THE EPHEMERA OF BUSINESS

Commercial lithography in Wisconsin centered around Milwaukee area where it began in 1852 when Henry Seifert established a plant. Seifert would soon be joined by the Guglers and Jacob Knauber, as the early lithographers of Milwaukee . Jacob Knauber (1846-1905) headed the firm of J. Knauber Lithographing Company from 1867 until his death. Knauber was born in Heidelburg Germany in 1846 and died in Milwaukee in 1905. He became a lithographer and engraver in Milwaukee heading his own firm J. Knauber Lithographing Company from 1867 until his death. He was apprenticed to a lithographer in St Louis at the age of 15. The firm would be incorporated in 1888. Knauber had three sons who also worked at the firm, Arthur, Walter and Richard.

I have had a hard time trying to come up with a title for these graphic billheads. All of them have a portrait of what we may assume, is/are the proprietor of the business. All of them men, of course, not that women owned businesses weren't out there.

As promised, below are pictures and informative information about the wonderful eight billheads I bought online two weeks ago. One item to note about billheads, is while I tend to think of them as letter size or slightly smaller, some of the other UK billheads I own are very small. My guess is that making them smaller was a cost savings and also easier to package along with the article purchased. I also wonder if the standard letter size was not the standard back then - thus the smaller form. Most of the billheads are from business of Lincoln in the UK. Lincoln is a cathedral city and county town of Lincolnshire, England. The Lincoln Cathedral was completed in 1092 and rebuilt after fire and an earthquake in 1185. The Bishops of Lincoln were among the magnates of medieval England. Lincolnshire, the largest diocese, had more monasteries than the rest of England put together. One of the four surviving originals of the Magna Carta is now preserved in Lincoln Castle...