Blogs across the Smithsonian will give an inside look at the Institution’s archival collections and practices during a month long blogathon in celebration of October’s American Archives Month. See additional posts from our other participating blogs, as well as related events and resources, on the Smithsonian’s Archives Month website. News clipping (source unknown) from the Duke of Gloucester’s Safari, 1928. Notice the affectionate dogs, bottom right. Arthur Sydney Waller may be best known as the white hunter who led a 3,000 mile personal safari for the Duke of Gloucester in 1928 and for the entourage of the first MGM major motion picture shot in Africa, Trader Horn, in 1930. Waller is somewhat lesser known as one of the early breeders of the Rhodesian Ridgeback, first registered as a standardized dog breed by the South African Kennel Union in 1924 as the “Lion Dog”, and imported from Rhodesia into Kenya by Waller that same year. According to the memoir of his second wife, Kathleen, he also exported the first dogs to his homeland, England, in 1927 where they made quite a splash at the Kennel Club Show at the Crystal Palace London in 1928. Waller and his Ridgeback sleeping on the MGM set of Trader Horn, 1930. The absolute origin of the Rhodesian Ridgeback is still not certain. It is believed that in the late 1880’s Dutch settlers in the Cape Colony of South Africa bred an imported hound dog from one of their trade routes (possibly from Malaysia) with the... Continue reading

It is not hard to find special collections librarians who believe that there are no duplicates, meaning that no two printed items made by hand are the same, even if from the same type, plate, or press. Continue reading