Sign in to Baker Library
The Kress Collection of Business and Economics Graphic Materials includes over 1,000 woodcuts, engravings, etchings, and lithographs on money, banking, and financial history from the 16th to the 19th century.
Collection Highlights:
The collection originated with the acquisition of the Bleichroeder Print Collection and was supplemented by prints acquired with Herbert Somerton Foxwell’s collection and later acquisitions. This collection includes over one thousand woodcuts, engravings, etchings, and lithographs from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. It is divided into the following general subject categories: views of stock exchanges, banks, mints, and treasuries; portraits of bankers, statesmen, and financiers; political and personal satires; national finance and taxation; images of moneylenders, avarice, corruption, poverty, charity, and antisemitism; and many prints on speculation and credit. Many prominent artists are represented in the collection, including Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Heinrich Goltzius, Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, William Hogarth, and James Gillray, to name a few.
The majority of the collection is available digitally. A guide to the collection with links to the digital versions is available online.
Seventy items from the collection are available digitally in the online exhibit Coin and Conscience: Popular Views of Money, Credit and Speculation.
