Collection Guide
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Rosin (Nancy and Henry) Collection of Valentine, Friendship, and
Devotional Ephemera
priRosin
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Table of contents
Contributing Institution:
The Huntington Library
Title: Nancy and Henry Rosin collection of valentine, friendship, and devotional
ephemera
Creator:
Rosin,
Nancy
Identifier/Call Number: priRosin
Physical Description:
226.25 Linear Feet
(221 binders, 171 boxes, 1 oversize folder)
Date (inclusive): approximately 1493-2010s; bulk
1840s-1930s
Abstract: The Nancy and Henry Rosin collection of
valentine, friendship, and devotional ephemera contains materials from Europe and North
America dating from 1493 to the late 2010s. The bulk of the collection ranges from
approximately 1840 to 1930 and pertains to St. Valentine's Day, but subjects also include
holidays such as Christmas, Jewish New Year, Leap Year, Easter, and other celebratory and
commemorative events. A significant portion of the collection also contains materials
relating to friendship, love and courtship, religious devotion, and education. Materials
consist of greeting cards, stationery, scrapbooks, verse writers, rewards of merit, marriage
certificates, friendship albums, periodicals, pictorials, prints, drawings, illustrations,
almanacs, cutwork, postcards, sheet music, artifacts, and other three-dimensional
items.
Language of Material: Materials are almost entirely in
English, with a small amount in German, Hebrew, French, and Italian.
Open for use by qualified researchers and by appointment. Please contact Reader Services at
the Huntington Library for more information.
RESTRICTED: Series V. Artifacts and 3D objects are fragile and only available with
curatorial approval. Please contact Reader Services at the Huntington Library for more
information.
NOT AVAILABLE: Audiovisual materials in box 46 are not available for paging until
reformatted. Please contact Reader Services for more information.
The Huntington Library does not require that researchers request permission to quote from
or publish images of this material, nor does it charge fees for such activities. The
responsibility for identifying the copyright holder, if there is one, and obtaining
necessary permissions rests with the researcher.
[Identification of item]. Nancy and Henry Rosin collection of valentine, friendship, and
devotional ephemera, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Gift of Robert B. Rosin and Belle Rosin, December 2017.
Gift of Robert B. Rosin and Belle Rosin, December 2018.
Gift of Robert B. Rosin and Belle Rosin, December 2019.
Purchased for the Huntington from Boston Rare Maps, January 2020.
Nancy P. Rosin is a researcher and writer whose work focuses on valentines and other
ephemera. She is president of the National Valentine Collectors Association, President
Emerita of the Ephemera Society of America, Member of the Grolier Club, and the American
Antiquarian Society. Rosin earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Nursing Education from The
Teacher's College of Columbia University and was a registered nurse for more than four
decades. She and her late husband, Dr. Henry D. Rosin, assembled the collection over a span
of forty years.
Rosin publishes on the historical significance of valentine, friendship, and devotional
ephemera, and shares her research and resources on her personal blog,
A Victorian Treasury. She is also a volunteer cataloger at the Metropolitan Museum
of Art where she describes valentines and related ephemera for the Prints and Drawings
Department.
The Nancy and Henry Rosin collection of valentine, friendship, and devotional ephemera
contains materials from Europe and North America dating from 1493 to the late 2010s. The
bulk of the collection consists of greeting cards exchanged on Valentine's Day, dating from
approximately 1840 to 1930.
Early handcrafted valentine cards found within the greeting cards subseries demonstrate
folk art methods of pinpricking, paper cutting, paper folding, painting, puzzle making, and
illustration. Other cards dating from the Victorian era include comic or "vinegar"
valentines, paper lace valentines, cobweb valentines, and cards created by various printing,
embossing, and assemblage techniques. Many of the late 19th-century cards are dimensional
and mechanical paper constructions, made with a combination of die-cut scraps, honeycomb
tissue paper, and levers, strings, or wheels that enable the cards to pop-up or move.
Also included in the collection are greeting cards exchanged for other holidays and events,
friendship cards dating from the Biedermeier era, friendship albums with locks of hair,
language of flowers almanacs and booklets, matrimonial documents, sachets, verse writers,
religious devotional items, mourning cards, scrapbook albums, and correspondence relating to
love and courtship.
The collection also contains artifacts and three-dimensional items such as fans, jewelry
boxes, shadow boxes, and additional items, some of which include fragile, glass
components.
Smaller portions of the collection include educational ephemera, such as rewards of merit
and bookmarks, and American Civil War ephemera, such as greeting cards and song sheets.
Additional materials include artist and organizational files relating to illustrator
Catherine "Kate" Greenaway, printer Louis Prang, and 20th-century greeting card companies
Rust Craft and Norcross.
The last series of this collection contains research materials compiled by valentine
scholar Charles Albert Reed and by Nancy Rosin. The materials consist largely of secondary
sources, notes, and newspaper clippings.
In 2019, Laura Magnusen preliminarily rehoused the collection. In June 2023, Mari
Khasmanyan processed the collection and created the finding aid.
Portrait
photographs of African Americans,
photCL 665.
Approximately 160 books from this collection were transferred to the general collection in
2023 and can be searched in the Huntington Library's online catalog.
- Series I. Valentine's Day, approximately 1493-1980s; bulk 1850s-1930s
- Series II. Manners and customs, approximately 1720s-1960s; bulk 1840s-1880s
- Series III. Artist and organizational files, approximately 1870s-1980s
- Series IV. Education, approximately 1740s-1930s
- Series V. Artifacts and 3D objects, approximately 1800-1950s; bulk 1810s-1880s
- Series VI. Reference materials, approximately 1800-2010s; bulk 1960s-2010s
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Bookmarks
Christmas -- Greeting cards
Chromolithographs
Courtship
Cut-paper work
Daguerreotypes (photographs)
Decoration and ornament -- Biedermeier
style
Devotional objects
Easter -- Greeting cards
Education
Embossed works (visual works)
Ephemera
Fans (ephemera)
Female friendship
Flirting in literature
Folk art (traditional art)
Frakturs (documents)
Friendship -- Poetry
Greeting cards
Guidebooks
Lace craft
Leap year -- Greeting cards
Lithographs
Love
Love-letters
Love poetry
Love symbols
Marriage certificates
marriage portraits
Marriage proposals
Memory books
Paperwork (visual works)
Periodicals
Postcards
Printed ephemera
Printing -- History
Rebuses
Rosh ha-Shanah -- Three-dimensional greeting cards
Scrapbooks
Theorems (paintings)
United States -- History -- Civil War,
1861-1865 -- Greeting cards
Valentines
Valentine's Day -- Greeting cards
Visiting cards
Weddings
Beistle Company
Carrington & Co
De La Rue, Thomas, 1793-1866
Greenaway, Kate, 1846-1901
Hallmark Cards, Inc
Howland, Esther Allen, 1828-1904
Marcus Ward & Co
Mansell, Joseph, 1803-1874
McLoughlin Bros.
Prang, Louis, 1824-1909
Raphael Tuck & Sons.
Rimmel, Eugene
Rust Craft Publishers
Strong, Thomas W. (Thomas Whaley), 1817-1892
Taft, Jotham, 1816-1910
Whitney, George C., 1842-1915