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 vignettes with head-and-shoulder portraits of circus owners Peter Sells, at left, Adam Forepaugh, at center, and Lewis Sells, at right.
priJLC_ENT_001331
Image not available
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.
priJLC_ENT_004733
Visual Materials
Image of an advertisement for the Sells Brothers circus featuring bust-length portraits of three Sells brothers: Ephraim Sells, Lewis Sells and Peter Sells.
priJLC_ENT_004734
Visual Materials
Image of a costumed female equestrian balancing on one foot on the back of a moving white horse.
priJLC_ENT_001332
Visual Materials
Image of a chariot race around a track in a tented circus arena, with two female drivers each driving teams of four horses in the foreground, followed by a third chariot driven by a male driver; small vignette with group head-and-shoulders portrait presumably of three Sells brothers Ephraim Sells, Peter Sells, and Lewis Sells at upper left.
priJLC_ENT_001334
Visual Materials
Image of spectators in a circus tent viewing zoo animals in circus wagons including a lion, tigers, rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, and a polar bear, and elephants and giraffes in fenced areas; the hippopotamus cage includes a pool and the sign "Only pair of Hippopotami male & female with any exhibition," and the roof of the tiger cage has the sign "The entire & undivided plant of 2 stupendous menageries, each hitherto the largest in existence and now exhibited as one"; small vignette with group head-and-shoulders portrait presumably of three Sells brothers Ephraim Sells, Peter Sells, and Lewis Sells at upper left.
priJLC_ENT_001333