Just a hobby...

January 25, 2021 • cardillo

by David Cardillo, DDNP staff

January is National Hobby Month!  Hobbies can range from collecting, performing non-professionally, playing sports non-professionally, reading, writing, gaming, ceramics, and so on.

The April 13, 1918 edition of the Evening Journal tells of Selden S. Deemer, owner and head of the Deemer Steel Casting Company.  While bordering more on a tradition, Mr. Deemer had the hobby of an annual Christmas party of some sort for disabled children of the area.  This seems to be borne out of both a desire to entertain as well as a memorial to his own daughter, who had died suddenly as a child.

Evening journal. [volume] (Wilmington, Del.), 13 April 1918. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.

The March 23, 1905 edition of the Evening Journal had a short snippet about Julia Marlowe’s hobby of the art of book binding and, presumably, book collecting.

Evening journal. [volume] (Wilmington, Del.), 23 March 1905. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.

It’s a shame, at least to bibliophiles, that the Evening Journal did not have a picture of Miss Marlowe’s collection or mention where she learned bookbinding.  To that end, I would like to acknowledge our institution’s own conservator, Susan Maguire, who has deftly repaired and rebound books, some of which are hundreds of years old.  The techniques and skill applied are as much art as they are conservatory science, and for a young woman over 100 years ago to have had such a noteworthy hobby is fascinating indeed.