Laura Lee Bird Collection

An Inventory to the Collection

Biographical Note

Laura Lee Bird, a native Texan poet and costume designer for the New York stage, received her B.S. (1929) and M.A. (1931) from the College of Industrial Arts. While attending CIA, she was active in literary and art organizations and associate editor of the Daedalian Her master's thesis was entitled "Original Designs of Stage sets and Costumes forThe Mikado. Her poetry had been published in Torch Bearer, Blue Moon, Kaleidograph, andPoetry: A Magazine of Verse (1933). Examples of her costume designs appeared in Theater Hits Monthly(1933). At the time of her death in April, 1980, she was the wife of Frederick R. Hammargren of Hollywood, CA.

Scope and Contents of the Collection

The collection contains around 756 original illustrations and costume designs for plays and musical works. Most of the designs are signed "Lauralee", some are inscribed with poetry, and many have notations naming characters or scenes. Also included are Bird's original poetry, and news clippings from the 1930's containing her verse. Although the bulk of the collection is undated, the documents that are dated are mainly from the 1930's.

Restrictions

Access to the Collection:

Open for research.

Publication and Copyright Statements:

Permission to publish materials must be obtained in writing from the Coordinator for Special Collections. Where copyright is unclear, all responsibility must be assumed by the user.

Administrative Information

Provenance

Unknown. Texas Woman’s University apparently accessioned these records in 1981, but provides no hint to the source of this acquisition.

Processed/Encoded by:

Penny Bell 2009

Detailed Description of the Collection