Guestbook from the Powell family vacation cottage: Museum Object and Cultural History

The object in the museum catalogue

Guestbook from the Powell family vacation cottage. The guestbook has a wood cover, two (2) metal hinges attaching the front cover to the spine, paper sheets on which guests wrote their entries, and a leather cord that holds the paper sheets in place and knots at the back cover. At the upper center of the guestbook cover is a piece of paper adhered to the wood listing "Rules of this Tavern." In the lower right quadrant of the front cover, engraved into the surface, is the cursive text [Guest/ Log]. Inside, the guestbook has twenty-five (25) bound pages and two (2) loose sheets. Guest entries are written by hand throughout the guestbook on all pages, in various colors of ink, including black, blue and green, and in pencil. Guest entries range in date from 1937 to 1975. The final five (5) bound pages have tabs adhered to the right edge, in descending colors of green, white, blue, yellow, and red.

Materials, dates and provenance

• Date: 1930s-1970s
• Manufactured by: Unidentified
• Used by: Isabel Powell, American, 1908 - 2007
• Type: visitors' books
• Medium: wood, paper, metal and leather
• Dimensions: Open (flat): 11 9/16 × 16 1/8 × 1 1/2 in. (29.4 × 41 × 3.8 cm)
• Dimensions: Open (90 degrees): 11 9/16 × 9 1/4 × 8 3/4 in. (29.4 × 23.5 × 22.2 cm)
• Place used: Oak Bluffs, Dukes County, Massachusetts, United States, Martha's Vineyard, North and Central America
• Topic: African American
• Topic: Communities
• Topic: Families
• Topic: Recreation
• Topic: Travel
• Object number: 2014.54.1-.3
• Credit Line: Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Preston Powell and The Isabel Powell Foundation
• Data Source: National Museum of African American History and Culture

Sources and reuse

Catalogue descriptions and facts adapted from National Museum of African American History and Culture through the Smithsonian's official Open Access dataset. This record explicitly marks its metadata CC0 1.0; formatting and selection have been changed. The underlying object's rights statement is: No Known Copyright Restrictions Proper usage is the responsibility of the user.