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
priJLC_ENT_Balls
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Visual Materials
The Jay T. Last Collection of Entertainment: Balls and Carnivals Prints and Ephemera contains approximately 150 printed items related to social and celebratory events primarily in the United States from the 1840s to 1940, with the majority of items dating from 1875 to 1900. The collection consists mainly of color lithographed invitations, programs, and tickets for various festive occasions including costumed dances and parties, such as Mardi Gras. Materials are arranged in two series: small-size items (11 x 14 inches or less) and large-size items (more than 11 x 14 inches). Items smaller than 8 x 10 inches in size are described broadly at the binder level; items larger than 8 x 10 inches in size are fully inventoried and all printers, artists, and publishers are indexed by name. The collection includes over a dozen large-size items comprised mainly of lithographed advertising posters for balls and pageants. Small-size items number over 100 and contain a variety of materials, including announcements, dance cards, invitations, posters, programs, and tickets; some items have manuscript text. Many of the invitations are ornately decorated die-cuts with features like ribbons or elaborate fold-out elements. Mardi Gras-related items comprise a significant part of the collection, including material from secret Mardi Gras societies Krewe of Proteus, Knights of Momus, Mystick Krewe of Comus, and Rex. Other social societies like the Priests of Pallas and the Veiled Prophets are also represented in the collection. While the majority of the material is American, the collection contains one winter carnival program from Montreal, Canada. The collection provides a resource for studying the history and evolution of American entertainment in the form of celebrations and pageantry through much of 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.
priJLC_ENT_Balls
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Visual Materials
This series consists of approximately 1,700 small sized items relating to fireworks, lottery schemes, sports, recreational activities, games, toys and novelties that date from approximately 1758 to approximately 1938. Formats range from broadsides to billheads, letterheads, booklets, paperdolls, card games, trade cards, puzzle cards, and dime novels.
priJLC_SPO
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Visual Materials
The Jay T. Last collection of travel and exploration prints and ephemera contains about 1,190 printed materials related to the history of hotels, resorts, luggage companies, and maps in the United States. The materials date from approximately 1814 to approximately 1937, although the bulk of the materials date from the mid-19th to early 20th centuries. The collection consists of 50 large-sized items, and over a thousand smaller-sized items, including trade cards, postcards, booklets, billheads, and letterheads. Many of the prints include views and promotional maps created by hotel and resort proprietors from New York City, Boston, and Chicago. Images on some of the prints trace the history of vacation destinations in the United States, predominately of beaches near Coney Island, ranging from Locust Grove to Starin's Glen Island, Dreamland, Luna Park, and more. The prints also contain images of elevated street views, storefronts, pedestrians traveling to hotels, and people at their leisure at beaches and amusement parks. A few prints also include promotional information about amenities, services, medical treatments, and local excursions offered by the various establishments. A large portion of materials in this collection are printed maps, varying from ornamental pictorial maps about U.S history and western expansion, to pocket maps created by hotel proprietors, real estate agents, government departments, and local businesses. While predominantly mapping locations within New York and Massachusetts, many of the maps also cover regions in California, documenting land development, fire-safety plans, and real-estate advertisements in Fresno, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Some of the maps in this collection also provide exploration routes and information on locating gold mines in California, Colorado, and Alaska. Information on the maps include topographic details, timetables for travel destinations, and document travel routes by rail or ferry. A smaller portion of this collection also consists of images of luggage, trunk, travel bag, and valise products advertised by manufacturers from Philadelphia, Boston, New York, Newark, and more.
priJLC_TRAV
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Visual Materials
priJLC_ENT_Balls
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Visual Materials
This series contains approximately 2,190 small-size printed items that pertain to or portray imagery of agriculture in the United States from approximately 1818 to 1915. The materials consist of advertising and promotional ephemera, illustrations, and business records related to agricultural industries. The agriculture-affiliated entities represented in this series include fertilizer companies, implement and machinery vendors and manufacturers, and fencing suppliers. Products advertised include harvesters, plows, reapers, rakes, hoes, tedders, pumps, windmills, fertilizer, and barb wire fencing for livestock. Item types include trade cards, leaflets, handbills, calendars, price lists, small catalogs, and printed billheads and letterheads with and without manuscript text.
priJLC_AGR