Christmas postcard illustrating Santa Claus driving a car filled with toys.

Whatever you're celebrating (or not celebrating) this week, here's to making it a safe one spent with the ones you love. Drive safe, everyone!

This 1907 postcard from the Robbins Bros. Co. of Boston, Massachusetts is part of Hagley Library's Waldron collection of Christmas and holiday postcards (Accession 2000.223).

This collection of over 500 items was donated to the Hagley Library in 1973 by Maxine Maxson Waldron (1898-1982), an artist and educator once employed by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in its department of education, by various private schools as an art teacher, and as a ceramics specialist at the Greenwich House Pottery Shop. After her marriage to William R. Waldron, an employee at Du Pont's Chambers Works, she pursued her interests in art, fashion, and interior decoration through her activities as a collector.

You can view digitized images from this collection by visiting its page in our Digital Archive.

Black and white photograph from inside a Bethlehem Steel factory, showing workers and large industrial shearing equipment.

Here's a photograph from one of the Hagley Digital Archives' newer collections; this image, captured in August of 1921, shows workers operating guillotine shears at the Midvale Steel and Ordnance Company's Coatsville Works.

The photograph was taken by George A. Richardson (1886-1976), who was an engineer with an expertise in metallurgy and a career in technical publicity and sales for major steel manufacturers. He began his career in 1913 in the sales department at the Midvale Steel & Ordnance Company, which acquired the Cambria Steel Company in 1916 and was, in turn, acquired by the Bethlehem Steel Company in 1923.

Richardson was also an early amateur photographer who used his work to illustrate his lectures and publications on the steel industry. This collection of photographs and negatives was primarily taken by Richardson while working for Midvale Steel and Ordnance Company and the Bethlehem Steel Corporation. 

Join us for the Eighth Annual Hagley 5K/1K run/walk along the Brandywine River through the beautiful grounds of Hagley Museum.

Hagley's 5K along the Brandywine - Registration fee is $30 through March 22, $40 beginning March 23.

Hagley's 1K Family Fun Run - Registration is $20.

Corporate and community teams are encouraged.

Photograph of a store window displaying DuPont winter car products.

Staying warm today might be off the table, but maybe you can at least stay safe this winter. This December 1978 photograph from Hagley Library's Charles H. DeMirjian collection of DuPont Consumer Products Division photographs and ephemera (Accession 1995.273) features a store display window showcasing DuPont's line of winter care car products.

The collection was assembled by Charles H. DeMirjian (1925-) during his years as a packaging design manager with E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company. He was primarily a manager of designers, and supervised an integrated approach that combined marketing research, advertising and package design.

DeMirjian collected pictures, advertisements, and publications showing DuPont consumer products, as well as some of the products and packages themselves, usually for presentation to dealers and retailers to demonstrate how packaging and merchandise display techniques could efficiently promote the products.

Fashion photograph of a woman in a ski parka.

Brrrrr!!!! The staff of Hagley Library are returning from our long holiday weekend to find that December is greeting us with a chilly Monday. This weather calls for a warm coat, perhaps even a ski parka by Ernst Engel in RSL Everglaze sasheen cotton like the one being modeled by Miss America pageant winner Nancy Anne Fleming in this 1961 photograph.

This photograph is part of our Joseph Bancroft & Sons Co. Miss America photographs (Accession 1972.430) collection. The company, incorporated in 1889, manufactured, bleached, dyed, and finished a variety cotton-made goods. After World War I, it added synthetics to its production, and these included rayon and nylon fabrics.

In 1929, the Bancroft Company merged with the Eddystone Manufacturing Company and soon after, it began producing a line of rayon goods and a cotton finishing process that were marketed under the trade names of "Ban-Lon" and "Everglaze" respectively.

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