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The Gerald T. and Charlotte B. Maxson printed ephemera collection contains over 5,000 pieces of assorted ephemera, the majority of which were commercially printed in the United States during the mid to late 19th-century.

The Gerald T. and Charlotte B. Maxson printed ephemera collection contains over 5,000 pieces of assorted ephemera, the majority of which were commercially printed in the United States during the mid to late 19th-century.

The Maxson collection provides a valuable resource for the study of 19th-century visual culture, commercial advertising, and humor in addition to the role of gender, ethnicity, and race in advertising. American businesses are the predominant focus of the collection, though many international businesses are also represented. While trade cards are by far the most prevalent type of ephemera found in this collection, an extensive array of genres are present including die cut scrapbook pieces, photographs, engravings, maps, serials, and manuscript materials.

The 23 binders that house the Maxson collection were arranged by the collectors themselves. Items are organized somewhat randomly in terms of topical arrangement. While pockets of related materials can be found here and there (for instance, the entirety of Volume 16 contains circus-related items while Volume 11 contains an extensive number of Shaker-related materials), for the most part any given subject may appear in any given volume. In some cases, items are clustered as a result of having been acquired together or due to a documented common provenance. Occasional typed annotations written by the Maxsons help provide additional context for certain items.

The Maxson Collection Subject Index serves as a volume-level subject index for materials found throughout the binders. The subjects indexed here are generally representative of both visual and commercial content. In addition to more general subjects, many names of specific people, places, buildings, events, and organizations that appear in the materials have also been listed. Researchers engaging with this collection should be aware that they will encounter numerous examples of racist caricatures, especially ones depicting African American, Native American, Irish, and Chinese people.

Leon Makielski (1885-1974) was an American portrait and landscape painter who, in addition to maintaining a private commercial portrait studio, taught art at the University of Michigan (1915-1927) and the Meinsinger School of Art in Detroit. His portraits are listed in the Smithsonian Institution's Catalog of American Portraits. and many of the portraits depicting University of Michigan faculty and administrators are displayed in University buildings. This collection contains approximately 180 of Makielski's charcoal portraits, about a quarter of which depict University faculty and staff, and the rest of which depict a variety of subjects including doctors, prominent politicians and others.

This collection consists of approximately 180 charcoal portraits made by Leon Makielski between 1923 and 1961, with most dated between 1924 and 1931. About a third of the subjects of the portraits are former faculty and staff of the University of Michigan, where Makielski taught from 1915 to 1927. Other subjects include physicians, politicians, architects and golfers, among others. Notable subjects in the collection include Speaker of the House of Representatives Nicholas Longworth, Secretary of the Interior Ray Lyman Wilbur, Michigan governor Frank Murphy, Michigan State Supreme Court Justice Henry M. Butzel, Polish Ambassador to the United States Titus Filipowicz, and pro golfers Al Watrous and Walter Hagen. Many, though not all, of the portraits are signed. The collection also includes a spreadsheet identifying the subjects of the portraits and any known details about each of them (profession, association with the University, etc.).