Series II. Performing Arts Prints and Ephemera (large size) | Collections | The Huntington

Series II. Performing Arts Prints and Ephemera (large size) | Collections | The Huntington

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Series I. Performing Arts Prints and Ephemera (small size)
Visual Materials
This series contains approximately 1,850 small-size printed items that pertain to theatrical and musical entertainment in the United States primarily from the second half of the 19th century. The materials consist of advertising and promotional ephemera, illustrations, and business records related to performers, theatrical and musical events, and venues in a wide variety of genres grouped broadly as music and theater (including theater, music, dance, burlesque, comedy, pantomime, and variety); minstrel (including minstrel shows, blackface entertainers, and female minstrels); and magic and miscellaneous (including magicians, motion pictures, and Wild West shows). The majority of items in this series promote plays and actors, and images primarily depict scenes from theatrical or musical events or contain portraits of performers. Item types include trade cards, programs and playbills, souvenir booklets, photographs, die-cut cards, and printed billheads and letterheads with manuscript text.
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Series II. Circus Prints and Ephemera (large size)
Visual Materials
This series contains more than 200 printed 19th and 20th century circus posters. The posters date from 1846 to the 1980s, with the bulk of the items spanning from the 1890s to the 1960s. These prints were used as promotional materials and typically posted outdoors in advance of the circus coming to town. These posters, primarily color lithographs, were produced by American printers for American circuses, though there are approximately seven posters with French or German text that Barnum & Bailey used for shows in Europe in the late 1890s and early 1900s. The posters typically contain brightly colored images of featured circus acts, performers, or animals. Many of the items include depictions of clowns, gymnasts, aerialists, acrobats, jugglers, animal trainers, or equestrians, portraits of circus owners such as P. T. Barnum, J. A. Bailey, and the Ringling Brothers, or scenes of street parades, historical pageants, circus wagons and railroad cars, tents, arenas, spectators and crowds, zoo menageries, and animals including bears, elephants, giraffes, gorillas, horses, lions, monkeys, rhinoceroses, and tigers. The posters, primarily color lithographs, range in size from approximately 12 x 16 inches to 117 x 41 inches, and while outdoor circus posters might take up entire building walls, most of the items in the collection consist of "one-sheet" posters sized to approximately 28 x 42 inches. Approximately twenty American printing firms are represented in the collection, though the Strobridge Lithographing Company of Cincinnati, Ohio, printed more than sixty of the posters, and the Erie Litho. and Printing Company of Erie, Pennsylvania, printed nearly thirty. About a quarter of the posters have date sheets, which are small strips with printed text containing information about the date and location of a particular upcoming show, pasted to the bottom of the poster. Among the earliest items is an 1850s four-sheet poster for A. Turner & Co's Combined Menagerie and Circus, and one of the most recent is a 1980s poster for the Ford Bros. Circus. While over fifty circuses are represented, most have between one and ten posters; the circuses of Barnum and Bailey and the Ringling Brothers comprise the largest subset in the collection with more than eighty posters among them.
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Subseries A. Music and Theater (large size)
Visual Materials
This subseries contains 372 large-size items that pertain to theatrical and musical entertainment in the United States from 1838 to 1928. The majority of items consist of posters related to the theater, dance and musical spectacles, musicians and concerts, and burlesque, comedy, pantomime, and variety troupes and shows. Many of the posters advertise dramatic productions of plays, and related stage actors and actresses, in genres such as Shakespearian dramas, melodramas, romance, comedy, crime, mystery, and Westerns. Images typically depict scenes from plays and shows or contain portraits of entertainers.
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Jay T. Last Collection of Entertainment: Performing Arts Prints and Ephemera
Visual Materials
The Jay T. Last Collection of Entertainment: Performing Arts Prints and Ephemera contains more than 2,300 printed items primarily advertising theatrical and musical entertainment and related performers in the United States from 1839 to the 1940s, with the majority of items dating from the 1870s to the 1890s. The collection consists of advertising and promotional materials, business records, and illustrations pertaining to a wide variety of performance genres that have been grouped broadly as music and theater (including theater, music, dance, burlesque, comedy, pantomime, and variety); minstrel (including minstrel shows, blackface entertainers, and female minstrels); and magic and miscellaneous (including magicians, motion pictures, and Wild West shows). Materials are arranged into two series: small-size items (11 x 14 inches or less) and large-size items (bigger than 11 x 14 inches). Small size items are described broadly at the series level; large-size items are fully inventoried and all printers, artists, and publishers are indexed by name. The collection has 450 large-size items comprised mainly of lithographic theatrical and minstrel posters that were intended to advertise specific shows or performers. Small-size items in the collection number approximately 1,850 and are comprised mainly of promotional ephemera and business documents such as trade cards, programs and playbills, souvenir booklets, tickets, die-cut cards, and printed billheads and letterheads with manuscript text. The collection provides a resource for studying the history of the American theater and the evolution of advertising strategies for the performing arts in the United States in the late 19th century. As graphic materials, the items offer evidence of developing techniques and trends in printmaking, and of the artists, engravers, lithographers, printers, and publishers involved in the creation of these prints.
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Series II. Transportation Prints and Ephemera (large size)
Visual Materials
This series consists of over 160 large-size printed items related to land-based modes of transportation primarily in the United States. The items date from the 1830s to the 1910s and consists largely of materials pertaining to railroads, with additional items concerning the bicycle and carriage, coach, and wagon industries. The series features lithographs produced by American artists, printers, and publishers, as well as engravings, letterpress, and woodblock prints. The items consist of advertising cards, posters, broadsides, system maps, timetables, views, and other visual materials primarily produced by transportation-affiliated entities including railroad companies and vehicle and part manufacturers such as wheel works, carriage builders, bicycle manufacturers, and locomotive machine shops. The series contains color-printed, hand-colored, and uncolored images and ranges in size from approximately 11 x 14 inches to 26 x 40 inches.
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Series II. Maritime Prints and Ephemera (large size)
Visual Materials
This series contains 57 large-size printed items pertaining to travel, shipping, and other maritime-related activities and businesses in the United States from 1825 to approximately 1942, with the majority of items dating from 1840 to 1890. The series is comprised mainly of lithographed advertising prints produced for steamship companies, including both domestic and transoceanic passenger and commercial services. Genres represented include advertising prints, certificates, broadsides, and documentary prints. The series contains color-printed, hand-colored, and uncolored images that range in size from approximately 11 x 14 inches to 30 x 40 inches.
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