As a teenager, Virgil Johnson [b.1918] became interested in the designs and symbols on cigarette packs like "Black Cat" and "White Roll", and he began actively collecting in the 1930s. His interest intensified during the 1940s when he was stationed in North Africa and across the Mediterranean region as a photographer with the U.S. Navy. Mr. Johnson collected cigarette packs for over fifty years, and was a member of the Cigarette Pack Collector's Association.
Approximately 6000 cigarette packages, foreign and American, arranged in 24 albums. Manufacturers include names such as those shown below.
Scope and Contents:
The collection consists of approximately 6,000 cigarette packages, ca. 1890-1997, arranged in 24 albums. The cigarette packages offer a strong base for research into the categories of visual imagery created, associated with, and manipulated for the sale of tobacco products. Researchers interested in the history of design will also find these packages a useful source, as they reflect design modifications (in image, logo, typeface, and package features) over time for virtually every brand marketed in the U.S. and an enormous selection of those marketed overseas, by both U.S. and other global tobacco concerns.
Series 3: BOOKS ABOUT TOBACCO AND TOBACCO COLLECTING These titles have been transferred to NMAH Library.
Arrangement:
The collection is divided into 3 series.
Series 1: Cigarette Packages
Series 2: Articles and Other Publications About Tobacco
Series 3: Books About Tobacco and Tobacco Collecting
Biographical / Historical:
As a teenager, Virgil Johnson [b.1918] became interested in the designs and symbols on cigarette packs like Black Cat and White Roll, and he began actively collecting in the 1930s. His interest intensified during the 1940s when he was stationed in North Africa and across the Mediterranean region as a photographer with the U.S. Navy. Mr. Johnson collected cigarette packs for over fifty years, and was a member of the Cigarette Pack Collector=s Association.
Related Materials:
The Archives Center is nationally recognized as a site in which to pursue research into the history of tobacco advertising. The Warshaw Collection (AC 60) include many thousands of tobacco advertisements and cigar box labels from the 19th and 20th centuries; the Ayer Collection (AC 59) includes advertising proofsheets for American Tobacco, Phillip Morris, R.J. Reynolds and other cigarette and cigar manufacturers since the 1870s. The Marlboro Collection (AC 198) includes print ads, company publications, and oral history interviews with tobacco industry and advertising agency personnel. The Walter Landor/Landor Associates Industrial Design Collection (AC 500) includes documentation on package design for numerous tobacco companies since the 1950s, and the newly acquired Sandra and Gary Baden Collection of Celebrity Endorsements in Advertising (AC 611) contains several hundred ads featuring movie stars, singers, politicians, and athletes promoting tobacco products since the 1890s.
4,000 cigarettes, also donated by Mr. Johnson, each contained in a screw top glass vial, were donated to the Center for Disease Control's Office of Smoking and Health in Atlanta, Georgia.
Separated Materials:
Thirty (30) empty wood, metal, and plastic cigarette packs are also part of the Virgil Johnson Collection. They are housed with the Consumer Culture Collections in the Cultural History Division, which also holds several dozen cigarette packs from the Walter Landor/Landor Associates Industrial Design Collection (AC 500).
Provenance:
The collection was donated to the Archives Center of the National Museum of American History in July 1998, by Mr. Virgil Johnson, a resident of Alexandria, Virginia.
The collection was donated to the Archives Center of the National Museum of American History in July 1998, by Mr. Virgil Johnson, a resident of Alexandria, Virginia.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research.
Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning copyright restrictions. Other intellectual property rights may apply. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
Percy B. Eckhart was a lawyer, a prolific oil painter, and a supporter of the arts. Most of the film footage in this collection is of travel, but there is also film footage of his family, and of a fiction film.
Scope and Contents:
This collection contains the films of Percy B. Eckhart. The travel film footage includes trips to the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, Virginia, Florida, Scandinavia, Northern Europe, South America, Africa, Asia, the Pacific, and Western Europe. The home movie film footage was filmed in Lyme, Connecticut; Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Charlevoix, Michigan. The miscellaneous film footage is outtakes and tests from a professional or serious amateur fiction film and Eugene Castle's "Hindenberg Explodes!" Castle's film is the only one in this collection that was published.
