by Jill Holt, Curator of Textiles

Occasionally, we give behind the scene tours of our museum collection storage areas. The cigar ribbon smoking jacket is one of my favorite artifacts that I like to show visitors on these tours.

During the Victorian era, cigar smoking became a popular pastime for men. Many homes had a private drawing room where men would gather to smoke and visit. Men would don smoking jackets and smoking caps which absorbed the odor of the cigar smoke. During the late 1800s, cigar manufacturers bundled their products in batches of 25 or 50 cigars and tied the bundles with gold silk ribbons on which were printed the manufacturers’ names. Women who did fancy work and quilting found a purpose for these silk ribbons and created quilts, table runners, and smoking jackets from them.

The quilted smoking jacket in our collection is made from gold, yellow, and orange silk ribbons and features a shawl collar. We have several examples of the loose silk cigar ribbons in our collection as well. The vibrant colors of luxurious silk ribbons are transformed into an unusual and outstanding article of clothing, making it one of my personal favorites.

by Brian Basore, Chief Library Technician

Oklahoma is a new enough state that history and family research are still pretty much the same thing, which is why so much of the Research Division’s work has been genealogical for almost 80 years. People who are looking for their family’s past want to find, among other kinds of things, death records. Information about deaths in Oklahoma before 1930 can be difficult to find. I don’t understand why any of the Oklahoma City city directories have death listings in them, but some do. (more…)

by Jill Holt, Curator of Textiles

When making the decision to accept an artifact for donation, several criteria are applied including condition, relevance, and provenance; the history of an object’s ownership. Each object that is accepted into the collection is assigned an accession number that records the object in order of acquisition. As I inventory the textile collection, I am sometimes faced with the need to deaccession, or dispose of, an artifact that is in poor condition or lacks any provenance. (more…)

by Angela Hoofard

OHS is happy to introduce our new and improved newspaper catalog. The catalog is an index of our extensive newspaper collection, which dates from 1828 through the present. Consisting of close to 4,000 titles on approximately 31,000 reels of microfilm, the collection is the largest of its kind in Oklahoma. (more…)