Celebrating the Jefferson R. Burdick Collection

«Today marks the launch of the new section of the Museum's website dedicated to the vast, diverse, and often surprising ephemera collection of Jefferson R. Burdick (1900–1963). The trade and postcards, which make up the bulk of the collection of over three hundred thousand objects, span in time from the 1890s to the last months of Burdick's life. An avid collector, Burdick dedicated his life to amassing, organizing, and cataloguing his collection. In addition to the acclaimed collection of over thirty thousand baseball cards—the most in a public collection outside of the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York—Burdick's collection includes a dizzying array of trade cards that were produced by tobacco, candy, and gum companies, as well as bakeries, clothing shops, and milliners, to name just a few types of the American businesses that adopted the form as a means of advertising their products.»

Left: Gonslar (American, 20th century). Portrait of Jefferson R. Burdick from the Chicago World's Fair (detail), 1933. Silhouette; approx.: 4 1/8 x 1 3/4 in. (10.4 x 4.5 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Jefferson R. Burdick Collection, Gift of Jefferson R. Burdick (Burdick.silhouette)

Left: Issued by Bowman Gum Company. Hank Bauer, Outfield, Yogi Berra, Catcher, Mickey Mantle, Outfield, New York Yankees, from Collector series, Colors set, series 7 (R406-7) issued by Bowman Gum, 1953. Commercial color lithograph; Sheet: 3 3/4 × 2 1/2 in. (9.5 × 6.3 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Jefferson R. Burdick Collection, Gift of Jefferson R. Burdick (Burdick 327, R406-7.44). Right: Max Rigot Selling Company. Fireworks Display over Lagoon, from the Chicago World's Fair series, 1933. Commercial color lithograph; Sheet: 3 9/16 × 5 1/2 in. (9 × 14 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Jefferson R. Burdick Collection, Gift of Jefferson R. Burdick (Burdick 435, PC225-1.37)

Under the auspices of a generous gift from Beth and Leonard Wilf, the Burdick Collection has been systematically catalogued and photographed over the past year, with nearly 10,550 new objects appearing in The Collection Online with photography, and approximately 4,100 new objects catalogued. This includes not only the silhouette of Burdick shown above, but a set of remarkable postcards produced to commemorate the Chicago World's Fair in 1933 entitled A Century of Progress, which celebrated the centennial of the city through technical innovation.

Kaufmann & Fabry Co., Chicago. Hall of Science, from the Chicago World's Fair series, 1933. Commercial color lithograph; Sheet: 3 9/16 × 5 1/2 in. (9 × 14 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Jefferson R. Burdick Collection, Gift of Jefferson R. Burdick (Burdick 435, PC225-1.13)

The cataloguing project continues, as does the endless discovery of the treasures of American material culture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Burdick Collection was brought to the Met by the then-curator of prints and photographs, A. Hyatt Mayor (1901–1980), a great proponent of popular prints and ephemera. He personally valued this type of printed matter because it acted as an encyclopedia of social history; for him, there could be no clearer inventory of the range of interests of a given time and place. Burdick's collection of printed ephemera serves as source material for endless research in fields as varied as sociology, anthropology, sports history, engineering, urban planning, medicine, material culture, and gender studies, among many others.

Related Links
The Jefferson R. Burdick Collection of Printed Ephemera
View all blog posts related to the Burdick Collection.