Opening Hours
Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Rare Books
An exposition of games and tricks with cards
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Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
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Manuscripts
The Alexander Z. Kruse papers contain documents relating to Kruse's career as an artist, art critic, and author. The time frame covered is 1890 to 1975 with the bulk of the material originating from the 1930s to 1960s. The material is arranged by functional series and includes: literary manuscripts and notebooks; correspondence; photographic materials--photographs and slides; ephemera--clippings, catalogs, and biographical material; and books. The majority of the collection is in its original format with a few being photocopies. The photographic materials are in good condition. However, much of the ephemera (especially the newspaper clippings) is extremely fragile. Most of the clippings are from Kruse's columns with the Brooklyn Eagle and the New York Post.
mssKruse papers
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Visual Materials
The Nancy and Henry Rosin collection of valentine, friendship, and devotional ephemera contains materials from Europe and North America dating from 1493 to the late 2010s. The bulk of the collection consists of greeting cards exchanged on Valentine’s Day, dating from approximately 1840 to 1930. Early handcrafted valentine cards found within the greeting cards subseries demonstrate folk art methods of pinpricking, paper cutting, paper folding, painting, puzzle making, and illustration. Other cards dating from the Victorian era include comic or “vinegar” valentines, paper lace valentines, cobweb valentines, and cards created by various printing, embossing, and assemblage techniques. Many of the late 19th-century cards are dimensional and mechanical paper constructions, made with a combination of die-cut scraps, honeycomb tissue paper, and levers, strings, or wheels that enable the cards to pop-up or move. Also included in the collection are greeting cards exchanged for other holidays and events, friendship cards dating from the Biedermeier era, friendship albums with locks of hair, language of flowers almanacs and booklets, matrimonial documents, sachets, verse writers, religious devotional items, mourning cards, scrapbook albums, and correspondence relating to love and courtship. The collection also contains artifacts and three-dimensional items such as fans, jewelry boxes, shadow boxes, and additional items, some of which include fragile, glass components. Smaller portions of the collection include educational ephemera, such as rewards of merit and bookmarks, and American Civil War ephemera, such as greeting cards and song sheets. Additional materials include artist and organizational files relating to illustrator Catherine “Kate” Greenaway, printer Louis Prang, and 20th-century greeting card companies Rust Craft and Norcross. The last series of this collection contains research materials compiled by valentine scholar Charles Albert Reed and by Nancy Rosin. The materials consist largely of secondary sources, notes, and newspaper clippings.
priRosin