This collection consists mainly of images of tools and machinery manufactured and sold by the Gardner Machine Works company. This collection has been organized into four series: Tools and machinery photographs and negatives; Trade catalogs and advertisements; Notebooks, drawings, and patents; and Scrapbooks. This collection would be of interest to those researching woodworking machinery, equipment, marketing, and design.

The Tools and machinery photographs and negatives series are arranged alphabetically by type. The tools and machinery represented include boring, chucking, cutting, gluing, presses, sanding, and sawing. The images date mainly from 1936 through 1957, many are undated. There are some photographs that date from the 1900s and 1910s.

The Trade catalogs and advertisements series contains images and descriptions of machinery including boring, chucking, seat presses, sanders and saddle seat machines. There are four trade catalogs for Gardner Machine Works. The advertisements are of machinery, tools, and furniture from competitors. A majority of the materials are undated, two catalogs have a date of publication of 1906 and 1913. The Notebooks, drawings, and patents series consists of images of machine parts and various notes pertaining to tools and machinery. There are four notebooks, two of which have pencil drawings of patterns of machine parts dating from the 1950s and unknown. One notebook contains lists of products and new tools purchased and dates from approximately the 1930s through 1946. The fourth notebook contains lists of tools and small ink or pencil drawings and dates from 1906 through 1909. The series also includes four patents that are accompanied by three patent drawings. The patents are for a machine for making saddle seats for chairs, a sand wheel, a tenoning machine, and a pneumatic furniture assembling press. The patents date from 1903, 1907, and 1952.

The Scrapbooks series consists of six scrapbooks of photographs and printed images clipped out of catalogs. Five scrapbooks are of Gardner Machine Works machinery, while the sixth is from a competitor, L.G. McKnight and Son Co. which was also located in Gardner, Massachusetts. While most of the scrapbooks are undated, one indicates that the images date from around 1911 and all scrapbooks appear to have been created around the same time frame.