Painted silk banner with linen backing and embroidered fringe created for the Brotherhood Railway Carmen of America, Minnehaha Lodge, between 1920 and 1930. The B.R.C. of A.’s Minnehaha Lodge was founded during World War I by Carl Skoglund, a mechanic at the Pullman rail yard in Minneapolis and a leading figure of the Socialist Worker party.

For details, view the banner in our online collections database.

One of the strengths of the Minnesota State Archives collection is its records set documenting St. Paul public schools; virtually every elementary, junior high, and senior high school in the city is represented. This 1920s-era photograph of the Bryant Elementary School Kitchen Kabinet Orchestra (K.K.O) depicts the group’s members posed with their instruments, all of which were fashioned from kitchen utensils.

Two boy scouts pose in front of stacks of bundled papers.  The sign they hold reads, “8960 election signs etc. removed from trees, poles, buildings on Minneapolis public property and boulevards by Boy Scouts.”  Photographed by Lee Brothers Photography in 1921.

For details, view the photograph in our online collections database.

Bed warmer made in 1920 and used by nurse Katherine J. Dreves to warm the beds of patients in her care. The device consists of a wooden cage for an electric light bulb fitted with a hole through which an electrical cord can be threaded.

Home Comfort model A1 cast iron cookstove.  Manufactured by the Wrought Iron Range Company of St. Louis, Missouri circa 1924.  The wood-fired stove has double-door warming ovens on its top with a vent pipe at center.  The top of the cooking surface has six burner lids and two detachable side extension shelves and towel racks.  Doors at the front of the stove conceal a fire box, oven,  damper control, soot clean-out and warming spaces.

The Wrought Iron Range Company outfitted the Women’s Reformatory (Shakopee), State Hospital (St. Peter), State Asylum (Hastings), State Prison (Stillwater), Soldier’s Home (Minneapolis), Minnesota Soldiers’ Home and U.S. Veterans Hospital (Minnehaha), and Pipestone Indian School (Pipestone) during the 1920s.

Toastmaster toaster invented by Charles P. Strite and manufactured by the Waters-Genter Company of Minneapolis circa 1921. The Toastmaster was the world’s first automatic, pop-up electric toaster that could heat both sides of a slice of bread simultaneously, eliminating the need for manual flipping.  The two side levers allowed users to submerge the bread and initiate the heating process, as well as to set the toasting time according to personal taste.

Learn more:

• Inventions of Champions: How Minnesota Changed Breakfast

Ojibwe velvet dance costume shirt probably made for Kay-zhe-baush-kung (Otto Bismark) of Walker, Minnesota in 1920 and later purchased by Neal Barnard at the Leech Lake Indian Reservation.  It features both Ojibwe-style and Dakota-style beadwork lazy-stitched in two eight centimeter-wide bands that extend from the front of the shirt over each shoulder and down the back.  Each sleeve has a similar band extending the length of the sleeve to the cuff.  The cuffs are spot-stitched with a multicolor floral pattern on a white background and fringed with leather thongs covered with white beads.  Each thong terminates in a metal cone.  Either side of the front-slit neckline and center back has an applique of black velvet spot-stitched with floral beadwork.  All beadwork bands are outlined with flat metal disks, each sewn with a blue or red bead at the center.  A satin ribbon binds the edges of each band.  See also dance costume items 1984.156 and 1984.157.

For details, view the shirt in our online collections database.

Doorbell from the Commodore Hotel in St. Paul, Minnesota, a favorite haunt of F. Scott Fitzgerald.  The bell operates by means of a key connected to a clockwork mechanism. As the key is turned, the clapper is struck against the bell. Two holes in the base permitted the bell to be mounted to a hotel room door.  The bell was recovered from the hotel building before its remodeling in 1978.

To hear the bell, watch the Hearing History: Sounds of the Collection podcast.

For details, view the bell in our online collections database.

Dress and belt worn by Elizabeth Sherer Russell while working for the Chippewa Indian Nursing Service between 1923 and 1931.  Made by an unknown maker belonging to the White Earth Nation of Ojibwe.  The beaded, tanned hide dress has spot-stitched sleeves with floral pattern beadwork.  Strips of leather fringe are sewn at the sleeve seams, side seams, and skirt hem.  The belt consists of floral spot-stitched curvilinear beadwork on hide, trimmed with light green silk ribbon and backed with pink silk. The beads are primarily pinks, green, purple and orange.

Dakota or Blackfeet choker necklace made of tubular (hairpipe) beads, leather spacers, and braided yarn.   The beads are strung onto an off-white length of yarn knotted and braided at either end to form a tie closure.  Created in 1920.

For details, view the necklace in our online collections database.