Recent Catalogs from Old Imprints

2022 Artist Print Catalogue We have serigraphs, lithographs, etchings, and engravings from the 18th through 20th centuries. Artists include Marcel Vertès, Hall Thorpe, Rudolf Veit, and Jean Charlot.

2022 Posters: The Art of Persuasion Striking graphic design aids mass communication in this newly catalogued collection of posters. We have airline and travel posters, World War One posters, concert and movie posters, and more!

Birds Catalogue 2022 Our collection of bird prints includes works by some of the most famous names in ornithological illustration history: George Edwards, Cornelius Nozeman, Mark Catesby, John Gould, Edward Lear, and Johannes Keulemans, and more. As Jean Anker wrote in Bird Books and Bird Art, “Among the many fellow creatures that man finds around him hardly any have had such power to attract his attention, occupy his thoughts, or fire his imagination as birds”.

Christmas and Holiday Catalogue 2021 Christmas and holiday-themed items from the late 19th to mid 20th centuries, most of which are newly catalogued. Christmas-themed political cartoons, toy advertisements, illustrations by Coles Phillips and Jessie M. King, and more.

Art Deco Catalogue - November 2021 We have Deco-influenced magazines, wallpaper sample books, theater programs, and maps from the early 20th century, as well as a Chinese painting from the 19th century that serves as a visual forerunner. Come explore the World of Tomorrow with bright colors and geometric shapes, Streamline Moderne architecture, and glimpses of the iconic Trylon and Perisphere from the 1939 World’s Fair in New York.

Magazines—late 19th to mid-20th centuries—October 2021 New acquisitions in the magazine department, combined with a few older items that enhance the collection. Architecture, interior design, politics, fashion, social history, and beautiful period advertising.

Late 19th Century Victorian England Dreams: PEARS’ CHROMOLITHOGRAPHS The lithographs in this catalogue were sold with Pears' Annual, a yearly volume of fiction accompanied by up to four high-quality lithographs ready to frame. The annual was sold for one shilling, placing fine art within the reach of people who would never otherwise have been able to afford it. These chromolithographs required a separate block for each color in a lengthy process that resulted in incredibly rich images. We have added an extra lithograph from the Detroit Publishing Company that matches the spirit of Pears'.

RARE BOOKS LA - SANTA MONICA 2021 Old Imprints catalogue for Rare Books LA - Santa Monica, a hybrid in-person and virtual book fair. The virtual book fair, using the Getman’s Virtual platform, ran from Thursday, September 30 through Sunday, October 3. We created a special catalogue that combines our book fair items with other rare books, maps and prints -- a celebration of knowledge and beauty with a California emphasis. Please enjoy!

Miami International Map Fair 2021 - the Virtual equivalent… Travel to Miami and beyond with a selection of modestly priced maps and atlases from the world around

Firsts London Virtual Fair November 2020 - 19th & 20th Century Travel & More… Prints, ephemera, books & maps to voyage with while we are staying close to home...

Virtually at the Brooklyn Book & Paper Show September 2020 From Women's Suffrage to New York beer, this brief list of 15 items will give you something to think about...

Antique Botanical Prints Summer Sale Botanical prints from the 1500s to the 1900s, offered this month at a SUMMER DISCOUNT OF 30% off the regular retail price.

MAGAZINES OF HISTORICAL & CONTEMPORARY INTEREST - FEBRUARY 2020 This catalog is a brief extract of our latest listing of forty late 19th century to mid 20th century magazines covering items of such contemporary interest as immigration, women's liberation and war, and a bound volume of issues of Collier's magazine with Arthur Conan Doyle's famous detective, Sherlock Holmes, represented in the magazine by three separate stories with stunning color covers of the detective by F.D. Steele.

A Magazine’s Eye View of the 20th Century Browse our latest additions of magazines from the twentieth century, full of lessons from the past in words and pictures and find out (or be reminded) of what we can learn from the past...
The catalog is viewable as a downloadable pdf and also on our website at https://www.oldimprints.com/searchResults.php?action=catalog&category_id=1544

San Francisco Map Fair September 2018 - Pictorial Maps of the Twentieth Century A selection of colorful and highly decorative maps produced for industry advertising, tourism, education and propaganda purposes

Tokyo International Antiquarian Book Fair Catalogue March 2018 We are pleased to present here a brief selection of the diverse stock that we will be exhibiting at the Tokyo International Antiquarian Book Fair March 23 to March 25 2018. Please visit our website at www.oldimprints.com for a more complete selection.

