Donald Hoke (1951-) and Carolyn Hoke (1951-) are co-owners of Vintage Steam Products, LLC, which manufactures and sells restoration materials for Stanley steam vehicles in Texas. Don Hoke created the Virtual Steam Car Museum, Inc. in 2011. Sparked by eight years at the Milwaukee Public Museum curating the Dietz Collection, he started collecting typewriter ephemera privately and discovered eBay in 1995. A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for producing written characters using a key to strike an inked ribbon to transfer ink or carbon onto paper. This collection of typewriter advertising and ephemera offers great insight into the technological development of the typewriter through its beginnings in the 1870s until its eventual dissolution in the 1990s. The plethora of advertising ephemera helps frame the typewriter historically and sociologically, offering insight into the careers of typists and the migration of the typewriter from the office into the home. Trends in advertising and industrial design through the twentieth century are also represented in this collection and will offer ample evidence of these evolutions to researchers.

The history of sexual harassment in America dates back to slavery and domestic servitude in colonial times. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Women’s Christian Temperance Movement and groups like them, along with labor activists, lobbied to protect women from sexual harassment. This collection is a postcard with an illustration showing a male employee with a female employee on his lap in an office setting.

Springs Cotton Mills was a cotton textile manufacturer in Lancaster, South Carolina. It was founded in 1887 by Samuel Elliott White (1837-1911) and became a leader in the textile industry in South Carolina. Springs introduced a distinctive “Springmaid” advertising campaign during the 1940s and 1950s that used sex appeal to advertise the line. The ads feature sexually suggestive illustrations in the pin-up style and make liberal use of double entendres. Sexist attitudes and racial stereotypes are present. This small collection consists of a set of color advertising tearsheets for Springmaid Fabrics.