CLARA (GOLDBERG) SCHIFFER

Clara (Goldberg) Schiffer (A.B. Radcliffe, 1932 and M.A. George Washington University, 1939) was a health program analyst for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and was concerned with occupational and environmental health and disease prevention. Earlier she had worked her way through college and spent summers working in factories and thus developed an interest in the history of women and work. Over the years, CGS assembled a large collection of prints culled from the 19th century pictorial press, which provided compelling documentation of women's labor history.

The era of pictorial journalism began with the publication of the London Illustrated News in England (1842) and Gleason's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion (1851) in the United States. In the United States a brilliant group of wood-engravers were employed by magazines to translate artists' sketches (by Winslow Homer et al.) into engravings on blocks of boxwood. For large illustrations, composite blocks were put together and then electrotypes capable of withstanding thousands of printings were produced from the blocks. The whole industry disappeared in the 1880s with the introduction of photomechanically produced blocks.

From the guide to the Collection, 1839, 1851-1890, 1994, (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute)