This is an interesting piece of office supply history.

Muskegon Michigan-based Shaw Walker produced almost every type of office supply and office furniture you can imagine. This catalog is a massive compendium of office furniture and office supplies for the Depression Era business. It has many pages of desks, filing cabinets, chairs, safes, counters, bank equipment, letter filing, folders, card systems, bookcases, binders, and much more.

Most of the merchandise in the catalog includes prices for 1940. There's extensive information about how to place orders, lists of customers of the Shaw-Walker company, and lots of pictures of offices that use Shaw-Walker products, often with identifying information about the company depicted in the photos. There are hundreds of pages of information describing offices of the 1940s throughout America.

It has a Shaw Walker Guarantee, a picture of its main plant in Muskegon, and extensive text detailing "What 'Built Like a Skyscraper' Means" (that's how they described their filing cabinets). This is not just a "comprehensive catalog. It is now a helpful manual of the best office practices. It starts with your office problems, and shows how to solve them, and cut office operating costs, with modern equipment and efficient systems."

This catalog is bound in brown hardcover boards with gold foil stamped "G. M. Harrington" in the lower right side corner of the cover. It was the personal copy of G. M. Harrington who worked for Shaw Walker beginning in 1929 and had a number of roles in the company including Secretary, Treasurer, and Executive Vice President. It's in excellent condition. Published in 1940, 428 pages long, 8.5"x11" with just a few signs of age including some scuffing of the cover.

This catalog from 1940 is an incredible piece of Americana and nostalgia.