The Big One -
The J R Burdick Collection |
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It is unlikely that many of our NZ members have travelled to the United States of America and very few would have visited New York. We have at least one member who has made the pilgrimage to view at least a tiny part of the biggest collection of cigarette cards, inserts, postcards, and other printed ephemera in the world. (Peter Bowie - who else? Ed.)
JEFFERSON R BURDICK in his short lifetime (25 February 1900 – 13 March 1963) amassed an unbelievable quantity of paper advertising material, much of it “Tobacco Advertising” (cigarette cards), playing cards, greeting cards, valentine cards, cigar bands, and much much more! Early in Jeff Burdick’s life, arthritis struck with extreme severity and it became necessary for him to give up his normal work of assembling electrical components for the Crouse-Hines Company in Syracuse. Burdick never married, lived in meagre lodgings and became obsessed with the study of American cigarette cards, editing a Card Collectors Bulletin and writing a series of books on the subject. He soon built up a fine collection of cards and ephemeral printed material but, with his health rapidly deteriorating had to decide what was to become of the results of his painful laborious efforts. In 1947 he took his problem to the Metropolitan Museum of New York. At first the Museum felt that it was unable to accept the responsibility for what was by this time a vast accumulation. After a time, the decision was reversed and Burdick himself was brought into the Museum to catalogue, classify, mount and organise what had become his lifetime obsession. The collection was presented to the Metropolitan Museum in 1948, and two to six cartons of prepared and completed albums were passed to the Museum every year, for the next twelve years. With his disability at an advanced stage every move was slow and agonising but the work went on and as the albums were made ready, they kept arriving at the Museum. It took another three years to sort and arrange the balance of the cards so that they could be handled and viewed with the least time and effort. He had brought his own little Art Nouveau desk from home and was installed in a tiny corner of the crowded Print Room of the Museum. American Cartophilists came from everywhere and he was given more and more scrapbooks, albums and even pots of paste to help with his task. Many cards are glued into the pages of albums but provision was made, where it was important and interesting for the backs to be viewed that a different system was used. His arthritis worsened to the stage where time was running out and it became a question of whether the medication or the disease would end his life. From time to time he would say, “I may not make it”. On 10 January 1963 at five o’clock he told the Museum authorities that he had mounted his last card and would not be back. The next day he walked from his hotel in Madison Avenue, 26th Street to the nearby University Hospital. Exactly two months later he died of an exhausted heart. The will that had driven him on to achieve his self imposed lifework, drove him on until his work was done. Then it snapped. A sad ending to this delicate, pain racked man who had made so much of a bad bargain, but had the courage to create a Cartophilic gem for the rest of the world to enjoy. A fine memorial to this unforgettable person. The collection is available for viewing by appointment only, from Monday to Friday, 2pm to 5pm, and can be found in the Print Room of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Because of the magnitude of the collection, visitors have to specify which albums they wish to see. The albums are quite heavy - average 12-14 pounds each (no metrics in US) and measure 12½ by 15 inches. (do your own conversions; Ed.) In total there are 660 ALBUMS & BOXES!!! Here is just a small sample of what the collection contains: TOBACCO ISSUES: Albums 201, 202, 203: Allen & Ginter - 4323 items Albums 204-213: Dukes - 7815 items Albums 214, 215: Goodwin - 2612 items Albums 216, 217: Kimball - 2151 items Albums 212-223: Lorillard, Buchner, & Mayo - 3168 items. ADVERTISING (Trade Cards): Foods and beverages, clothing & shoes, personal accessories, household furnishings, farm and business transport, hotels, amusements, etc, etc. These old cards, a minute fraction of which have appeared in "Cardlines" postal auctions; total 20,471 items housed in 30 albums & 42 boxes! CIGAR BOX LABELS - 6000. FOOD, GUM and miscellaneous inserts - 58,939 items contained in 70 albums. POSTCARDS (old of course) - approx 80,000. The list is bewildering and endless. Masterminded by one very sick lonely man, determined to achieve his chosen goal before time ran out for him. He did it in the light of loaded odds, with two months to spare. |