The collection contains various newspaper clippings, trade publications, brochures, photographs and negatives, notes, original typewritten articles, correspondence, and organization-related directories and other papers. The majority of the documents in this collection relate to the Grand Rapids furniture industry, but a significant percentage deal with other topics of interest to Lawrence Jessup. Included is material relating to the Grand Rapids Furniture Designers Association, documents, including directories, newsletters, financial reports, correspondence, notes, and articles; Social Civic Club documents, primarily correspondence; and files containing information on topics of interest to Jessup, many furniture-related. In addition, several brochures, newspaper clippings, photographs, and other documents unrelated to the furniture industry are included in this collection.

One significant non-furniture element is a set of 15 photographs taken at Senator Arthur Vandenberg's funeral at Park Congregational Church, Grand Rapids. Then-Congressman Gerald R. Ford appears in three of these images.

Most of the Jessup collection consists of documents gathered for research purposes, presumably for the writing of his articles; only a small proportion of this collection (perhaps 10-15 percent) consists of Jessup's original work. Of these documents (newspaper clippings and typewritten articles), many do not cite an author; it is therefore impossible to make an accurate statement as to how much of the material was written by Jessup. Nor is this collection comprehensive in terms of Jessup's work; furthermore, it lacks a full bibliography of any kind. In addition to the scarcity of information regarding Jessup's authorship, this collection lacks background information about Jessup himself. With the exception of the organization-related data, all bibliographic details concerning Jessup's life were found in external sources.