Nancy and Henry Rosin collection of valentine, friendship, and devotional ephemera, approximately 1493-2010s; bulk 1840s-1930s

Printable guide [HTML]
Request items

Summary

Creators:
Rosin, Nancy
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.
Extent:
226.25 Linear Feet (221 binders, 171 boxes, 1 oversize folder)
Language:
Materials are almost entirely in English, with a small amount in German, Hebrew, French, and Italian.
Preferred citation:

[Identification of item]. Nancy and Henry Rosin collection of valentine, friendship, and devotional ephemera, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

Background

Scope and content:

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.

Biographical / historical:

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.

Acquisition information:

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.

Processing information:

In 2019, Laura Magnusen preliminarily rehoused the collection. In June 2023, Mari Khasmanyan processed the collection and created the finding aid.

Arrangement:
Organized in six series:
  1. Series I. Valentine's Day, approximately 1493-1980s; bulk 1850s-1930s
  2. Series II. Manners and customs, approximately 1720s-1960s; bulk 1840s-1880s
  3. Series III. Artist and organizational files, approximately 1870s-1980s
  4. Series IV. Education, approximately 1740s-1930s
  5. Series V. Artifacts and 3D objects, approximately 1800-1950s; bulk 1810s-1880s
  6. Series VI. Reference materials, approximately 1800-2010s; bulk 1960s-2010s
Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Access and use

Restrictions:

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.

Terms of access:

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.

Preferred citation:

[Identification of item]. Nancy and Henry Rosin collection of valentine, friendship, and devotional ephemera, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

Location of this collection:
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108, US
Contact:
(626) 405-2191
reference@huntington.org
Website