Promotional toys have been a popular form of advertising for a long time. The doll pictured here is Bandy, an advertising mascot created for General Electric in the 1920s. General Electric had many other advertising toys, including the Hotpoint doll and a circus set. Bandy promoted their ...

The Daum glass factory of Nancy, France, is famous for its cameo glass, but that isn’t the only kind it made. When Jean Daum founded the factory in 1875, he made cut and enameled glass. His sons Auguste and Antonin started an art glass department in 1885, adapting to the art glass movement ...

Did you know that sharing a wordless picture book can be a powerful way to build important literacy skills? Wordless picture books are books without text that rely solely on the pictures to convey the story. They are often dismissed as being too easy for any age reader. But they are outstanding ...

If you’re familiar with 19th-century ceramics, you probably know about ironstone. It was first made by English potter Miles Mason, who sold Chinese export porcelain and decided to make his own replacements for broken dishes. To make these replacements, he created a ceramic using slag from ...

I love a good story! The question that each of us must ask, however, is what makes a story good? Your mind might hark back to lessons in grammar and writing to come up with answers like flowing dialogue, relatable characters, character growth, conflict, an easy to follow structure, and so on. ...

For many of us receiving paper valentines may be the stuff of school days -- a piece of the past. The tradition goes back much further, of course, and wasn’t always just for kids. The first commercial valentines in America were made by Esther Howland in Massachusetts in 1850. They were made ...