Collection Guide
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Finding Aid to the Duane Weston Antique Valentine Collection
1807-1984
BASC 18
BASC 18
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Table of contents
Contributing Institution:
Book Arts & Special Collections, San Francisco Public Library
100 Larkin Street
San Francisco, CA 94102
(415) 557-4560
bookarts@sfpl.org
Title: Duane Weston Antique Valentine Collection
Creator:
Weston, Duane, 1916?-1988
Identifier/Call Number: BASC 18
Physical Description:
8 cartons, 2 oversized flat boxes
(11 Cubic Feet)
Date (inclusive): 1807-1984
Date (bulk): (bulk 1807-1890)
Abstract: This collection contains more than 2,300 Valentines, 1,143 Christmas and New Year's cards, 214 friendship cards, and 286 miscellaneous
cards, as well as Valentine envelopes, paper lace, and decorative paste-ons. The collection also includes exhibition materials
and correspondence.
Physical Location: The collection is stored on site.
Languages Represented: Collection materials are in English.
Collection is open for research and is available for use during Book Arts & Special Collections hours.Collections that are
stored offsite should be requested 48 hours in advance.
Many materials are fragile and may not be photocopied. Copyright has not been assigned to the San Francisco Public Library.
All requests for permission to publish or quote from materials must be submitted in writing to Book Arts & Special Collections.
Permission for publication is given on behalf of the San Francisco Public Library as the owner of the physical items.
[Identification of items], Duane Weston Antique Valentine Collection (BASC 18), Marjorie G. and Carl W. Stern Book Arts &
Special Collections, San Francisco Public Library.
The Duane Weston Antique Valentine Collection was a bequest to the Library's Book Arts & Special Collections Center in 1988
from Duane Weston, who assembled a collection of Valentines over a period of years from 1945-about 1978. He first became acquainted
with Valentines on a visit in 1945 to the San Francisco Bay Area and later to W. Parker Lyon's Pony Express Museum near Pasadena.
He caught the collecting bug, eventually acquiring more than 2,300 nineteenth century Valentines.
The Duane Weston Antique Valentine Collection demonstrates the scope of nineteenth century lettering and handwriting, as well
as contemporary printing technology and methods used in the making of this distinctive form of ephemera. Researchers are encouraged
to discover additional resources about the lettering arts in the Richard Harrison Collection of Calligraphy & Lettering and
the history of printing ephemera in the Robert Grabhorn Collection on the History of Printing & the Development of the Book.
During processing, most of the collection was rehoused in archival boxes, with a few original non-archival boxes remaining
from the donor.
Most books in this collection were cataloged and transferred to Book Arts & Special Collections or the Business, Science &
Technology Center at San Francisco Public Library. Published items already in our collections were sent to the Friends of
the San Francisco Public Library.
Duane Weston, formerly Eugene Estes Thurston, was born in or near Detroit, Michigan, approximately 1916. He first became acquainted
with Valentines on a visit in 1945 to the San Francisco Bay Area and later to W. Parker Lyon's Pony Express Museum near Pasadena.
Educated at the Pratt Institute, graduating with a General Art Degree, 1930; and Columbia University (1931), Weston (under
the name of Eugene Thurston) was employed as a lettering artist and graphic designer by the industrial design firm of George
Switzer, 336 Central Park West, New York (1937-1938?); later, with industrial designer and commercial artist Egmont Arens,
480 Lexington Avenue, New York (1939). About 1950, he moved to San Francisco, where he subsequently worked as a lettering
artist and graphic designer with the commercial art studio Shawl Nyeland & Seavy (1954+). He was a colleague and friend of
Leo Holub, (1916-2010) San Francisco photographer, lithographer, and teacher. Thurston legally changed his name to Duane Weston
in 1978.
Weston began collecting nineteenth century Valentines in 1945, acquiring more than 2,300 specimens, and to a lesser degree,
other holiday greeting cards. His collection was exhibited at venues throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, including Samuels
Jewelers, 865 Market Street, San Francisco (1955), the Rudolph Schaeffer School of Design (1959), the DeYoung Museum (1953;
1979), the City of Paris Department Store (1970), and San Francisco Public Library (1978). Duane Weston bequeathed the collection
to the San Francisco Public Library in 1987; he died in San Francisco, April 23, 1988.
The collection contains a wide variety of Valentine formats made popular during the nineteenth century: lace paper, fringed,
pop-ups and movables, comic, "vinegar" cards, and ornamental; assembled from scraps and seashells, hand colored, embossed,
and chromolithographed cards. Valentines were often handmade or manufactured, sometimes by a famous designer. The collection
includes envelopes, as well as parts, scraps, ornaments: decorative paste-ons for the making of Valentines. Two scrapbooks
may be found in the collection: Valentines manufactured by Louis Prang & Company, Boston, Massachusetts; and the scrapbook
of Bessie Fitch Bedell, a collection of assorted paste-ons and visiting cards.
Greeting cards with other holiday themes are included in the collection: 1,143 Christmas and New Year's cards, 214 friendship
cards, nineteenth century friendship hairwork pieces, and 286 miscellaneous cards. The collection also includes exhibition
materials and donor correspondence.
Please note: Images used in the nineteenth century by Victorian designers and manufacturers have demonstrably changed and
may be considered offensive to twenty-first century readers. What might have been considered humorous or comically risqué
to Victorians may now be considered sexist, misogynistic, racist, gender phobic, and ageist. The collection presents a picture
of the mores, culture, and society of a specific population exchanging a popular form of greeting card.
This collection is arranged in 5 series. Series 1: Correspondence; Series 2: Writings and artwork; Series 3: Research and
subject files; Series 4; Exhibitions; Series 5: Valentines, holiday cards, and trade cards.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Valentine's Day
Valentines
Valentines -- Specimens
Collectors and collecting
Greeting cards
Christmas cards.
New Year cards
Three-dimensional greeting cards
English wit and humor
American wit and humor
Cruikshank, George, 1792-1878
Cruikshank, Robert, 1789-1856
Bartolozzi, Francesco, 1727-1815
Mansell, Joseph, 1803-1874
Greenaway, Kate, 1846-1901
Crane, Walter, 1845-1915
Howland, Esther Allen, 1828-1904