Circus, Sideshow & Oddities

1850 Spalding & Rogers Circus Broadside on Lid of Small Antique Footlocker. A buckram-covered wooden footlocker (19 ½ x 8 x 9”) with an illustrated letterpress broadside for the Spalding & Rogers “Apollonicon” pasted on the underside of the curved lid. Also includes an 1858 trimmed newspaper notice for Nixon’s Great American Circus which bears a similar type of illustration. Slout notes that the Spalding & Rogers’ Apollonicon “introduced the pipe organ as circus music with the addition of a parade wagon.”