Ephemera, Maps and Books - A California International Book Fair Selection We invite you to visit us at booth 507 at the California International Antiquarian Book Fair, February 9-11, 2018
We will be exhibiting a wide variety of ephemera, maps and books, many of which are pictured in this catalogue.

PICTORIAL MAPS & EPHEMERA: Florida, California & Further Afield… February 2018 A selection of pictorial maps and ephemera for those attending the Miami International Map Fair February 3 and 4, the ABAA International Antiquarian Book Fair in Pasadena, California on February 9 to 11, and lovers of historical graphics everywhere.
Where ever this list finds you, we send all best wishes for 2018.
Elisabeth Burdon & Craig Clinton

A SHORT LIST OF FILM NOIR CLASSIC MOVIE POSTERS 1948-1950 The distinctive style of movies of the golden age of Film Noir, that genre of Hollywood crime dramas infused with liberal doses of sex and cynicism, is captured in the striking graphics of these classic movie posters. The portrait that emerges of a darker side of mid-twentieth century America makes them a compelling resource for the study of that period as well as for film history archives.

The light-hearted Gary Cooper / Barbara Stanwyck comedy “Ball of Fire” of 1941 that we include in this listing drives home this contrast…but no matter what, somebody is going to get burned...

San Francisco Map Fair September 15-17, 2017 A Selection of 19th & 20th Century Pictorial Maps Old Imprints will be exhibiting at the inaugural San Francisco Map Fair to be held September 15 to 17, 2017 at The Regency Center, 1290 Sutter Street in San Francisco. For those unable to attend we offer a catalog of select items that we will be exhibiting featuring chiefly maps of California as well as examples of maps from other places. Additional images and condition description are available on our website, together with a more complete listing of highlights. Maps in this catalog are arranged by category: 1) California, 2) the United States, and 3) the World.
We hope that you will enjoy this selection.

What’s on the menu?...Vintage Food and Drink Menus 1926-1967 We have had fun putting together our latest ephemera list, this one comprised of vintage menus, most from restaurants in the United States, but British, Canadian, and Mexican restaurants are also included. A number of the menus represent Polynesian-themed restaurants, a mid-twentieth century vogue that, in some menu listings, conflated Chinese food with the South Pacific. Occasionally a menu's emphasis is directed toward offerings from the bar, while others are decidedly discrete: "Could we suggest a glass of wine before dinner?" The menus represent a 40 year span, feature great graphics, prices that make you wonder and drinks that make you thirsty...

UNCOMMON (AND OCCASIONALLY ODD) BRITISH AND AMERICAN THEATRE BOOKS AND EPHEMERA A short and varied list of ephemera and books relating (mostly) to 19th century theatre in England and the United States. Items include an 1880 color lithograph of Sarah Bernhardt, three 1880s "Garden Theatre" programs from Uhrig's Cave in St. Louis and a program for Balieff's theatre touring in New York.

20th Century Pictorial Maps - Old Imprints at the Miami International Map Fair, HistoryMiami 2017 Oldimprints.com will be exhibiting at the Miami International Map Fair at HistoryMiami February 4-5, 2017. This year one of the map fair events, with oldimprints participating, consists of a panel focusing on the institutional, research, and private collecting approaches to the study of twentieth century pictorial maps. It is gratifying to see the growing interest in these colorful and frequently humorous maps, especially as their ephemeral nature often belies their significance as repositories of historical and social interest.

