Darlene Lacey is recognized for her work in preserving and sharing a significant collection.
Lacey is the curator of the Candy Wrapper Museum. She has collected candy ephemera since she was a child and now has more than 50,000 pieces in her collection. The museum website describes her collecting history, “I began collecting wrappers in 1977 with an eye toward the unusual, ironic, and aesthetic, although I also collected “classic” but more mundane wrappers for posterity’s sake.”
In 2019, Lacey acquired a giant-sized scrapbook saved by Necco’s one-time vice president of research and development, Jeffrey S. Green. The scrapbook documented the history of the New England Confectionary Company, the quintessential New England candy company. Lacey and her husband, Joe, began a three-year project to make the Necco history available to the public through the publication of two books about candy history and the company: NECCO: An Epic Candy Tale and NECCO: The Archive Collection.
Now in its fourteenth year, the prize recognizes collectors or dealers who have assembled or helped save significant collections of historical material related to New England or the nation that might otherwise have been left unrecognized or lost. The collections range from books, manuscripts, photographs, prints and drawings to all types of ephemera. View a list of past recipients here.
Media Contact: Susanna Crampton, [email protected]
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