A Butler Brothers Catalog Collection

In the 1870s, three brothers, Edward, George and Charles Butler, started a business venture that would eventually become one of the greatest business success stories in American history. Together, the three brothers came up with the idea to sell wholesale merchandise to retail stores through the mail and use catalogs as their selling tool. Butler Brothers opened their first warehouse in Boston in 1877. In 1879, the brothers moved their business to Chicago. The business expanded to New York (1880), St. Louis (1898), Minneapolis (1907), Dallas (1911), Baltimore (1930), and San Francisco (1932). Each catalog has become a small time capsule and includes all that was being manufactured and sold at that given point in time from the 1870s through the 1940s. This volume contains the glass and pottery sections from four early catalogs; November 1896, Spring and Summer 1898, Spring 1903, and Spring 1906.