San Diego Normal School student's binder of manuscript notes, construction examples & Milton Bradley samples, ca. 1913-1917 (incl. 1913 Kindergarten Supplies catalog)

Half-size cloth notebook binder with material for Manual Arts Training compiled by Gladys Sloan (b.1892), a student at the San Diego State Normal School. Contains reference material for teaching clay, basketry, and cardboard construction. Fifteen example cardboard cutouts are mounted to the pages such that they can still be folded into their intended shapes, including various boxes, wall pockets, and a toothpick holder. The manuscript notes include several bibliographies of manual arts reference books, with a few additional notes on the dramatic arts and play. 

The binder also contains rare Milton Bradley sample materials: including bullseye construction paper, plain drawing papers, and 5 swatch tags for jute, raphia, carpet warp, macramé and rug yarn samples. A full 1913 Kindergarten Supplies catalog is mounted at the back. A loosely inserted five-page syllabus for a basket-making course taught by Nell K. Wills during the 1917 UCSD summer session instructs students to maintain a cache of sample materials, like in this binder. The address written inside the back cover matches Sloan’s in the 1914 San Diego directory (she had a different address in subsequent years), suggesting she reused the binder throughout her studies, roughly 1913-1917.

An envelope of wedding photos has also been stashed in the binder long enough to cause offsetting. Three individual photos of a handsome bride and a few snapshots of the charming groom. The only photo with both shows them standing congenially (and untouching) in an untidy landscape. Another photo shows the bride’s sister seated on a wooden crate amidst some broken-up timber. The images are indicative of the unconventional marriage, which occurred as a complete surprise to guests during an afternoon party at the Sloan household. According to the San Bernardino County Sun, which reported the wedding on September 12, 1919: “The attempt of the bride and groom to ‘carry on’ in their surprise campaign was blocked by their too alert friends. They were whisked away in a good samaritan’s machine, but the pursuers overtook them at Rialto, as they were boarding a train and a rice snow storm enveloped the bridal pair.” The images add intrigue to what seems like both an eager and reluctant marriage. The article mentions Gladys’ marriage “leaving a vacancy in the public schools, in which she has been a very successful teacher since her graduation from normal school in San Diego,” although she eventually returned to teaching.