This subseries contains letters of recommendation for Culin's appointment at the University of Pennsylvania as Lecturer in Ethnography and American Archaeology. The respondents to W. Romaine Newbold's (Dean of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia) letter of request for recommendation include Adolf Bastian (Director, Museum für Völkerkunde, Berlin), Daniel Brinton (Professor of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia), George Dorsey (Curator, Field Columbian Museum, Chicago), and William Holmes (Curator, United States National Museum, Washington, D.C.). The letters are laudatory and specifically cite Culin's articles and exhibitions.

Reflecting Culin's work as an ethnologist, these letters come primarily from colleagues and peers in the profession. Most of the letters concern issues directly related to collecting or to the profession itself, though there is a small amount that covers his personal or social life. While the majority of this subseries is letters written to Culin, a few of his responses are also included.

Curator George Dorsey (Field Columbian Museum, Chicago) writes of collecting trips in Spain, China, and Japan. Thomas Keam, a collector and trader of Native American objects, discusses Navajo and Zuni objects and cultural traditions. An early correspondent is Lee Chin Sun, who writes of the difficulty of learning English and of being Chinese in America; he expresses his gratefulness to Culin for helping him to make the transition. While Culin's expertise on games and gambling devices is evidenced in letters from colleagues and students, his correspondence extends well beyond the world of museums and academia. For example, there are letters concerning the translation of Korean texts related to games from a member of the Korean Legation. Attorneys also made inquiries about games such as Parcheesi, seeking Culin's advice in the initiation or resolution of lawsuits.

Several of the writers corresponded with Culin over long periods of time. Charles H. Read, whose career at the British Museum was contemporaneous with Culin's, maintained both professional and social contact with Culin for thirty years. The American painter Thomas Eakins kept in contact with Culin during the last third of the artist's life. He wrote of their common interest in the Oriental Club and the Faculty Club in Philadelphia. He also discussed works of art (both his and works by others), including his portrait of Frank Hamilton Cushing, and the various social engagements that were shared with Culin (including a boxing match!).

Culin's relationship with the Brooklyn Museum is also traced in these letters. The letter from Franklin W. Hooper, Director of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences (the Brooklyn Museum's parent organization), inviting Culin to be Curator of the newly formed Department of Ethnology is included here. And, too, discussion of the possibility of Culin leaving the Brooklyn Museum apparently for a newly planned Philadelphia museum of art is found in the 1915-16 letters of both John Wanamaker and Charles H. Read.

This letter press book contains copies of Culin's letters written during his first four years at the Brooklyn Museum. The letters primarily concern museum business and the collecting of Native American materials in the Southwest.

Of the 202 letters, nearly half are written to Franklin W. Hooper, Director of the Brooklyn Institute and Culin's primary supervisor, regarding a range of topics from the acquisition of collections to the security of Culin's office during his absence while on collecting expeditions. Included are such topics as Native American objects traded to the Field Columbian Museum, Native Americans of the Southwest, Japan, acquisition expenses, games, gambling sticks, and general museum business. Culin's letters to Alfred G. Mayer (Curator-in-Chief, the Brooklyn Museum) discuss Southwest Native American topics, including the Zuni costume worn by fellow ethnologist Frank Hamilton Cushing, and the portrait of Cushing by Thomas Eakins. Other important correspondents include George Dorsey (Field Columbian Museum, Chicago) and Andrew Vanderwagen, a trader in Native American objects.

A large and diverse collection of materials, this subseries details Culin's daily museum, professional, scholarly, and personal activities. Of primary importance is the wide-ranging correspondence that discusses the acquisition, interpretation, and display of artifacts, as well as documentation of museum administrative matters. Culin's influence and resources went far beyond the Brooklyn Museum, as evidenced by his correspondence with an international community ranging from museum personnel to people in the design and textile industry, dealers and collectors both professional and amateur, and a warm circle of personal friends. The development of Culin's extensive research library is documented here; his generosity is evident in frequent loans of books and objects to individuals studying a wide variety of topics. Included in this subseries are many clippings and ephemeral materials and a small number of photographs and typescripts. It should be noted that, while some of these were physically or intellectually attached to specific letters, others appear to have been included only because of the dictates of the chronological filing system.

A considerable amount of correspondence with the directors, trustees, and colleagues at the Brooklyn Museum, among them Frank Babbott, Edward Blum, and Walter Crittenden (trustees) and W. H. Fox (Director), document museum activities in great detail. The topics range from purchases and gifts to the Brooklyn Museum, loans to other institutions and department stores, the Museum Governing Committee, and major installations such as the Rainbow House (1925-26) and exhibitions such as Primitive Negro Art (1923).

Ever vigilant in the search for new acquisitions, Culin's correspondence reveals the wide range of resources that he drew upon for purchases and donations to the Brooklyn Museum. From dealers and collectors to the missionary just returned from Asia, Culin made queries to or received queries from all possible sources. For example, he communicated with dealer William O. Oldman regarding objects from Africa, Tibet, Morocco, and the Middle East; with Hassan Khan Monif, owner of the Persian Antique Gallery in New York City, concerning Persian textiles and the Hamza-nama miniature paintings; and with Edward Barrett, an importer with offices in New York and Siberia, about Chinese prayer boards and curtains, as well as decorative arts from Tibet. Other notable dealers include Wise & Co. and Yamanaka & Co.