Arrangement:
This collection is arranged in 3 series: (1) Travel Footage, 1926-1936, 1949-1950; (2) Home Movies, 1925-1932, 1947; (3) Miscellaneous Film Footage, 1954
Biographical Note:
Percy Bernard Eckhart was born in 1877 in Lake Forest, Illinois. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of Chicago and his law degree from Harvard University. He taught public utility law at the University of Chicago and was a founding partner in the law firm of Eckhart, McSwain, Hassell, and Husum. He also served as legal counsel for the Art Institute of Chicago. His support of the arts included serving as a trustee of the Art Institute of Chicago, a founder of the Ravinia Festival association, and a governing member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestral association. He additionally served as director and officer of the B. A. Eckhart Milling company, a firm started by his late father; as a member of the executive committee of Montgomery Ward & Co; as a director of Chicago Title & Trust company, and the Champlain Oil & Refining company; and as president of the DeSoto Securities company, DeSoto Realty Trust, and the 208 La Salle Street corporation. In 1951, he received Northwestern University's centennial award. In his spare time, he was also a prolific oil painter (primarily of landscapes, some of which were exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago in the 1920s). Eckhart died in 1969 in Lake Placid, New York.
Sources Consulted
"Percy Eckhart Dies at Age 93; A Civic Leader." Chicago Tribune, July 16, 1969.
Chronology
1877 -- Born in Lake Forest, Illinois
1899 -- Graduated from the University of Chicago
1902 -- Received J.D. from Harvard University
1903-1915 -- Taught public utility law at the University of Chicago
1951 -- Received Northwestern University's centennial award
1969 -- Died in Lake Placid, New York
Provenance:
Donated by Wendy Williams in 2017.
Restrictions:
The collection is open for research. Please contact the archives for information on availability of access copies of audiovisual recordings. Original audiovisual material in the Human Studies Film Archives may not be played.
Access to the Percy B. Eckhart film collection requires an appointment.
The papers of Hildreth Meière measure 27.3 linear feet and 0.068 GB and date from 1901 to 2011, with the bulk of material dating from 1911 to 1960. The collection documents Meière's life and travels, and her long and prolific career as an architectural muralist through biographical material, correspondence, writings, thirteen diaries, files regarding her war relief work during the Spanish Civil War and World War II, printed and digital materials, extensive photographs and slides, eight sketchbooks, and two videocassettes and 93 reels of motion picture film documenting her travels, her volunteer efforts in Spain following the civil war, artwork, and home movies.
Scope and Contents:
The papers of Hildreth Meière measure 27.3 linear feet and 0.068 GB and date from 1901 to 2011, with the bulk of material dating from 1911 to 1960. The collection documents Meière's life and travels, and her long and prolific career as an architectural muralist through biographical material, correspondence, writings, thirteen diaries, files regarding her war relief work during the Spanish Civil War and World War II, printed and digital materials, extensive photographs and slides, eight sketchbooks, and two videocassettes and 93 reels of motion picture film documenting her travels, her volunteer efforts in Spain following the civil war, artwork, and home movies.
Biographical material includes an autobiographical narrative written by Meière, her many awards and certificates, membership information, passports, her U.S. Navy service records from World War I, documentation of her brief marriage and family genealogy, obituaries, and memorial service documentation. Also found are extensive writings and research conducted by Meière's daughter, Louise Meière Dunn, which include a complete list of Meière's commissions, detailed biographical narratives, and records of Meière's works held elsewhere.
The papers contain Meière's personal and family correspondence, travel correspondence, and business correspondence regarding professional activities. Much of the correspondence with family and friends was written during Meière's extensive travels over the world. Both family and travel correspondence have extensive indexes, summaries, and in some cases, transcripts prepared by Meière's daughter, Louise Meière Dunn. Some of the indexes, summaries and transcripts are digital. Writings include poetry and diaries kept during childhood and school years, travel diaries, essays and talks written about Meière's work, writings Meière prepared for committees of the National Mural Painters Association, and detailed travelogues of her trips to Constantinople and the Balkans in 1933, to Russia in 1936, her "Grand Tour" to Australia, Southeast Asia, India, Africa, and Europe in 1952-1953, and her "Holy Land" tour of the Middle East in 1954.
Civilian War Service Records document Meière's efforts at war relief organization during and after the Spanish Civil War and during World War II. The Spanish Civil War files include extensive photographs provided by the Spanish government as well as three motion picture films documenting refugees and damaged architecture and public artwork shot by Meière during a trip sponsored by Franco's government. World War II activities concern Meière's efforts to organize artists in the United States to design and execute murals and other works of public art at military facilities around the U.S.
Travel records include maps, ephemera, slides, and 83 motion picture films taken on trips abroad between 1933 and 1958. Trips include Eastern and Western Europe, the Mediterranean Region and the Middle East, South America, Mexico and Guatemala, India, Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Scandinavia, and the UK. The motion picture films are mostly shot in Kodachrome color and many contain intertitles prepared by Meière to identify locations for travel lectures.
