Opening Hours
Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Rare Books
Chinese handmade paper
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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
This collection contains of the business records of the Merrymount Press and the related papers of its founder Daniel Berkeley Updike (1860-1941). The bulk of the collection consists of financial volumes; correspondence with customers, publishers, illustrators, craftsmen, and suppliers; bills; estimates; and scrapbooks with specimens of work. While the majority of the correspondence is comprised of letters, there are occasionally proofs, specimens, and cloth, paper, fabric samples, etc., found with the correspondence. The records reflect Updike's involvement with printing across the United States and in Europe, though much of his work was produced for clients in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New York City. Some of the correspondence reflects Updike's personal interests including Rhode Island history and churches and charitable work with poor children as well as prison inmates.
mssMerrymount
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Manuscripts
The collection consists primarily of letters written by Floyd Dessery (1879-1927) to his family, during his deployment in the Philippines, including his mother, Mrs. A. B. Dessery, and his sisters, Hazel and Theodosia Dessery. The collection also includes Floyd's diary from his time in the Philippines. His letters and diary reflect the daily experiences of a foot soldier during the Spanish-American War. Also included are a few family photos, and some ephemera, including clippings, notes, and trade cards.
mssHM 72946-72969
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Visual Materials
Folders include handmade valentine cards, drawings and letters that are undated.
priRosin
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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