves are saying. Most of the time we don’t know what color someone’s dress actually was, and there’s a line between possibility and projection that we don’t want to cross. Instead, we present items that speak to a potential palate that can help us better understand the world of color early Americans inhabited without imposing a choice on real people that they might not have ever made. It’s one of the beautiful challenges of working with history—how can you think creatively and expansively while still maintaining fidelity to the known facts?
More than Gray: Reimagining Early America in Full Color is open now for in-person viewing! Stop by the library any weekday from 12-4pm before April 4, 2025 to explore the materials or view the linked online exhibit anytime.