Trade Catalogues and the American Home
Explore domesticity, daily life, consumerism and technology in America between 1850-1950.
This collection presents a wealth of highly visual trade catalogues, cards and marketing ephemera, tracing the rise of the ‘American dream’ and evolution of commerce throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The content is sourced from three of the pre-eminent collections of trade literature in America: the Lawrence B Romaine collection at UC Santa Barbara, the Hagley Museum and Library and the Winterthur Library.
As part of our suite of collections in American Consumer Culture, this resource is ideal for interdisciplinary research, presenting a treasure trove of primary source material for the study of social history, the history of business and marketing, gender, technology and consumerism.
Industries covered include:
- Advertising
- Animal and agriculture
- Automotive
- Bicycles, carriages and wagons
- Clothing and accessories
- Construction and Real Estate
- Cosmetics and consumer products
- Crockery, glassware and utensils
- Department store and mail order catalogues
- DIY and gardening
- Education, gifts and stationery
- Entertainment, arts, crafts and hobbies
- Food and drink
- Health and medicine
- Home decorating and design
- Household goods and appliances
- Sport, leisure and outdoor
- Toys and games
Included in
Key data
Period covered
Source archives
- University of California, Santa Barbara
- Winterthur Library
- Hagley Museum and Library
- Product design
- Business, Economics and Retail History
- Women's history and women as consumers
- Domestic life and interior design
- Gender and domesticity
- Domestic life and leisure
- Development of domestic technologies and labour-saving devices
- Catalogues
- Leaflets
- Trade Cards
- Price Lists
- Order Forms
- Correspondence
- Samples and ephemera
- Manuals and ‘How to’ Guides
- Sales Rep Documents
- Daniel Horowitz, Smith College
- Vicki Howard, University of Essex
- Deborah Sugg Ryan, University of Portsmouth
- Margaret Petty, Queensland University of Technology
- Karen Carter, Ferris State University
- Clare Rose, Royal School of Needlework, Hampton Court
- Business and Economics
- Cultural Studies
- Marketing, Advertising and Design
- North American Studies
- Sociology, Social History and Social Science
- Technology
- Trade Catalogues and the American Home is available within the cross-searchable suite of collections: American Consumer Culture, allowing students and scholars to broaden their research across three AM products
- Department store catalogues
- Business biographies
- Online Exhibitions of domestic appliances
- Contextual essays from leading scholars
- Visual highlights galleries
Supporting material
Videos
Webinar: Selling the American Dream
