Trade Catalogues & the American Home is an essential visual record of a variety of products and facilitate research into popular culture, material culture, social norms and attitudes, as well as the history of marketing, business, and technology.
These documents provide evidence of the evolution of distribution and communication systems linking manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers, and consumers across the emerging United States and beyond. They document the changing commercial tastes and fashions of the consumer over a period of rapid growth, expansion and crisis (both at home and overseas), revealing contemporary prices and economic expenditure for households and individuals on a range of products.
This database includes materials from the The Romaine Trade Catalogue Collection held at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and from the Winterthur Library and Hagley Museum and Library.
