Thursday, February 11, 2010

One project that Kallie is working on is cleaning a collection of busts. After Caitlin tested a couple different treatment methods she settled on using a mixture of water and photo flo roughly a 4:1 ratio. Kallie has been using swabs and cotton pads to remove the mud covering the busts. This process is particularly time consuming due to all the small crevices in the sculptures. There are 7 busts and Kallie has completed one and is halfway finished with a second.

The busts were a part of The Old Taylor Distillery Company bourbon whisky promotion. For $5 you could buy a sculptured bust of an ingenious American. They belonged to Mrs. Gerolyn Banks, a teacher who used them as instructional tools in her classroom (incidentally, she didn’t drink alcohol). Kallie is working on Lewis Latimer who worked with Thomas Edison and developed an improved method for the production of carbon filaments in Edison’s light bulb. The ad for this particular bust can be found in Ebony, July 1967.

Other busts in the series include: Granville T. Woods who improved telegraph system for railroads; Garrett Morgan who invented the electric traffic signal; Benjamin Banneker was an astronomer, clockmaker, and surveyor who predicted eclipses; Norbert Rillieux improved sugar refining process; and Matthew Alexander Henson reached the North Pole with Admiral Peary in 1909. He was actually the first member of the team to set foot on the spot.

Monday, January 4, 2010

One of our quandaries was how to clean Vernon Smith’s typewriter, an important artifact from the African American Museum. We found our answer when we contacted Vernon Steve at Steve’s Business Machines (formerly Steve’s Typewriter) in Iowa City. Vern cleaned and repaired the typewriter but did not repaint it. The typewriter shows the wear and tear of the flood but is clean and fully functional.

Vern inherited the business from his father. He not only repairs typewriters but also repairs cash registers, old calculating machines, time-clocks, etc. In fact, after seeing the results of the typewriter cleaning, we left a flood-damaged sweeper for repair.

Vernon Smith courtesy of the African American Museum of Iowa

The typewriter was a college graduation gift from Elmer Sr and Vesta Smith to their son, Vernon. He graduated from Coe College circa 1950. He used this typewriter to type up his master’s thesis at the University of Iowa. He received a master’s in Chemistry from the U of I in 1952. Before receiving his master’s he had accepted a position as a chemistry instructor at an African American college in Virginia. 10 days after receiving his master’s while he was packing to move to Virginia, he contracted polio and lost the use of both of his legs and one of his arms.

He spent 4 years recovering from polio and then found a job in the special laboratory at St. Luke’s Hospital in Cedar Rapids. He worked there for 35 years retiring as head of the lab. He was very active in community affairs in Cedar Rapids, particularly in Civil Rights issues. He co-founded the Cedar Rapids Negro Civic Organization in 1961 and served on its scholarship committee throughout the 1960s. In addition, he served as a member of the Cedar Rapids N.A.A.C.P. and the Cedar Rapids Council on Human Relations. In 1971, he was named “Handicapped Iowan of the Year”. He married Phoebe Downs and raised five children: Ruby, Vernon, Deborah, Phoebe, and Katharine. He passed away in 2000. More at: http://www.blackiowa.org/exhibits/finding_guides/SmithVernonPhoebe.doc