The Mark Twain House & Museum has been awarded a Preservation Assistance Grant for $1,690 from the National Endowment for the Humanities to assess 26 objects in the museum’s collection.
The funds will be used to hire a professional conservator to evaluate personal items and furnishings belonging to Samuel Clemens or his family members. They include his billiards table (from his home Stormfield in Redding, Connecticut), his wife Olivia’s tortoiseshell hair comb, and his walking cane.
The objects are irreplaceable artifacts of America’s literary history and culture that provide unique and valuable insight into Mark Twain, his work, his era, and his enduring legacy.
The project will provide the information the museum requires to set conservation priorities and to budget and fund-raise for needed conservation work. The project’s ultimate goal is to ensure that the collection objects are properly preserved so that they will continue to be available for display in the historic Mark Twain House, which is a National Historic Landmark, and in exhibitions at the museum and at other cultural institutions, as well as for research by museum staff, scholars, and others.