On Archives Illuminating Archives… and Blogs

Once an archive has been cataloged, the finding aid is released online (and/or in paper) and is an organized guide to helping you find what information you are searching for. The work behind the scenes is lost: questioning the original order (or disorder!) of documents, the process of organization, and identifying the unidentifiable or unique […]

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Archival Fragments and Personal Interests

Edgar Tafel was a man of many interests and not just an architect, a writer, a public speaker, and a community activist. And even though the archive is cohesive as whole, bringing together what one would normally expect of an architectural archive (project records, office files), Tafel’s archive also reflects his many interests, especially in […]

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Miscellanea, Comedy, and Archivists

Archivists tend to swerve away from creating the dreaded ‘Miscellaneous’ folder, but there are usually odds and ends that one finds in an archive that just do not seem to fit. Even more feared is the folder labeled “Miscellaneous” by its own creator! Such was the case in Tafel’s archive, where I found dispersed throughout […]

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Life at Taliesin

During the time when Edgar Tafel was an apprentice to Frank Lloyd Wright, Taliesin was a hub of creativity that accepted students and apprentices with a wide variety of talent in other arts besides architecture. Included in the archive is Tafel’s correspondence around this time to his family and friends, including Robert (Bob) Goodall, a […]

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