This extremely rare 1940 trade catalog the Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum Library, Katalog farforu fa︠i︡ansu i maĭoliky, represents the production of not any one company. It is the output of 10 state-owned ceramics factories all over the Ukraine in small towns and villages, after industry was nationalized in 1918. This is a primary source document for the decorative arts and for studying the material culture and political history of the Ukraine and the former Soviet Union.
Cemeteries use a variety of styles to mark graves. The gravestones might be upright or flat. Sometimes both a headstone and footstone mark the grave or a monument might stand at the spot. If you had walked into a cemetery in the late 19th century, what would you have expected to find? Maybe you would have run into a grave guard.
It’s September and students across the country are now well-settled in their new classrooms, many filled with laptops and high tech, interactive white boards. What would you expect to find in an 1874 schoolroom? This trade catalog from that year shows typical furniture but also illustrates a few more things, like teaching aids. Though a little lower tech than today’s models, some are still quite innovative.
Imagine it is 1918 and you are resting in a comfortable chair with the phonograph playing. Perhaps this trade catalog will give us a glimpse of what that might have been like almost a century ago.
This post was written by Tracee Haupt, an intern at the National Museum of American History Library. Tracee is a graduate student in the University of Maryland’s dual-degree master’s program for History and Library Science.
At six and a half feet tall and three hundred and fifty pounds, Willie Vocalite was an imposing figure. “The Man Who Isn’t a Man,” as a 1934 booklet uncovered in our Trade Literature Collection described him, was barrel-chested with gleaming red eyes and a friendly expression. He was often pictured with a cigarette hanging jauntily from his lips, and later in his career he adopted a fashionable mustache that gave him the cavalier look of a 1930s movie star. Willie was a star of sorts–beginning in 1931, his act toured America from coast to coast drawing hundreds of thousands of spectators eager to see the “world famous robot” who could move, talk, and respond to voice commands.
When we think of summer, many of us think of traveling and vacations. The Trade Literature Collection includes quite a bit of travel related catalogs. As you might expect, there are catalogs advertising luggage and ones showing different modes of travel, like steamships or the railway. There are also catalogs about camping and everything you would need for a vacation in the outdoors.
As the weather gets hot, let’s look at a catalog to encourage thoughts of something a bit cooler in temperature. Perhaps a trade catalog related to soda fountains?
