Binney, Edwin, 1925-1986

The Binney family fortunes began with an English immigrant, Joseph Walker Binney, founder of a chemical plant that specialized in the red oxide pigment used to paint barns. His son Edwin Binney Sr. and a cousin, C. Harold Smith, co-founded Binney & Smith, creating the first dustless white blackboard chalk in 1902 and producing the first box of Crayola crayons in 1903. That portmanteau name combines craie (French for “chalk”) and ola (for “oily/oleaginous”). Ed (as the third-generation Edwin Binney called himself) lost his father a month before he turned four, and his paternal grandfather when he was nine. The boy’s mother and grandmother doted on him, ensured he was widely traveled, and exposed him to the world’s best art. He began his first collection—trolley transfer tickets—in Portland, Oregon, when he was five. At Harvard, he concentrated in French, graduating in 1948 after returning from wartime army service. He stayed on for his doctorate, and in 1965 published his dissertation, Les Ballets de Théophile Gautier, illustrated with prints from his burgeoning collection.

The 1986 bequest of 10,000 dance prints from Edwin Binney, 3rd, ’46, Ph.D. ’61, who became the HTC’s honorary curator of ballet, contributed significantly to its becoming one of the largest and most prominent performing-arts collections in the world.