Photographs -- The Healdsburg Museum & Historical Society

Subject: Re: Information Request: Historical Photographs of the Italian-Swiss Colony, Asti, CA
From: "Daniel Murley" healdsburgmuseum@sbcglobal.net
Date: Mon, March 26, 2007, 8:36 pm

Greetings Simone,
We at the Museum do have many photographic images of the wine industry and some of Italian Swiss Colony.
The number is prohibitive to send you all.
If you could check our website: http://www.healdsburgmuseum.org/ there are some examples. You could also be specific in topical representaion in the images ie. picking, crushing, buildings, people, equipment etc ?
I look forward to hearing from you and hopefully we can supply you with the images you need.
Sincerely,
Daniel

Daniel F. Murley
Curator
The Healdsburg Museum
Healdsburg, CA 95448
(707) 431-3325

Simone Cinotto wrote:
Dear Sirs/Madams,The writer is an Italian historian teaching at the Universities of Turin, and specializing in Italian American Studies. My complete vita with publications is online at http://simonecinotto-cv.blogspot.com/

My current research project is an exploration of the presence of Italian immigrants in California's winemaking before and after Prohibition. I am especially interested in detailing the function of ethnicity in the labor and entrepreneurial experiences of Italian American winemakers. The project has been funded by the local administration of Piedmont (the wine region in the Italian northwest) and its end result will be a book published in both Italian and English.

I spent the whole month of December 2006 doing research in California, visting libraries and archives such as the Bancroft Library of UC at Berkeley, the Shields Library of UC at Davis, the San Francisco Public Library, the Sonoma County Regional Library at Healdsburg, the University Library of California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, and the Charles E. Young Research Library of UCLA. Unfortunately, during my stay, I was unable to visit the Healdsburg Museum & Historical Society. Now I am in the process of writing the book.

The purpose of this letter is the following: we wish to include a photographic section into the book. We have a modest amount of funds we can devote to cover the expenses of reproduction and, if applicable, rights or other fees. Since the book will deal at length with the case study of the Italian Swiss Colony at Asti, we would be very much interested in including photographs documenting work and everyday life at the Colony, in particular from the period between its foundation (1881) and the early 1920s.

Since I learnt the photographic collections at The Healdsburg Museum & Historical Society contain photos of many northern Sonoma County wineries, we would much appreciate if you may provide us with any relevant information re the possibility to order reproductions of photographs of the Italian-Swiss Colony and publish them into my book.

Needless to say, I will be more than glad to provide any further information you may want to receive on my book, its intended audience, and projected uses.

I will be looking forward to hearing from you soon. Thank you for your attention.

Best regards,
Simone Cinotto