Jay T. Last Collection of Food Prints and Ephemera

The Jay T. Last Collection of Food Prints and Ephemera contains approximately 4,950 printed items advertising food products and related businesses in the United States from the 1840s to the 1960s, with the bulk of the items dating from 1875 to 1950. The collection consists largely of ephemera produced for American businesses affiliated with the growth, manufacture, packaging, distribution, and sale of food and food products. Most of these items are color lithographs, but hand-colored and uncolored engravings and woodcuts are also included.

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). Small-size items are described broadly at the series level; large-size items and select small-size items are fully inventoried and all printers, artists, and publishers are indexed by name. The collection includes over 45 large-size items comprised mainly of lithographed advertising prints and product labels. Small-size items number approximately 4,900 and contain a variety of promotional materials, including trade cards, product labels, and printed billheads and letterheads with manuscript text.

The collection highlights food production, merchandising, distribution, purveying, and consumption, and the images provide a rich resource for studying the history of such American industries as canning, packaging, and manufacturing along with the evolution of their advertising in the 19th and early 20th centuries. As graphic materials, the prints and ephemera offer evidence of developing techniques and trends in commercial printing, and of the artists, engravers, lithographers, printers, and publishers involved in the creative process.

Please note that food starch can be found in the Jay T. Last Collection of Household Goods Prints and Ephemera (in process). Food starch and laundry starch are grouped together because both were often made or distributed by the same companies and advertised together.