Paul Elder: A Literary Life in Seven Bookstores

Paul Elder: A Literary Life in Seven Bookstores

Paul Elder’s bookstores were a familiar sight in downtown San Francisco for seventy years, but he preferred to call himself a “Western Publisher.” He issued over four hundred titles in his career, beginning in 1898 in partnership with Morgan Shepard, then from 1903 as Paul Elder & Company. In this exhibition, we present many of […]

Creatures of Commerce: Animal Advertising Ephemera from the Bruce Shyer Collection

Humans have been fascinated by animal imagery since the prehistoric era when cavemen painted images of animals on walls to symbolically capture their prey and to record their observations. With the advent of the printing press, animal imagery was used as a symbol for the press itself. For example, the great fifteenth century printer Aldus […]