Press of the Woolly Whale Collection

The Press of the Woolly Whale collection primarily consists of ephemera issued by the Press of the Woolly Whale between 1928 and 1941, including prospectuses, booklets, invitations, broadsides, holiday cards, labels, certificates, programs, etc., most of which were drawn from the stock of the press when it was donated in 1969 to the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University; books printed by the press were also received but were cataloged separately. The collection is organized into two series: I. Publications and Production Files; and II. Other Papers. Series I, Publications and Production Files, is arranged according to David Pankow’s bibliography in Melbert B. Cary, Jr. and the Press of the Woolly Whale (Rochester, 2002); the publications were listed chronologically, with ephemera following the major titles in each year. Accompanying some of the publications are production files kept by George Van Vechten Jr., the printer at the Press of the Woolly Whale. These files may include original and carbon typescripts, paper samples, title page designs, dummies, page proofs, corrected galleys, notes, receipts, and some correspondence with Cary, Frederic Goudy, and others. Some files also contain original drawings by Alban B. Butler, Warren Chappell, and Fritz Kredel; number 58, The Treasure in the Forest, has two original gouache paintings by W.A. Dwiggins, as well as a set of stencils he used to create one of the illustrations. Filed at the end of the series is a range of ephemera produced for the American Institute of Graphic Arts and National Orchestral Association. Mary Flagler Cary (Mrs. Melbert B. Cary Jr.) was president of the latter organization, and those items were not individually listed in Pankow’s bibliography. Series II, Other Papers, contains copies of the Buffalo and Rochester exhibition catalogs, obituaries for George Van Vechten Jr., a holiday card from Paul Wescott with a trade sign design for the press, and notes made by Mary Flagler Cary about press publications. Folders 175–178 were added to the collection in February 2013, as letters from Warren Chappell to Melbert B. Cary about Woolly Whale business had been found in another RIT Cary Collection location.