This pdf catalogue is a selection from our latest catalogue of 20th century pictorial maps. The complete catalogue may be viewed online at www.oldimprints.com

Thank you for your interest,
Elisabeth and Craig

SIXTY FIVE YEARS OF AMERICAN HOMES: House Plan Catalogs 1900-1965 Old Imprints is pleased to offer our latest catalog of vintage house plan booklets and brochures dating from the 1900s through the 1960s. These “pattern books,” depicting a home’s exterior together with detailed floor plans and enticing descriptive paragraphs, feature page after page of designs for homes both large and small. The images and evocative language employed in the catalogs and brochures engaged the imaginations of readers of an earlier era as they pondered the virtues or liabilities of individual designs. Insidiously, the dream of home ownership took hold.

PRODUCTS FOR THE HOME Manufacturers’ Catalogs 1900s - 1950s This listing contains a wide variety of pamphlets, brochures and catalogs devoted to products for the American home—products manufactured to promote comfort or convenience, often enhanced (so it is claimed) by aesthetic pleasure derived from innovative color or design. These “home product” advertising publications date primarily from the first half of the 20th century, and their relevance to the home is at times complicated by goods manufactured by firms seeking domestic as well as commercial outlets for their product .Then there are the curiosities, of which there appear to be no shortage: for example the “Secret Door Openers” (promoted in item 53871.) Some of the products included in the list, glowingly described by their manufacturers, were subsequently found to be health hazards (for instance, propane gas refrigerators, asbestos floor tiles, wood products enhanced by “toxic preservation” etc.). For those interested in oddities or historic exemplars associated with products for the home, or in the projection of the “new” or “modern” advanced by manufacturers in their focused appeals to female “home-makers,” the catalogs and brochures listed should prove interesting and enlightening.

Pictorial Maps Listing May 2016 - Highlights Old Imprints is pleased to present some particularly interesting pictorial maps in this, our second listing of the year.

- several fine aviation era maps by Ernest Clegg, Kenneth Thompson, Ruth Taylor White and L. Helguera

- maps of Australia, Canada and New Zealand by MacDonald Gill whose work led the renaissance of decorative mapmaking in the early 20th century

- work by important American pictorial map makers Jo Mora, Ernest Dudley Chase, Edwin Olsen and Blake Clark

- a map of Spokane, Washington a fine example of late 19th century bird's eye views

And here's your chance if you have never seen a Willy Nilly map or a "Fun Map"...

The pdf catalog contains highlights of the full listing which can be viewed online at www.oldimprints.com

A Catalog of Theatrical Ephemera September 2015 Craig Clinton has just prepared A Catalog of Theatrical Ephemera, including items such as play bills, prints and magazines, covering the following topic categories: Actors, Japanese Theatre Prints, Opera, Play Ephemera, Portraits, Programs/Broadsides, Scenery, Sheet Music, Spectacles, Theatre History, Views, Miscellaneous. This richly illustrated catalog provides a fascinating view into the world of the theater from the eighteenth century to the recent past. For those with an interest in the topic, there is much to look at. The pdf catalog available for download here orders these items chronologically within the topic categories. The items can also be viewed online at www.oldimprints.com. In either format we hope that exploration of this catalog will be both an enjoyable and a worthwhile activity.

ILLUSTRATED CHILDREN’S BOOKS July 2014

Our latest children’s book list offers an engrossing array of books from the 1850s to the 1950s.  As usual there’s much enlightening and enjoyable between these covers… If you’re ever concerned about the violence that young people are exposed to nowadays, you might be relieved to know that innocents of 100 years ago were being molded by tales such as that of Morgiana in “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” (1858 edition) who pours boiling oil into the large jars containing the 40 thieves “thus stifling and killing them all.”  Or take a look at the beautiful interior of the home of the Three Bears as depicted by Frederick Richardson in “Old Old Tales Retold.  Volland Edition.  Eight Best-Beloved Folk Stories for Children” filled with other full page color illustrations of many favorite tales.

VINTAGE HOUSE PLAN EPHEMERA - the American dream from 1890 to 1950 “Home reflects character. More, it moulds character. Home is the image of thought, exposed, inviting the gaze of the world. As your home is, so are you. Then make your home as you want to be—in good taste, dignified, ennobling, to be admired” (Building with Assurance, 1921). The dream of home ownership has been a constant in the American psyche for more than a century; this selection of house plan booklets from the 1890s to the 1950s demonstrates how diversely it has been realised, mirroring the profound changes in the lifestyle of the American middle class.