Bertha Stuart Collection

Collection — Container: MS 7043

Call Number: MS 7043

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

This collection contains Barbara Adams Hebard’s research on Bertha Stuart, a book cover designer active at the beginning of the twentieth century. Hebard gathered this material with the intent of writing a biography about Stuart. The research became the basis for an exhibit of Stuart’s designs that was featured in the Rare Books Department of the Boston Public Library entitled “A Fixed Rule of Design: The Book Art of Bertha Stuart”. The catalog for the exhibit, Hebard’s correspondence with historical societies, museums, and Stuart’s family as well as correspondence between Stuart and Henry Holt, her employer, is included.

Also included are photocopies of Stuart's sketchbooks and book covers; photographs of Stuart, her book plates, and her watercolors; and information on Stuart’s contemporaries Julie Pratt, Margaret Law, and Anna Belle Crocker.

Dates

1996-2002
Majority of material found in 1895-2002
Other: Date acquired: 00/00/2009

Creator

Stuart, Bertha (Family)

Conditions Governing Access

The collection is open for research.

Conditions Governing Use

Items in this collection may be subject to copyright restrictions. In most cases, the Boston Public Library does not hold the copyright to the items in our collections. It is the sole responsibility of the user to make their own determination about what types of usage might be permissible under U.S. and international copyright law.

Biographical / Historical

Bertha Stuart was born on October 22, 1869 in Clinton, Iowa. When she was a child, her family moved to Chicago where her father opened a stationary store. Stuart studied design at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and in 1890, won first prize for Decorative Designing. The Stuarts moved to Portland, Oregon in the early 1890s. While in Portland, Stuart continued to draw and sketch.

In 1900, Stuart moved to New York City to pursue her art career. She attended the Women’s School at Cooper’s Union and also took courses at the Art Student’s League. In 1902, while at Cooper’s Union, she won the Bronze Medal for Designing among first year students and later that year, won a prize for Best Design in Silk. In 1904, she began to work for Henry Holt’s publishing company for which she drew 73 of her 168 cover designs. By 1912, changes in publisher’s binding styles eliminated the need for book cover artists such as Stuart; consequently she stopped working for Holt in 1914.

Stuart returned to Portland and opened an interior decorating shop called The Studio. Some of her clients included the Pittock Mansion, the Governor’s Mansion, and the Autzen Mansion. Stuart died in Portland on January 22, 1953.

Extent

0.25 Linear Feet

Language of Materials

English

Additional Description

Arrangement

Organized alphabetically.

Method of Acquisition

Donated to the Boston Public Library by Barbara Adams Hebard in 2009.

Related Materials

Stuart, Bertha,For you: a collection of old favorite love songs. PN 6110.L6F671902 c.1

Stuart, Bertha, illustrator. Riley, James Whitcomb, 1853 – Good-bye Jim. [verse.] Illustrated by Howard Chandler Christy, Decorations by Bertha Stuart. *A.7479.32

“A Fixed Rule of Design: The Book Art of Bertha Stuart” An exhibit in the Rare Books Department of the Boston Public Library, October-December 2009. (Exhibit material located in the Rare Books Department).

Processing Information

Finding aid written by Alissa Link, April 2012.

Processing Information

This electronic finding aid is transcribed from legacy data. In many cases, transcriptions were not verified against collection materials at the time of transcription. As a result, this finding aid could be incomplete and might only reflect a partial understanding of the material.

Statement on harmful description

Archival description reflects the biases of time periods and cultures in which it was created and may include direct quotations or descriptions that use inappropriate or harmful language. Creator provided descriptions may be maintained in order to preserve the context in which the collection was created and/or used. Legacy description and potentially offensive content may be made available online until a collection can be reprocessed because the access that they provide to primary source materials is uniquely valuable to the research community at large. Our efforts to repair outdated descriptions and to describe our collections more equitably are iterative and ongoing.