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Kenneth Bates may be the king of enamels

He’s not an official symbol of Valentine’s Day, but it seems like the right time to have the King of Hearts make an appearance. This King of Hearts enamel was made in 1946 by Kenneth Bates, who may as well be called the king of enamels. Bates was born in Massachusetts in 1904 and developed a love of art and crafts as a child. He attended the Massachusetts School of Art from 1922 to 1926, where he studied painting and had his first exposure to enamels. In 1927, he traveled to Cleveland to teach design at the Cleveland School of Art. He realized that there were already many artists ...

Planning for our library’s future

New Ulm Public Library has completed our 2024-2028 Strategic Plan and we’re excited to share our vision for the library’s future! We began the strategic planning process in fall 2022. An eight-member committee of representatives from the library staff, New Ulm Public Library Board, and the New Ulm community met monthly from October 2022-December 2023. Public input was received through three open-ended questions displayed in the library, online, and in print. In addition, the committee shared information regarding the ongoing process online and in the local media. The entire library ...

Desirable glass made by the Boston & Sandwich company

Amethyst, a variety of quartz with a vivid purple color, is the birthstone for February. It’s also a highly sought color for decorative glass. Colored glass is made by adding metallic oxides or salts to the raw material. Amethyst glass often gets its color from manganese, which along with iron, also gives the natural gemstone its color. Colored glass has been made since ancient times, but, in the United States, it experienced a surge in popularity in the mid-19th century, when lime became a substitute for lead in glassmaking. This tulip-shaped amethyst glass vase was made between ...

New year, new books!

I hope you had a very Happy New Year! Here are some great new books in the children’s room. Is This Winter? by Helen Yoon is a story about an adorable puppy’s first walk in the winter snow. The excitement builds as the puppy encounters things along the way. He scares a squirrel and flattens a snowman with his exuberance. But when he encounters his first Christmas decorations in a yard he becomes very confused as to what winter really means to the humans around him. I was really excited to find the picture book, Books Make Good Friends by Jane Mount. I was a shy child and felt ...

Snail shells have captured artists’ minds for years

Snails have a lot of negative associations. Their slow movement makes them a symbol of laziness and inefficiency. They are garden pests, eating plants and oozing slime. And yet they often appear in decorative arts, like this miniature brass figure that sold for $51 at an auction by The Benefit Shop Foundations. Its shell is decorated with colorful glass “jewels,” a popular adornment on brass in the Victorian era. The beauty and geometry of snail shells has captured artists’ minds for thousands of years. The image of the “lazy” snail is often reinterpreted to have themes of ...

Cutting through the noise of media voices

When the world wide web of the internet was beginning to expand in the mid-1990s, many people grasped onto the idea of how it could be used to spread information and misinformation as the case could be. Remember email chain letters? Just forward it to 10 people to get your wish! Or perhaps someone shared with you an urban legend once spread only in gossip columns but now able to spread even faster. Just look up the origins of eating spiders in your sleep or the Pacific Tree Octopus. Things like these are still around by constantly reinventing the method of their delivery even though the ...