New-York Historical Society

The New-York Historical Society has just re-opened, so a good moment to blog about the Bella C. Landauer Collection of Business and Advertising Art, in which I was privileged to work for a week on an exchange with the late Wendy Shadwell some years ago.  Bella C. Landauer and John Johnson were contemporaries and knew each other. Their collections differ slightly in focus, but there is much overlap.   Ephemera comes under Graphic Collections in the N-Y H S and are described in the following terms:

The Society’s ephemera collections include lottery tickets, trade cards, billheads, tobacco labels, theater playbills and countless other types of material that were created for temporary use but have survived to illuminate everyday life and popular culture. A highlight is the Bella C. Landauer Collection of Business and Advertising Art, assembled over a forty-year period by the tireless Mrs. Landauer (1874-1960) and arranged alphabetically into 100 product categories, such as Banking, Food, Hotels, Theatrical Enterprises, and Transportation.

There are other ephemera collections too: Broadsides (catalogued), Dining Menus (mainly donated by Arnold Shircliffe) and American Board and Table games (Liman Collection).

(c) New-York Historical Society