Highlights from the Department of Horticultural Science lantern slides and glass plate negatives

NC State University Libraries' Special Collections Research Center would like to share lantern slides and glass plate negatives from the Department of Horticultural Science Records, which we have digitized and are available on our Digital Collections' Rare and Unique Materials website. These are amazing images dating from the 1900s to the 1950s, featuring primarily scenes of planting, harvesting, and shipping fruits and vegetables, but also landscapes children at play, and more. Eye-catching are the hand-colored ones, intricately and vibrantly painted. We previously posted when these images were digitized and published online, but we're going to talk more about their history and show highlights from the collection.

They were scanned as transparencies, caring for the fragile glass items.

Some came to us damaged, but digitizing preserves them and makes them easily available.

While early methods of photography were almost entirely in black-and-white, there are also photographs that appear in color. Some of the Horticultural Science slides are examples of hand-colored lanterns, individually painted to be projected with a lightened lantern. They were hand-colored by Effie Brown Earll Slingerland, an artist and advocate for women's suffrage.

Some were photographed by Effie Singlerland's husband, M. V. Slingerland. He was an economic entomologist, known for his research publications and the identification of fruit pests. He would use his photos and illustrations to feature in his writings.

Here are some other highlights from the collection.

Please visit our website for more of these incredible lantern slides and glass plate negatives, you'll find even more gems from the collection.

If you would like to learn more about the Special Collection Research Center and our over 150,000 resources of digitized materials, please visit the Rare and Unique Digital Collections for access to images, video, audio recordings, and textual materials. You can also visit Historical State for a timeline of the history of NC State, and explore our collection guides.

If you have questions about our collections or would like to view Special Collections materials in person, please contact us at library_specialcollections@ncsu.edu or submit a request online. Using our collections is by appointment only. Appointments are available Monday-Friday, 9am-6pm, and Saturday, 1pm-5pm. Requests for a Saturday appointment must be received no later than Tuesday of the same week.