Prior to the twentieth century, a woman with straight hair who desired curls had to spend hours heating curling irons over a flame or sleep with rags and pins in her hair in order to achieve waves. If she could not attain…
In 1927, Marilyn Färdig’s grandparents, Andrew and Esther Färdig, purchased twenty acres of land in Ephraim, Image courtesy of the Wisconsin Historical Society. Image ID: 79142. Wisconsin, and started a cherry orchard. With the help of their seven children and workers from a variety of locations, including the southern United States, Mexico, and Jamaica, Andrew…
This wool coat was constructed from a ‘point blanket’ made by the Hudson’s Bay Company, likely during the early 1920s. A Wausau businessman wore it at one of the town’s early Winter Frolics, an annual winter sports festival that attracted tourists from as far as Chicago. The businessman belonged to a group of local business…
We are surrounded by objects that seem very ordinary, but once we look closer, they often reveal deep connections to the history of our state and our communities. In this Object History, Pao Vue writes about the thread-bare baby sash he found in his mother’s room that, it turns out, once saved his life and…
This shirt, which features an African kente cloth print, was designed, made and worn in the mid-1990s by Milwaukee's Earlene Fuller, an African American bowler and seamstress.
This bowling shirt costume from the television series Happy Day speaks to Wisconsin's association with bowling. Milwaukee, where the show was set, was known as the bowling capital of America.