Unique metal cabinet housing the music of Steven Foster Foster Hall Reproductions 1934 set #902 presented to the West Virginia Department of Archives and History. Looks complete but not checked. lxx
This is a remarkable piece of American musical history: a custom metal slipcase cabinet housing the Foster Hall Reproductions of Stephen Foster’s compositions (compiled by Josiah K. Lilly Sr. through Foster Hall in Indianapolis). This specific set bears the hand-stamped or assigned archive designation Set #902, historically presented to the West Virginia Department of Archives and History out of a limited run of only 1,000 sets distributed to strategic libraries and institutions nationwide. The set includes the three uniform slip-cased cloth box volumes containing exact facsimiles of early and first-edition Stephen Foster sheet music printed on specialized watermarked rag paper, alongside the descriptive index volume. Appearing complete in its unique institutional housing, it represents a premier artifact of 19th-century parlor music preservation.
In 1934, Lilly produced exactly 1,000 complete sets. Yours is number 902 out of that strict, limited run.The Cabinet: The unit is a custom-made, heavy-duty green steel cabinet explicitly engineered to store and protect the collection.The Music: Inside, it originally housed three slip-cased volumes containing facsimiles of every first edition (or earliest available edition) of all 287 known songs and compositions written by Stephen Collins Foster.The Purpose: These sets were never sold commercially. Lilly meticulously gifted them to major libraries, universities, and institutions across the world to preserve Foster’s musical legacy.