Best of the Web

Costume Collection, National Museum of American History

Costume Collection, National Museum of American History

Women’s dresses are the most requested objects in the Smithsonian’s 30,000-piece Costume Collection, so the institution has made roughly 70 of it best dresses available online. Examples include... Read More or Visit Site

More About Thimbles

More About Thimbles

The sheer volume of scholarship on display at the innocuously named More About Thimbles is worthy of a museum. Created by Magdalena and William Isbister, the site explains how the rise of metal thimbles... Read More or Visit Site

TheStieffCompany.com

TheStieffCompany.com

Scott Perkins is an enthusiastic evangelist for The Stieff Company, a significant Baltimore silversmith and maker of pewter items. His site is loaded with Stieff catalogs, price lists, factory photos,... Read More or Visit Site

Cloud Glass Reference Site

Cloud Glass Reference Site

Chris and Val Stewart’s impressive attempt to create a complete catalogue of all known cloud glass, a decorative form of glass that was popular in the 1920s-1940s. Originally focused on Davidson’s cloud... Read More or Visit Site

Virtual Shoe Museum

Virtual Shoe Museum

This virtual museum from Shoe Icons Publishing showcases over 800 pairs of shoes and related reference information. Follow the development of footwear from the 17th Century through the present (Salvatore... Read More or Visit Site

The Quilt Index

The Quilt Index

This collaborative project provides a visual index of almost 2,000 antique quilts across multiple museums and collections - a model for cooperation in the antiques world. Start with the browse page, where you... Read More or Visit Site

Mandolin Cafe

Mandolin Cafe

Launched in 1995, Mandolin Cafe brings together anyone with an interest in mandolins—from players and teachers to collectors and enthusiasts. The site features mandolin chord diagrams (yes, for lefties,... Read More or Visit Site

Silversugartongs.com

Silversugartongs.com

Graham Hodges' collection of antique Georgian (as in King George of England) silver sugar tongs from 1760 to 1820. Hundreds of tong photos including hallmark close-ups and descriptions, browsable by maker and... Read More or Visit Site

Fashion Doll Guide

Fashion Doll Guide

This site is all Barbie, all fashion from 1959 to 1972. Suzanne Maxwell lays out hundreds of period wardrobe choices, with pictures of vintage outfits in their original boxes. She offers comprehensive... Read More or Visit Site

Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia

Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia

Founded by David Pilgrim, a former sociology professor at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan, the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia boasts some 4,000 objects designed to demean, insult, and... Read More or Visit Site

Star Wars Collectors Archive

Star Wars Collectors Archive

Gus Lopez and friends have created a parallel universe for Star Wars collectors, impossible to fully explore in one lifetime. Its core is the archive database of collectible items, but there's also quite a bit... Read More or Visit Site

The Scrap Album

The Scrap Album

Malcolm Warrington’s The Scrap Album is a handsomely organized site, as you’d expect from an articulate champion of Victorian Era scrapbooking. Browse pages devoted to such arcane pieces of ephemera as the... Read More or Visit Site