Printing For The Modern Age: Commerce, Craft, and Culture in the RR Donnelley Archive
Web Exhibits - Special Collections Research Center The University of Chicago Library
  • Introduction
  • Richard Robert Donnelley: Midwestern Business Pioneer
  • The Family and the Company
  • The Evolution of a Graphic Identity: The R.R. Donnelley Indianhead
  • The Architecture of Printing
  • Training Craftsmen: The R.R. Donnelley Apprentice Program
  • Craftsmanship by Example: Fine Binding
  • Early Advances in Technology
  • Research and Development After World War II
  • Promoting the Craft: The Four American Books Campaign
  • "Undivided Responsibility": R.R. Donnelley Advertising, 1920-1945
  • "Undivided Responsibility": R.R. Donnelley Advertising, 1946-1965
  • Promoting the Craft: Public Exhibitions in the Lakeside Press Galleries
  • Printer to the Modernist Movement: A Century of Progress
  • Graphic Design in the C. Prentiss Smith Papers
  • Imaging the Craft: Photography in the R.R. Donnelley Archive
  • Printer to Chicago
  • Mass-Market Magazines Part 1
  • Mass-Market Magazines Part 2
  • Mail-Order Catalogs
  • Printing for the National Marketplace
  • The R.R. Donnelley Community
  • Defining Moments of the Modern Age
  • R.R. Donnelley and World War II
  • Collections within a Collection: Scrapbooks, Ledgers, Albums
  • Exhibit Checklist
  • About the Exhibit
  • Rights and Reproductions

Mail-Order Catalogs

In the mid-nineteenth century a confluence of events gave birth to a new and highly successful American industry-the mail-order catalog. The construction of railroads, the introduction of new consumer goods, and advances in printing technology all drew the industry to Chicago, which soon became a the hub of mail-order commerce and the headquarters for Montgomery Ward and Company, Sears, Roebuck & Co., and other smaller companies.

The growth of the industry was remarkable. By 1893, Ward's was receiving 15,000 mail-orders a day. Congress supported the new market by instituting Rural Free Delivery, and in 1912 a parcel-post law was passed providing for economical delivery of large packages. By 1924, more than six-and-a-half million Americans were benefiting from these services 

RR Donnelley's business volume doubled between 1915 and 1919 in part due to a 1917 contract to print the Montgomery Ward catalog. Work for Sears, Roebuck & Co. started at the same time. On a routine sales call in 1922, Donnelley secured the first significantly large contract with Sears for the Dallas edition of the general catalog (or "Big Book"). Then in 1928, as its contract with Cuneo Press neared expiration, Sears decided to turn the printing of the Big Book over to RR Donnelley and W. F. Hall.

Hall was to do the composition (this because RR Donnelley compositors already handled the Ward's catalog, with the danger that the two jobs would be mixed up); Donnelley was to do the printing. But when Hall's price for composition became too high, Donnelley took over the entire production of the catalog.

In 1948, RR Donnelley built a two-story, 45,000 square foot facility in Chicago exclusively for printing each of two yearly Sears catalogs with a combined print run of seven million copies. In 1964, RR Donnelley built a plant in Warsaw, Indiana, to produce the JC Penney catalog. Donnelley remained the printer for Sears's "Big Book" until 1993, when the retailer discontinued its catalog service.

7. Sears, Roebuck and Co. “Sears Presents the Finest, Most Beautiful Line of Kitchen Equipment to fit all Budgets.” Catalog, 1940. R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company Archive. 7. Sears, Roebuck and Co. "Sears Presents the Finest, Most Beautiful Line of Kitchen Equipment to fit all Budgets." Catalog, 1940. R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company Archive.
Printing For The Modern Age: Commerce, Craft And Culture in the RR Donnelley Archive. Kim Coventry and Maija Anderson.
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