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Title: High art and elegant clothing. Merchant tailor misfits, 400 South Eighth St., first door bel. Pine. Private house. Please ring the bell
Description: Series of racist trade cards promoting a Philadelphia clothing store and depicting African American women. An African American woman, portrayed in racist caricature and attired in a striped head kerchief, a checked shawl, and a dress with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows, cradles her head in her hands as she leans on the windowsill of an open window and looks at the viewer. Other card depicts an African American woman nanny, portrayed in racist caricature and attired in a head kerchief, a striped dress with the sleeves rolled to her elbows, and a checked apron, who smiles and stands behind a picket fence holding a white infant at her side., Title from item., Date inferred from content., Gift of Emily Phillips, 1883., RVCDC, Description revised 2021., Access points revised 2021., Cataloging funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (PW-506-19-10), 2010-2012., Digitized.
Date: [ca. 1880]
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department trade card - Merchant [1975.F.583 & 584]

Title: The pic nic on the Fourth of July, "A day to be remembered"
Description: Copy of subscription print published in 1864 and 1866 for "Demorest's Monthly Magazine" after the painting of Lily May Spencer showing her family at a Fourth of July picnic in a grove near, possibly, the Passaic River, in Newark, N.J, the hometown of the Spencers. Shows Spencer's husband Benjamin in the center of the view, lying on his side, and with one hand on the broken rope of a tree swing. Family members surround him, seated and standing, and predominately laugh and clap, except for a boy who attempts to help him up and the artist who runs toward him with her arms out. Another child waves a flag while on her father's shoulders. In the foreground, in the right, an African American man servant with a picnic basket, pot, and ice cream churn at his feet is distracted by the husband and pours wine on an older female guest who scowls. To their left, an African American woman caretaker holds a concertina and watches the scene with African American man. Seated next to her is her young white charge, who rests on a dog. To the right, a boy, holding up a small instrument, possibly a noise maker, lays behind a log on which a young couple courts each other. They hold hands and the woman places a fan to her face. Lush greenery forms the landscape, and in the background, a path through the woods, and canoes, a sailboat, and boys playing at the river is visible., Title from item., Published and copyrighted by the New York Engraving, Printing & Publishing Company in 1864 and published by H. Peters and P. & J. Levy (N. Y.) in 1866., Gift of David Doret, 2009., Trimmed and strip of paper mounted on bottom edge., Description revised 2021., Access points revised 2021., Part of digital collections catalog through a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services as administered by the Pennsylvania Department of Education through the Office of Commonwealth Libraries, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett, Governor, 2013-2014.
Creator: Hollyer, Samuel, 1826-1919, engraver
Date: [ca. 1864]
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department **GC - Holidays - F [P.2009.6.1]

Title: Dixon's carburet of iron stove polish
Description: Series of trade cards promoting Joseph Dixon Crucible Company's stove polish and depicting a racist caricature of an African American woman nanny at work. Shows the nanny smiling, holding, and scrubbing an unclothed white girl, who is coated in black stove polish along her right side. The long, brown haired girl wears a red headband and is partially covered by a white cloth draped around by the nanny. The nanny uses a scrub brush under the right arm of the girl. The girl stands, her right leg raised, upon a table covered with a yellow tablecloth and stained by the polish. She looks down and touches the nanny's face with her right hand. She places her left hand over the woman's hand on her left side. The nanny is attired in a white head kerchief with red polka dots; a yellow short-sleeved shirt with red stripes; and a blue skirt. On the table is a plate; a brush; and boxes labeled Dixon's Stove Polish. Image also includes, in the left background, a stove with a steaming copper kettle and a partial view of a stove pipe and checkered flooring. The Joseph Dixon Crucible Company, established by Joseph Dixon in Salem, Mass. in 1827, produced graphite pencils, crucibles and stove polish, and relocated to Jersey City, N.J. in 1847. In 1868, the firm name changed from Joseph Dixon & Co. to the Jos. Dixon Crucible Co. In 1870 the firm won a trademark case against a Philadelphia competitor selling J.C. Dixon Stove Polish., Title from item, Printers and engravers include Major & Knapp Engraving, Manufacturing & Lithographic Co. (New York) and A. Gast & Co. (New York and St. Louis)., Advertising text printed on verso: Advertising text printed on verso: Established 1827. Dixon's stove polish; over fifty years in the market. Neat; quick; brilliant, and lasting. No dust. No odor. Nothing will make a stove so bright and cheerful for so long a time as the Dixon stove polish. It is by far the cheapest in use, in the long run. Buy it. Try it. Take no other. Pressed into a neat quarter-pound packet, absolutely free of adulteration. Six millions sold in 1880. Jos. Dixon Crucible Co., Jersey City, N.J., Gift of Emily Phillips, 1883. Purchase 1998., RVCDC, Description revised 2021., Access points revised 2021., Cataloging funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (PW-506-19-10), 2010-2012., Digitized.
Date: [ca. 1885]
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department trade card - Dixon [1975.F.235; P.9577.14; P.9599]

Title: Martyrdom of John Brown
Description: Print depicting the fictitious blessing of an enslaved African American baby by the radical abolitionist on his walk to the gallows in December 1859. Shows Brown in front of his Charles Town, Virginia cell, flanked by guards carrying rifles and swords. An African American woman kneels before him and holds her baby up while Brown lays his hand on the baby’s head. Spectators surround them, including white women and veterans, one with his arm in a sling. In the right, an African American woman nanny wraps her arms around her two well-dressed white boy charges., Title from original painting "John Brown's Blessing" completed in 1867 by Southern historical and genre painter Thomas Satterwhite Noble in the collections of the New York Historical Society., Purchase 1968., Description revised 2021., Access points revised 2021., Part of digital collections catalog through a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services as administered by the Pennsylvania Department of Education through the Office of Commonwealth Libraries, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett, Governor, 2013-2014.
Date: [ca. 1867]
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department **Portrait Prints-B [7777.F]

Title: Cornwallis is taken! The watchman's cry - Philadelphia 1781
Description: Print commemorating the surrender in 1781 of British General Cornwallis at Yorktown depicting the watchman's purported moonlit announcement of the event on October 22nd at the Philadelphia residence of Thomas McKean, the president of Congress. Near the "Geo. Washington" tavern, the white watchman, one hand raised, a lantern in the other, his mouth open and with a few teeth missing, cries the news to the crowd of men, women, and children surrounding him and McKean. McKean, wearing a silken robe, chin in hand listens. His face portrayed with a look of contemplation. The crowd, many in nightclothes hold candlesticks, pray, cheer, and listen solemnly. Included in the crowd are a white man veteran with a prosthetic wooden peg leg, an African American boy, an African American woman caregiver holding presumably McKean's baby in the doorway, a white man and woman couple facing each other and holding hands, white women in shawls and elegant robes, a seated Native American woman attired in moccasins, and a white man portrayed with a frowned expression near behind the watchman., Title from item., Date inferred from duplicate with variant imprint in the collections of the American Antiquarian Society.., Gift of Mrs. Francis P. Garvan, 1978., RVCDC, Description revised 2021., Access points revised 2021., Part of digital collections catalog through a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services as administered by the Pennsylvania Department of Education through the Office of Commonwealth Libraries, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett, Governor, 2013-2014., For further desciption, see Erika Piola, "Creating The Watchman’s Cry: A spectrum of diversity in an historical popular print." Representations and uses of the American Revolution in past and present 25 (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2025).
Creator: Doney, Thomas, engraver
Date: [ca. 1856]
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department **GC-American Revolution [8384.F.23]

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