Overview
Papers of American theatrical designer, Robert Redington Sharpe.
Dates
- Creation: 1902-1938
Language of Materials
Collection materials are in English, French and German.
Conditions Governing Access
There are no restrictions on physical access to this material.
A portion of this collection is not housed at the Houghton Library but is shelved offsite at the Harvard Depository. Retrieval requires advance notice. Readers should check with Houghton Public Services staff to determine what material is offsite and retrieval policies and times.
Extent
5 linear feet (4 boxes and 11 portfolio drawers)Collection includes: original costume and set designs; working drawings; photographs of designs, sets, and scenes; notes; script materials; programs; clippings pertaining to Sharpe's childhood, student work, and professional career; family miscellany; lists and indexes of Sharpe's work; and other materials.
Biographical / Historical
Robert Redington Sharpe (1904-1934) was an American theatrical designer. Sharpe was born in Boston, the son of George Bertram Sharpe, an advertising executive and Leslie Redington Sharpe. In 1919 the family moved to Cleveland where Sharpe studied at the Cleveland Art Institute while attending high school. In 1922 he went to New York City to study scene design with Norman Bel Geddes, and in 1924 he moved to Los Angeles where he became the first art director of the Pasadena Community Playhouse (1924-1926). From 1926-1928 he studied in Paris and Berlin and in 1927 was briefly the art director of the Theater am Kurfürstendamm in Berlin. He returned to New York in 1928 and continued to design sets and costumes; his most critically successful designs after this time being for the Theatre Guild's Major Barbara (1928) and Tobacco Road (1933-1934). Sharpe was found violently beaten and robbed in the subway in New York on 12 May 1934 and he died of head injuries two days later at the age of thirty. Source: American National Biography Online, 2010.
Arrangement
Arranged into the following series:
- I. Production designs and additional materials
- II. Lists, indexes, and general files concerning design work
- III. Biographical miscellany
- IV. Oversized materials [not cataloged as of September 2010]
Physical Location
Harvard Depository, portfolio drawers
Immediate Source of Acquisition
No accession number. Gift of Robert Redington Sharpe; received 1926 April 20.
No accession number. Gift of Hugh Henry Sharpe II; Union College, Schenectady, New York (and of Valley Falls, New York); received: 1938 August 1. [nephew of RRS].
General note
A portion of this collection is shelved offsite at the Harvard Depository. See access restrictions below for additional information. Portfolio drawers are uncataloged and shelved in Pusey
Processing Information
Processed by: Bonnie B. Salt
NOTE: The portfolio sized materials have not been cataloged as of September 2010. See curatorial file for lists of these materials.
This original gift was described in the Harvard Crimson of 1938 as: "five portfolios of original drawings, portraits and projects; five scrapbooks of clippings, programs, and photographs; many manuscript notes; and costume sketches." It appears that the scrapbooks were dismantled in the repository at the time of the first collection processing.
- Title
- Sharpe, Robert Redington, 1904-1934. Robert Redington Sharpe papers, 1902-1938: Guide.
- Author
- Houghton Library, Harvard College Library
- Description rules
- dacs
- Language of description
- und
- EAD ID
- hou02106
Repository Details
Part of the Houghton Library Repository
Houghton Library is Harvard College's principal repository for rare books and manuscripts, archives, and more. Houghton Library's collections represent the scope of human experience from ancient Egypt to twenty-first century Cambridge. With strengths primarily in North American and European history, literature, and culture, collections range in media from printed books and handwritten manuscripts to maps, drawings and paintings, prints, posters, photographs, film and audio recordings, and digital media, as well as costumes, theater props, and a wide range of other objects. Houghton Library has historically focused on collecting the written record of European and Eurocentric North American culture, yet it holds a large and diverse number of primary sources valuable for research on the languages, culture and history of indigenous peoples of the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania.
Houghton Library’s Reading Room is free and open to all who wish to use the library’s collections.
Harvard Yard
Harvard University
Cambridge MA 02138 USA
(617) 495-2440
Houghton_Library@harvard.edu