C GROWING TOGETHER
From Masonic Dolls to Masonic Lamps: Scot Museum & Library Collections in The Northe The Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library opened on April 20th, 1975, five years after the first issue of The Northern Light was published. Since its opening, the Museum & Library has contributed dozens of articles about collections, exhibitions, and events to the magazine. As The Northern Light celebrates its 50th anniversary, we take a look back at a few of the extraordinary objects highlighted in the publication over the years. Foxy Grandpa January 1980 A January 1980 issue featured a printed cloth “Foxy Grandpa” doll from the collection in an article titled “Was Foxy Grandpa a Mason?” The Art Fabric Mills Company of New York manufactured the doll, associated with a comic strip of the same name, in the early 1900s. On some models of the doll, originally sold in printed sateen sheets to be cut out, sewn, and stuffed by the buyer, Grandpa wears a Masonic fob attached to his vest. Though he was never touted as a Mason in the comic strip, this model of the doll did and still does beg the question: was Foxy Grandpa a Mason? The doll was included in the 1980 SRMML exhibition “American-made Dolls, 1850-1979,” which featured over 100 dolls, doll furniture, and memorabilia lent by the Massachusetts doll club, the Yankee Doodle Dollers. 12
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“Foxy Grandpa” Masonic Doll, 1903-1912. Art Fabric Mills Company, New York. Museum Purchase, 77.36.
Masonic Trench Art Lamp February 2014 A trench art lamp, featured in a February 2014 issue, was made from a shell “probably a naval artillery shell” and converted to an attractive lamp intended for use in a Masonic lodge. A brass plaque on the base of the lamp explains that Robert T. Woolsey (18931944) presented the lamp to his lodge, Union Lodge No. 31, in New London, Connecticut, on December 25, 1922. Woolsey, born in Appleton, Missouri, in 1893, enlisted in the Navy in June 1917. After the war, he moved to Connecticut and joined Union Lodge No. 31, in March 1922. During and
Trench Lamp with Masonic Symbols, 1922. France or United States. Museum Purchase, 2000.059.8. Photograph by David Bohl.
The Northern Light