Printed materials consist primarily of clippings and publications that reference Meière's work, contain profiles of her, or contain published writings by her. A single published educational film is also found, given to her by an Australian filmmaker friend. Additional photographs, digital photographs and moving images include personal photographs of Meière, with portraits by Peter A. Juley and Sons and Berenice Abbott, photographs of many of her commissioned works, and a few photographs of artwork by others. Home movies show Meière with friends in 1926 and 1940. Among the photographic documentation of artworks by Meière and others are motion picture films of the 1939 New York World's Fair, the D.C. Municipal Building Frieze, and the 1937 Paris Fair; also found are 311 lantern slides and 201 glass copy negatives of her own completed works as well as murals she documented while traveling, notably murals in Norway and Oberammergau, Bavaria, taken in the 1930s.
Eight sketchbooks date to her early years as an art student and artist and include many figure studies, landscapes, and theatrical sketches made at home and abroad.
Arrangement:
This collection is arranged in 8 series. Indexes, summaries, and transcripts prepared by Louise Meière Dunn that relate directly to archival materials in the collection are found throughout the collection with the material they describe. These indices are particularly rich in Series 2, Correspondence.
Series 1: Biographical Material, 1915-2003 (0.6 linear feet; Boxes 1, 14, OV18)
Series 2: Correspondence, 1901-2011 (3 linear feet; Boxes 1-4, RD19, 0.038 GB; ER01-ER03)
Series 3: Writings, 1904-1960 (1.3 linear feet; Boxes 4-5)
Series 4: Civilian War Service Records, 1938-2006 (1.3 linear feet; Boxes 5-6, 15, FC 28-30)
Series 5: Travel Records, 1933-1958 (12.8 linear feet; Boxes 6-10, 15, OV18, FC 31-111)
Series 6: Printed Material, 1913-1998 (2.1 linear feet; Boxes 10-12, 15, FC 112)
Series 7: Photographs and Moving Images, 1915-1966 (5.8 linear feet; Boxes 12-13, 16, 20-27, FC 17, 113-127, 0.029 GB; ER04)
Series 8: Sketchbooks, 1911-1922 (0.4 linear feet; Box 13)
Biographical / Historical:
Hildreth Meière (1892-1961) was born in Flushing, New York, and had a prolific career from 1921-1961 as an architectural muralist working primarily in an Art Deco style. Meière painted murals and designed for various mediums including mosaic, metal, and stained glass. In 1956 the American Institute of Architects awarded Meière their Fine Arts Medal.
Meière was educated at New York's Convent of the Sacred Heart, Manhattanville, the Art Students League in New York, the California School of Fine Arts (now San Francisco Art Institute), and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, in addition to pursuing studies in Italy. Her major commissions include the Nebraska State Capitol at Lincoln, the National Academy of Sciences, the Resurrection Chapel of the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. In New York, she designed the Art Deco plaques on the exterior wall of Radio City Music Hall; created mosaic interiors for the Irving Trust Building at 1 Wall Street; and provided ecclesiastical decorations for St. Patrick's Cathedral, St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church, Temple Emanu-El, and elsewhere. She also created murals for the Chicago 1933 Century of Progress Fair, and the 1939 New York World's Fair.
She was also an active officer in the Art Students League and the National Society of Mural Painters. Some of her most inspired collaborations were with the architect Bertram Goodhue in the 1920s, and only his sudden death in 1924 put an end to them, although some projects were finished with the successor firm.
Meière died in 1961 at the age of 68. Her work is remembered in several major publications, including The Art Deco Murals of Hildreth Meière by Catherine Coleman Brawer and Kathleen Murphy Skolnik, with photographs by Meière's granddaughter, Hildreth Meière Dunn, published in 2014; and the catalog of the 2009 exhibition at St. Bonaventure University, curated by Brawer and photographed by Dunn, entitled Walls Speak: the Narrative Art of Hildreth Meière.
Provenance:
A majority of the collection placed on deposit 2001 by Louise Meière Dunn, daughter of Hildreth Meière. The collection was donated incrementally by Dunn through 2012. Donations occurred 2001-2007, and again in 2010-2012.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires and appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C. Research Center. Contact Reference Services for more information.
Rights:
The Archives of American Art makes its archival collections available for non-commercial, educational and personal use unless restricted by copyright and/or donor restrictions, including but not limited to access and publication restrictions. AAA makes no representations concerning such rights and restrictions and it is the user's responsibility to determine whether rights or restrictions exist and to obtain any necessary permission to access, use, reproduce and publish the collections. Please refer to the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for additional information.
