#MagnificentCollections

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By June 1861 an “Envelope Mania” had taken hold of the Union, which, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, was an economic boon for engravers, stationers, and printers who had “no cause to complain of a lack of business” while others struggled to adjust to the new wartime economy. This collecting fad was made possible by recent innovations to methods of graphics printing. Civil War–era printers in the North fed the frenzy by producing patriotic, sentimental, and satiric illustrations that covered the entire fronts of wrappers and rendered them nearly unusable as anything other than collectors’ items. Consequently, many of these pieces never made it into circulation, but rather were saved in the scrapbooks of “collectors of curiosities” like Philadelphian John A. McAllister (1822–1896), who gave his collection of Civil War ephemera to the Library Company of Philadelphia in 1886. 

These envelopes, engraved and lithographed with images of soldiers engaged in heated battle, enslaved African Americans depicted as human contraband, and the stoic visage of Abraham Lincoln, appeared within weeks of the start of the conflict. Over 6,000 envelope designs flooded the market during the war; the majority (about 4,000) between 1861 and 1862. These “queer devices” (as described by the Inquirer) that proved an economic windfall for Northern stationery printers and purveyors not only document the politics of the nation, but also provide valuable information about mid-19th-century consumer and visual culture and the social and technological changes that impacted it during this critical period in our nation’s history. #MagnificentCollections

Browse our McAllister Collection of Civil War Envelopes & Stationary.

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For this week’s #MagnificentCollections we highlight Emily Phillips, a collector of some of our favorite trade cards. 

Emily Phillips (1822-1909), descended from one of the first Philadelphia Jewish families, gave her collection of trade cards to the Library Company in 1882. A shareholder in the Library and a philanthropist, Phillips supported several local Jewish benevolent organizations, including the Hebrew Education Society and the Jewish Maternity Association, while collecting nearly two thousand trade cards representing all manner of Victorian Philadelphia businesses from ice to velocipedes.

Visit the trade card collection HERE.

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This week for #MagnificentCollections we highlight Helen Beitler (1915-2002), a descendent of the Morris and Wistar families who unabashedly collected ephemera representing numerous subjects, including advertising — the profession of her husband. The Library Company acquired hundreds of pieces of advertising ephemera from her eclectic, yet refined collection, including postcards, billheads and envelopes, programs, advertisements,  and calendars following her death in 2002.

To see more visit: The Helen Beitler Graphic Ephemera Collection

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In 1785, The Library Company acquired, at auction, much of the contents of the American Museum of Pierre Eugène du Simitière (1737-1784), the Geneva-born artist, naturalist, and antiquary. Du Simitière was a restless man, forever traveling, forever collecting, forever projecting grand schemes in solitude. At the American Musuem (the first public museum, btw), du Simitière presented his many materials collected during his travels and from his collections.

Toward the late 1760s, du Simitière’s collecting became more and more focused on the political history of North America. The Stamp Act of 1765 generated almost instantaneous opposition in the American colonies, and du Simitière was quick to gather the resulting effusions. He acquired this one-penny sheet of stamped paper from a Philadelphia coffee house, where it was posted after arriving from New York, a vestige of 10 boxes of such paper that had been burned. 

The paper includes a note: “Part of the combustible matter which was preserv’d from amidst the devouring flames, which lately consum’d 10 boxes of the same commodity; at New York.”

Each Wednesday this month we will be highlighting the collectors and collections that have shaped the Library Company of Philadelphia since 1731, as part of the #MagnificentCollections challenge sponsored by Smithsonian Libraries.