When I first saw today’s POTW, I thought - Best jewelry ever, but what is the story here? The photo’s caption covers the bare essentials, but left me opportunities to dig for more.
Miss Charlotte Villanyi [standing in front of several book shelves] tries out necklace, bracelets, and earrings fashioned from some of the thousands of old keys collected by the Brooklyn Public Library in the nationwide campaign sponsored by the Paper and Twine Club.
We see our model festooned with the extravagant jewelry, standing in front of books like Art index and Music index, a clue that she is in the reference section in the Art and Music division of the library. And we learn from an article in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 19, 1944, p.16, that she was head of the Music division at that time.
Although no date was originally on the record, I had a clue as to where these keys were going, and confirmed that with articles in a number of local papers describing a 1942 scrap metal drive to fund the U.S.O. during WWII dubbed the “National Key Kollection Kampaign.” The drive carried the slogan, “There’s fighting metal in your old keys.” Across the country, Victory Key-Kans were placed in public buildings, churches and businesses to gather scrap metal. In this case, the Key-Kan in the library was sponsored by the Paper and Twine Club. This turned out to be a national organization for the paper industry. Its mission can be found on a menu in the collection at NYPL for their 1939 dinner at the Waldorf Astoria.
The purpose of the Club is to wrap in Paper and tie up with Twine mutual friendships, understanding and co-operation with occasional evening opportunities to learn how HUMAN we all are.
A surprisingly heartwarming statement for an industry trade group. Newspaper articles allowed us to tie the campaign to 1942 so we can now date this photo depicting some playful ingenuity in the midst of a world war.
Interested in seeing more photos from the collections? Visit the CBH online image gallery, which includes a selection of our images, or the digital collections portal at Brooklyn Public Library. We look forward to inviting you to CBH in the future to research in our entire collection of images, archives, maps, and special collections. In the meantime, please visit our resources page to search our collections. Questions? Our reference staff is available to help with your research! You can reach us at cbhreference@bklynlibrary.org.
This blog post reflects the opinions of the author and does not necessarily represent the views of Brooklyn Public Library.
Post a Comment
While BPL encourages an open forum, posts and comments are moderated by library staff. BPL reserves the right, within its sole discretion, not to post and to remove submissions or comments that are unlawful or violate this policy. While comments will not be edited by BPL personnel, a comment may be deleted if it violates our comment policy.
eNews Signup
Get the latest updates from BPL and be the first to know about new programs, author talks, exciting events and opportunities to support your local library.