Occupation:
Painters -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Muralists -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Mosaicists -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Hildreth Meière papers, 1901-2011, bulk 1911-1960. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Funding for the digitization of 84 reels of motion picture film in the collection was provided by The Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts at St. Bonaventure University through a generous grant from the Ruth Dayton Foundation. Glass plate negatives in this collection were digitized in 2019 with funding provided by the Smithsonian Women's Committee.
35 Items (albumen prints mouned into album (2.5 linear ft.), black and white)
1 Photograph (black and white)
1 Glass negative (black and white)
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Photographs
Glass negatives
Albumen prints
Photograph albums
Place:
India -- History -- Sepoy Rebellion, 1857-1858
India -- Delhi -- Delhi
Date:
circa 1858
Scope and Contents:
35 albumen prints by Felice Beato, mounted into album format with captions, entitled "Photographs of Delhi and c.," depicting views of the Indian Mutiny near Delhi, India, ca. 1858. The photographs are an important record of buildings in Delhi which were subsequently destroyed by the British.
Arrangement:
One box; Arranged by size of material
Biographical / Historical:
Felice Beato (born 1833 or 1834, died c. 1907), sometimes known as Felix Beato, was a Corfiote photographer. At the time of his birth, Corfu was part of the British protectorate of the Ionian Islands, and so Beato would have qualified as a British subject. Corfu had previously been a Venetian possession, and this fact goes some way to explaining the many references to Beato as "Italian" and "Venetian" member of the Corfiot Italians. The Beato family is recorded as having moved to Corfu in the 17th century and was one of the noble Venetian families that ruled the island during the Republic of Venice.
Beato was one of the first photographers to take pictures in East Asia and one of the first war photographers. His photographs represent the first substantial oeuvre of what came to be called photojournalism. He is noted for his genre works, portraits, and views and panoramas of the architecture and landscapes of Asia and the Mediterranean region. Beato's travels throughout Asia gave him the opportunity to create powerful and lasting images of countries, people and events that were unfamiliar and remote to most people in Europe and North America. To this day his work provides the key images of such events as the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and the Second Opium War. The Indian Rebellion or Indian Mutiny, also called Sepoy Mutiny (1857-58), was a widespread uprising against British rule in India begun by Indian troops (sepoys) in the service of the British East India Co. Beato documented the aftermath of the gruesome events, depicting military groups, bullet-scarred walls, blown-out battlements, corpse-littered courtyards, and the hangings of mutineers.
Local Numbers:
FSA A1993.04
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research.
Rights:
Permission to publish, quote, or reproduce must be secured from the repository.
Genre/Form:
Albumen prints
Photograph albums
Photographs -- 1850-1900
Glass negatives
Citation:
Felice Beato Photograph Album - "Photographs of Delhi." Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives. Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.
Identifier:
FSA.A1993.04
Archival Repository:
Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives
From the Mediterranean to the China Sea : miscellaneous notes / edited by Claude Guillot, Denys Lombard and Roderich Ptak ; with the assistance of Richard Teschke
The ancient Mediterranean : [exhibition] Sept. 4, 1975-July 1976, the Brockton Art Center--Fuller Memorial ... in co-operation with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston : [catalogue] / text by Sandra Knudsen Morgan
Le Corbusier et la Méditerranée : ouvrage réalisé à l'occasion de l'exposition ... Marseille, Centre de la Vieille Charité, 27 juin- 27 september 1987
Peindre dans la lumière de la Méditerranée : Musée d'Israël, Jérusalem, juillet-septembre 1987 : Musée Cantini, Marseille, octobre-novembre 1987 / [conception et rédaction du catalogue, Jean-Louis Andral, Yona Fischer]
Title:
לצייר באור הים התיכון : מוזיאון ישראל, ירושלים, קייץ 1987, מוזיאון קאנטיני, מרסיי, סתיו 1987 / [עריכת הקטלוג ז׳אן־לואי אנדראל ; עיצוב הקטלוג יונה פישר]
Handbook for travellers in Turkey in Asia ; including Constantinople, the Bosphorus, plain of Troy, isles of Cyprus, Rhodes, &c..., with general hints for travellers in Turkey, vocabularies &c
The conservation of archaeological sites in the Mediterranean region : an international conference organized by the Getty Conservation Institute and the J. Paul Getty Museum, 6-12 May 1995 / edited by Marta de la Torre
Title:
Proceedings, the conservation of archaeological sites in the Mediterranean region
