Agriculture Through the Medium of Lithography - A Collection of Eighty (80) Items: [Lithography, Chromolithography, Race, Class, Gender]

United States: Various, 1850s-1890s. Very good to near-fine. Minor flaws in the collection include toning, short tears, chipping, dust soiling, or edge wear.. An extensive collection of chromolithographed material collected by a single collector over 30 plus years related to agriculture in the United States, dating from approx. the 1850s to the 1890s. There are a total of eighty (80) items divided into six (6) categories: Farm Animals; Farm Equipment and Machinery; Fertilizers; Fruits, Flowers, and Seeds; Millers, Milling, and Cereals; and a final category with unrelated items depicting agriculture in their marketing. The categories collectively represent ten (10) kinds of ephemera, fifty-three (53) manufacturers, and fifty-nine (59) kinds of products.

In these items, the ability of chromolithography to present a rich range of bright color and tone is on full display. Also of note are the social aspects of this collection. Specifically, race and gender feature prominently in much of the material. Gender roles are emphasized through farm machinery with strong handsome men wielding plows and heavy machinery, as well as with the reverse: a young stylish woman drives a plow in a kind of "even a woman could do it"-style of marketing in one example. Women are often stylized as muses or goddesses, as in the Moline Wagon Company ad that depicts a young blonde woman as a fairy heralding the coming of Spring. Girls and young children cradle chicks or pick wildflowers in some of the ads, to evoke sentiment. Race is also present through racist depictions of slavery and stereotyping, including in a Southern Industry tobacco label that depicts a White overseer on horse while slaves harvest cotton. There is also a Milburn Wagon advertising card that depicts two stereotyped Black men in a wagon pulled by donkeys, alongside Black workers harvesting cotton; in the distance, a well-off White family is pulled in a fancier carriage by white horses. The final social aspect present is class. In an advertisement for Walker, Stratman & Co. Bone Fertilizer, a "tramp" is the butt of the joke, while a farmer looks on and laughs.

An expanded description is available on request; it includes full listings of manufacturers, products, and types of ephemera present in the collection, as well as rough ranges of dimensions.

Institutional sale only - to be contextualized for educational purposes. An expanded description is available on request; it includes full listings of manufacturers, products, and types of ephemera present in the collection, as well as rough ranges of dimensions.

Institutional sale only - to be contextualized for educational purposes.