Visual Materials

Series I. Circus Prints and Ephemera (small size)

Description: This series contains over 500 printed items, 11 x 14 inches or smaller, that pertain to circuses in the United States from approximately 1850 to 1991, with the bulk of items dating from 1880 to 1960. Items consist of advertising and promotion ephemera that promote circuses or were used as business documents by circuses. Item types include trade cards, programs and souvenir books, route cards, envelopes, tickets, songsters, and printed billheads and letterheads. While some of the stationery is filled out in manuscript with miscellaneous correspondence or invoices, the series does include a substantial amount of blank letterhead.
Type: Visual Materials(Opens in new tab)
Date: approximately 1850-1991
Call number: priJLC_ENT_Circus
Creator: Last, Jay T

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.

priJLC_ENT_Circus

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Series I. Horticulture Prints and Ephemera (small size)

Visual Materials

This series contains approximately 1,375 small-size printed items that pertain to or portray imagery of horticulture in the United States from 1840 to 1933. The materials consist of advertising and promotional ephemera, illustrations, and business records related to horticultural industries. The horticulture-affiliated entities represented in this series include nurseries, florists, seed companies and lawn mower manufacturers. Item types include trade cards, catalogs, catalog covers, booklets, seed packets, price lists, and printed billheads and letterheads with and without manuscript text. The materials in this series either promote or are connected to horticulture-related products, services, or sponsoring businesses. Binder 1 is the exception, containing promotional ephemera featuring images of anthropomorphic fruits, vegetables, flowers, and other plants promoting hoticulture-affiliated businesses as well as companies in unrelated industries.

priJLC_HORT

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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.

priJLC_ENT

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Series I. Fairs and Expositions Prints and Ephemera (small size)

Visual Materials

This series contains approximately 1,865 small-size printed items that pertain to fairs and expositions in the United States from approximately 1850 to 1939, with the bulk of materials dating from the late 1800s. The materials consist of advertising and promotional ephemera, illustrations, and business records related to fairs, exhibitions, and expositions; exhibitors at these events; and related businesses. Common item types include trade cards, calendars, booklets, programs, tickets, leaflets, guides, postcards and stationery, catalogs, and printed billheads and letterheads with manuscript text. The materials in this series either promote or are broadly connected to fair and exhibition-related products, services, or sponsoring businesses. Many of the images depict fair and exposition buildings, though the collection also has a wide variety of other images, including people, local transit, agriculture and livestock, and depictions of various products being advertised by exhibitors and vendors.

priJLC_FAIR

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Series I. Beverage Prints and Ephemera (small size)

Visual Materials

This series contains approximately 3,175 small-size printed items that pertain to the beverage industries and related products in the United States from approximately 1840-1930. The materials consist of advertising and promotional ephemera, illustrations, and business records related to beverage industries. The beverage-affiliated entities represented in this series include breweries, distilleries, liquor distributors, tea and coffee merchants, milk suppliers and dairies, and water and ice companies. Item types include trade cards, die-cut scraps, calendars, booklets, product labels, and printed billheads and letterheads with manuscript text. The materials in this series either promote or are broadly connected to beverage-related products, services, or sponsoring businesses. Many of the images depict bottles, barrels, and drinks, though the collection also has a wide variety of other images, including young women; animals; children and families; comic scenes and caricatures of ethnic groups such as Chinese, Native American Indians and African Americans; views of buildings and landscapes; and patriotic symbols and vignettes. Items are arranged mainly by product type and then alphabetically according to company name. Groupings include: Beer, Liquor, and Wine; Coffee and Tea; Juice (including ciders and cider vinegars), Soda, and Water (including ice); and Milk. Items smaller than 8 x 10 inches are housed in binders, while items that are between 8 x 10 inches and 11 x 14 inches in size are individually sleeved and arranged in folders in one box.

priJLC_BEV

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Series I. Fashion Prints and Ephemera (small size)

Visual Materials

This series contains approximately 7,250 small-size printed items that pertain to fashion, clothing and dress, textiles, and sewing supplies from the late 16th century to the early 20th century, with the bulk of the items dating from 1825-1900. The material consists of trade cards, calendars, booklets, product labels, fashion plates, periodicals, clippings, and printed billheads and letterheads with manuscript text. Items in this series are grouped broadly 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. Note that advertisements for a company may feature specific products that overlap with specialty shops and manufacturing companies in other subseries. Due to the fact that the collection covers a wide date span, categorization of items is complicated by the evolution of American commerce in the 19th and early 20th centuries, from specialized shops and tradesmen to dry goods and department stores selling an array of ready-made products. Also, advertising practices often encourage overlaps among subseries. A trade card, for example, might advertise raw materials, a finished product, a tradesman, manufacturing company, retail establishment, or some combination. In many cases, a manufacturing company created a stock trade card that dealers or agents personalized with their own textual advertisements. The majority of items in this series promote clothiers, tailors, dry-goods establishments and specialty manufacturers, or showcase current fashions in the 19th century, with two notable exceptions: a group of hand-colored woodcuts from Hans Weigel's 1577 Trachtenbuch (Box 2, Folder 7), and a group of Esnauts et Rapilly prints illustrating French headwear and hairstyles circa 1777 (Box 2, Folder 4).

priJLC_FASH

Series I. Circus Prints and Ephemera (small size)

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Series II. Circus Prints and Ephemera (large size)

Series I. Horticulture Prints and Ephemera (small size)

Series I. Performing Arts Prints and Ephemera (small size)

Series I. Fairs and Expositions Prints and Ephemera (small size)

Series I. Beverage Prints and Ephemera (small size)

Series I. Fashion Prints and Ephemera (small size)