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
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Visual Materials
This collection contains more than 650 printed items that relate to circuses in the United States from the 1850s to the 1990s. The collection consists of advertising and promotional materials, business records, and illustrations produced for or pertaining to circuses, their tours and shows, staff and performers, acts and exhibits, and animals. Materials are arranged in three series: small-size prints and ephemera (11 x 14 inches or less); large-size prints and ephemera (more than 11 x 14 inches); and broadsides and handbills. The collection has 206 large-size items comprised mainly of lithographic posters containing brightly colored images of featured circus acts, performers, and animals that were typically posted outdoors in advance of the circus coming to town. Small-size items in the collection number more than 320 and are comprised mainly of advertising and promotion ephemera and business documents such as trade cards, programs and souvenir books, route cards, envelopes, tickets, songsters, and printed billheads and letterheads. The 130 broadsides, handbills, and related advertisements consist primarily of long, narrow broadsides printed on newspaper paper in black ink using letterpress type that advertised upcoming circus shows and were intended to be distributed by hand, left in stacks in public places, or posted on walls, fences, or in windows in advance of the circus's arrival in a town. This collection provides a resource for studying the history of the American circus and its impact on popular entertainment and advertising in the 19th and 20th centuries. As graphic materials, the items offer evidence of the development of printmaking techniques and trends, and of the artists, engraves, lithographers, printers, and publishers involved in the creation of these prints.
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Visual Materials
Image of monkeys waiting in line to pay admission to an elephant before entering a circus, with a one-monkey band playing on a pedestal and a pig dressed as a clown poking its head out of the tent; with two signs labeled "Way in" and "Admission 2 Nuts."
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Visual Materials
Image of a majorette marching with an elephant.
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Visual Materials
Image of a circus street parade with a procession of costumed riders and animals led by an elephant and two Indian animal trainers holding spears and followed by a horse-drawn circus wagon containing lions.
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Visual Materials
Image of three seals balancing balls and climbing a ladder with a male and a female trainer; "The Greatest Show on Earth" globe logo printed on one of the balls.
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Visual Materials
Image of a whiteface clown riding on a circus elephant’s trunk; "The Greatest Show on Earth" globe logo at top left.
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