Last (Jay T.) Collection of Beverage Prints and Ephemera, approximately 1840-1949, bulk approximately 1850-1915

View only results with digital items
Printable guide [HTML]
Request items

Summary

Title:
Jay T. Last Collection of Beverage Prints and Ephemera
Dates:
approximately 1840-1949, bulk approximately 1850-1915
Creators:
Last, Jay T.
Abstract:
The Jay T. Last Collection of Beverage Prints and Ephemera contains approximately 3,240 printed items advertising beverage products and related businesses in the United States from the 1840s to the 1940s, with the bulk of the items spanning from 1850 to 1915. The collection consists largely of lithographed ephemeral items produced for American businesses affiliated with the manufacture, distribution, and sale of beverages such as coffee, tea, juice, milk, carbonated beverages, and alcoholic drinks including beer, wine, whiskey, and other liquors.
Extent:
approximately 3,240 items
Language:
English.
Preferred citation:

[Item title, Call number]. Jay T. Last Collection of Beverage Prints and Ephemera, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

Background

Scope and content:

The Jay T. Last Collection of Beverage Prints and Ephemera contains approximately 3,240 printed items advertising beverage products and related businesses in the United States from the 1840s to the 1940s, with the bulk of the items spanning from 1850 to 1915. The collection consists largely of lithographed ephemeral items produced for American businesses affiliated with the manufacture, distribution, and sale of beverages such as coffee, tea, juice, milk, carbonated beverages, and alcoholic drinks including beer, wine, whiskey, and other liquors.

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 approximately 65 large-size items comprised mainly of lithographed advertising prints and product labels for tea, coffee, and spirits. Small-size items number nearly 3,200 and contain a variety of promotional materials including trade cards, calendars, die-cut scraps, booklets, and printed billheads and letterheads with manuscript text.

The collection deals with beverage production, merchandising, advertising, and consumption -- including depictions of families and other groups drinking together -- and the images provide a resource for studying the history of American beer, liquor, coffee, tea, and carbonated beverage industries along with the evolution of their advertising in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Materials in the collection produced for manufacturers and distributors of alcoholic beverages also provide a perspective on their advertising strategies in the face of a growing temperance movement in the United States leading up to Prohibition. 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.

Biographical / historical:

The Jay T. Last Collection is an unparalleled archive of printed paper artifacts that documents American lithographic, social, and business history. The collection began in the early 1970s when physicist and Silicon Valley pioneer Jay Last moved to Southern California and started collecting citrus box labels he found at local flea markets and rummage sales. As his collection grew, Last realized that these labels conveyed important information about commercial printing, graphic design, and social history, and he expanded his collection to include other forms of American visual culture. Today this collection contains more than 200,000 lithographic prints, posters, and ephemera of mostly nineteenth- and early twentieth- century American origin and represents works by more than five hundred lithographic companies.

Acquisition information:
This collection forms part of the Jay T. Last Collection of Graphic Arts and Social History, which was donated to the Huntington Library by Jay T. Last in 2005 as a gift in progress. The bulk of the beverage prints and ephemera were transferred to the Library between 2010 and 2013 .
Arrangement:

Items are arranged broadly by size in two series, which have been further arranged in subseries according to product type:

  • Series I. Beverage Prints and Ephemera (small size)
    • Subseries A. Beer, Liquor, and Wine (small size)
    • Subseries B. Coffee and Tea (small size)
    • Subseries C. Juice, Soda, and Water (small size)
    • Subseries D. Milk (small size)
  • Series II. Beverage Prints and Ephemera (large size)
    • Subseries A. Beer, Liquor, and Wine (large size)
    • Subseries B. Coffee and Tea (large size)
    • Subseries C. Juice, Soda, and Water (large size)
    • Subseries D. Milk (large size)

Rules or conventions:
Finding aid prepared using Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Note:

The Jay T. Last Collection is a gift in progress. Container numbers may change as the collection expands.

Finding aid last updated on November 20, 2019.

About this collection guide

Collection Guide Author:
Finding aid prepared by Charla DelaCuadra.
Date Prepared:
© 2013
Date Encoded:
Machine readable finding aid encoded by Charla DelaCuadra in November 2013 .

Access and use

Restrictions:

Open to qualified researchers by prior application through the Reader Services Department. For more information, contact Reader Services.

Terms of access:

The Huntington Library does not require that researchers request permission to quote from or publish images of this material, nor does it charge fees for such activities. The responsibility for identifying the copyright holder, if there is one, and obtaining necessary permissions rests with the researcher.

Preferred citation:

[Item title, Call number]. Jay T. Last Collection of Beverage Prints and Ephemera, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

Location of this collection:
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108, US
Contact:
(626) 405-2191
reference@huntington.org
Website