One example of Culin's many acquisitions are the nine folios of the Hamza-nama, an important series of Indian miniature paintings illustrating the life of Mohammad's uncle Amir Hamza. Culin corresponded with Museum Director William Henry Fox; trustees Frank Babbott and William Crittenden; dealer Monif; German ethnologist and archaeologist Albert A. von leCoq; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Edward Stevens, Librarian of Pratt Institute; and M. D. C. Crawford, Women's Wear editor, concerning the purchase and provenance of these paintings.

Among Culin's peers and colleagues in the United States and Europe, Louis Clarke (Curator, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Philadelphia), John deVegh (Director, National Museum of Applied Art, Budapest), Berthold Laufer (Curator of Ethnology, Field Columbian Museum, Chicago), Charles Lummis (ethnologist and founder of the Southwest Museum, Los Angeles) are a few of the primary correspondents. The mutual concerns of collecting, exhibition, and publishing appear frequently in these letters. There are also letters from directors and curators at the British Museum; the Commercial Museum, Philadelphia; the Field Columbian Museum, Chicago; the National Museum of Applied Arts, Budapest; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum für Völkerkunde, Berlin; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the American Museum of Natural History, New York; the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, New York; the Pennsylvania Museum of Art (now the Philadelphia Museum of Art); and the ;Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

In addition to museum professionals, Culin also had a close working relationship with designers and the staff of design institutes, textile manufacturers, and department stores. Aaron & Company, Abraham & Straus, Arditti & Sons, Blanck & Co., Bonwit Teller, Lord & Taylor, Macy & Co., A. Namm & Sons, Wanamaker Co., Edward L. Mayer & Co., and Pratt Institute were all a part of a cooperative circle with Culin. Culin supplied study pieces for the design institutes and manufacturers and arranged for loans of exhibition material to department stores. This relationship is particularly evident in the Primitive Negro Art exhibition (1923), where textile patterns created from Museum objects were used in the creation of new lines of textiles and clothing. The textiles were not only marketed in the department stores but also became a part of the exhibition itself. There is also some correspondence with those who were critical or were aware of criticism of Culin's close work with designers and department stores.

The relationship between the Brooklyn Museum and Pratt Institute is further accounted for in correspondence with Frederic B. Pratt (President) and William Longyear (Professor, School of Fine and Applied Arts), among others. Activities included inviting Pratt students to study in the Museum and display their work in student exhibitions. Frederic Pratt also purchased objects that Culin wanted to acquire for the Museum's collection. Culin, too, assisted in arranging exhibitions at Pratt, including the German Textiles exhibition (1924).

Culin's close working relationship with M. D. C. Crawford (editor, Women's Wear, Fairchild Publications) is extensively documented. Their correspondence is the most frequently encountered in this subseries, with letters between the two men found in two-thirds of the folders. Among the wide-ranging subjects are the International Congress of Americanists, the International Silk Exposition, department stores, the Primitive Negro Art exhibition, development of a study room for designers, textiles, Museum acquisitions, the Pratt Peasant Costume exhibition (1924), the Rainbow House installation, Culin's Road to Beauty manuscript, the Philadelphia Sesquicentennial (1926), the History of the Blouse exhibition at the United Waist League (1922), object loans, and Crawford's books, The Heritage of Cotton (1924) and The History of Silk (1925).

Culin's collaboration with Crawford provided the foundation for the Museum's Industrial Division (1935-46) and Design Laboratory (founded 1947). This collaborative spirit was also reflected in other ongoing professional relationships with designers. For example, the artist Ruth Reeves enjoyed a long and productive association with Culin. Her letters are accompanied by clippings of her lectures and her fashion designs, which were reproduced in Women's Wear illustrations, Christmas cards that she designed, and a numbered etching. Culin's support for designers was not only intellectual but also extended to loans of objects and participation in programs; he conferred with Elizabeth Alexander regarding Museum doll and mask loans for exhibitions at the Arden Gallery, with the Neighborhood Playhouse and Lee Simonson (Theatre Guild) about costume loans for performances, and with the Art Alliance on the subject of art competitions.

In Culin's correspondence, the boundaries between the professional and the personal are often discarded. When he first visited Hungary in 1921, as the country struggled to recover from World War I, he met John deVegh, Director of the National Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest. Culin hired deVegh to ship back his purchases, starting a correspondence that gives a vivid portrait of Hungary at that time, including the difficulties faced by the Hungarian museum. In response to deVegh's letters, Culin attempted to find outlets where Hungarian embroidery could be sold and lectured on Hungarian arts to bring the plight of the country to the attention of Americans. In these efforts Culin corresponded with Charles Winter of the Hungarian Consulate, Walter T. Swingle of the United States Department of Agriculture, and the editor of the Hungarian newspaper Szabadsày. Culin's correspondence with refugee Anna Igumnova, a widow whom he met during that same trip, provides a parallel view of life in eastern Europe at that time, focusing on an individual rather than an institution.

Culin's family life is also documented sporadically throughout this series. His wife, the artist Alice Mumford Culin, loaned paintings to other institutions, and Culin often acted as her agent in these matters. She also painted works related to the Museum collections; Culin discussed these works with his colleagues. The education of Culin's step daughter, Penelope, is another family concern addressed in this subseries, as are housing and financial matters.

Interspersed with the correspondence is a large collection of clippings, many from Women's Wear's"Design Department" and "Romance of Merchandise" columns. The Women's Wearclippings appear most regularly during the first five years (1919-23) of this subseries, and Culin's byline appears on a small percentage of them. There are many clippings documenting the effect of Brooklyn Museum exhibitions and programs on the