American Historical Ephemera & Photography

4 x 3 1/4 in. hand-colored glass lantern slides. A Rare assemblage of glass lantern slides produced for a lecture series given by Elsie Powers Corwin on pioneering horticulturalist Luther Burbank. They are estimated to date from the mid-1920s based on Corwin's statements that they are used "with permission of Burbank from photographs taken at the time the experiments were made." Slides are housed in a locking pebbled cloth case with attached key on ribbon and were produced by E.W. Goodrich of Tremont Temple, Boston. The lecture notes are for 100, but 93 slides are present. Images include photos of Burbank and family, his home and farms, and many varieties of plant hybrids. Two brass memorabilia with Burbank's image include a small pin (New York: Medallic Art Co.) and a watch fob proclaiming him as "The Wizard of Horticulture," an "honor award for meritorious work in introducing Stark-Burbank Fruit Creations."

Burbank's work gave us spineless cactus, rainbow chard, apricot-plum crosses, the most widely-grown variety of Russet potato in the US, and hundreds more varieties of food and ornamental flowers. Burbank viewed his work as humanitarian and in harmony with nature, a perspective that bears interest in the current ideological arguments regarding newer technologies used in manipulation of plant genetic material.