Opening Hours
Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Visual Materials
Visual Materials
Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Visual Materials
Image of three head-and-shoulder portraits of female actors, including two wearing bonnets and one with small decorative fans in her hair, in circle ribbon frames surrounded by flowers; the poster advertises the comedy "A Rag Baby" written by Charles H. Hoyt.
priJLC_ENT_000425
Visual Materials
Image of a three-fold leaflet advertising stoves manufactured by Littlefield Stove Manufacturing Company of Boston, Massachusetts; descriptions and image of a parlor furnace on recto; four models of stoves and furnaces pictured on verso, including the "Morning Glory of 1868."
priJLC_HHD_004905
Visual Materials
Image of a dining room scene with a wedding cake on the table and the groom sitting back in his chair as the bride rushes at him with her hands in the air knocking over her chair, while the rest of the family stands up from the table; a head-and-shoulder portrait framed within a nutmeg seed of a girl wearing a bonnet at upper left; the poster advertises the melodrama "The Nutmeg Match" written by William Haworth.
priJLC_ENT_000232
Image not available
Visual Materials
The Jay T. Last collection of fashion prints and ephemera contains approximately 7,500 items dating from the 1570s to the early 1900s, with the bulk of the items spanning from 1825 to 1900. This collection consists of fashion plates, advertising prints, broadsides, and promotional ephemera produced for clothiers and tailors, dry goods suppliers, garment manufacturers, fashion publications, and textile companies affiliated with the design, production, and/or sale of clothing, accessories, and dry goods. While most of the materials are American, there are also notable quantities of foreign items in the collection, including French fashion plates, fez labels in several languages, and foreign textile labels. Labels affixed to textile samples of various sizes are also included. Materials are broadly divided into two series: small-size items (11 x 14 inches or smaller) and large-size items (typically larger than 11 x 14 inches). Small-size items are described broadly at the series level; large-size items and select small-size items are fully inventoried with printers, artists, and publishers indexed by name. The collection includes 250 large-size items comprised mainly of lithographic advertising prints and fashion plates. Small-size items number approximately 7,250 and contain a variety of promotional materials including trade cards, calendars, booklets, product labels, fashion plates, periodicals, clippings, and printed billheads and letterheads with manuscript text. Each series is divided into subseries according to the kind of business, service, or trade sponsoring the advertisement. Types of businesses have been identified according to the principal type of product(s) manufactured or sold by the business. These subseries are arranged as follows: Accessories; Clothiers, Tailors, and Dry Goods; Fashion Plates And Periodicals; Footwear; Garments; Headwear; Sewing Supplies; and Textiles. This collection contains many American and European printed illustrations, commonly known as "fashion plates," that typically depict men, women, or children modeling current clothing and dress styles. Small plates (usually 14 x 10 inches or less in this collection) illustrated the pages of magazines and bound volumes that were marketed specifically for women. Larger plates, primarily intended for display, advertised the products and services of fashion designers, tailors, and pattern makers. The collection provides a resource for studying clothing and dress, sales and merchandise, textiles, and sewing, as well as changing fashion trends in the United States and Europe in the 19th century. The images are primarily promotional in nature and provide information about the history of the American fashion, clothing, dry-goods, and textile industries and the evolution of their advertising strategies in the 19th and early 20th centuries. As graphic materials, the prints offer evidence of developing techniques and trends in printmaking, and of the artists, engravers, lithographers, printers, and publishers involved in the creative process.
Visual Materials
Image of two vignettes of head-and-shoulder portraits of husband-and-wife vaudeville entertainment team Stuart Darrow (sometimes spelled "Stewart Darrow") and Harriet Darrow in formal dress, surrounded by black-and-white silhouettes of a female circus performer walking on a tight rope, a man on a jumping horse, a man fishing from a canoe, a profile of a Native American Indian head, a man blowing into a horn towards a woman on a balcony, a bird, wolf, rabbit, ducks, and swan; as well as a framed picture of pink roses and a framed image of a castle in the moonlight, with two squirrels at lower left holding a smoke device below the frame.
priJLC_ENT_000332
Visual Materials
Image of a scene in a formal parlor with actor Charles L. Davis, playing the part of country bumpkin farmer Alvin Joslin, wrestling a man in formal suit for a gun, while a woman in a ball gown ducks away in fear, with a vignette of a head-and-shoulders portrait of Davis in top left corner; the poster advertises the musical comedy "One of the Old Stock" by Davis.
priJLC_ENT_000185
priJLC_FASH_003680