Sales tags, undated

Yale R. Burge collection consists of sales and marketing material produced from 1948 and 2013, and reflects the firm’s antiques business, design of reproduction furniture and interior design work. It includes product catalogs with price lists, product photography, negatives and color transparencies. There are also original drawings of furniture. Of note are the watercolor renderings of room designs. There is a series of illustrations for a national promotion with Sylvania in 1967, in which Burge designed cabinetry around the company’s television units. Other renderings bear the label Burge-Donghia Inc. when interior designer Angelo Donghia was a partner in the design firm. Also in the collection are color negatives of the PepsiCo world headquarters in Purchase, NY, designed by Burge-Donghia in 1971.

The collection provides some insight into the place that Yale R. Burge had in the world of interior design. Yale R. Burge's national reputation is reflected in its advertisements in magazines such as Architectural Digest and Interior Design, some as early as the late 1950s, with a predominance of advertising tear sheets from 1970s-1990s. Publicity resulted in a number of high-profile placements in magazines and newspapers across the country, as evidenced in the number of PR clippings in the collection. Burge was considered an authority on design and in a1963 clip, Paul Palmer of the San Francisco Examiner wrote that Burge "has affected the look of today's furniture as surely as Dior put the New Look on the map."