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Conference & Fair EPHEMERA/18 March
20-22, 1998
Schedule of Speakers and Presentations
Friday, March 20 10 a.m.-Noon
 Products
of Intelligence and Diligence: The Shakers and Their Products
M Stephen Miller
The United Society of Believers, commonly called Shakers, is a
sect whose spiritual existence is underpinned by economic activity.
Beginning with the sale of garden seeds in the 1790s and continuing
with the sale of herbs at the present time, Shaker products have
been raised in 18 self-sustaining communities and marketed throughout
the United States. One medicinal preparation, the Extract of Roots,
was sold globally. This slide presentation looks at the tangible
remains of the Shaker community industries-ephemera-to survey the
impressive scope of their output in the 19th century.
M Stephen Miller is a practicing periodontist who has collected,
researched, and written about Shaker ephemera for 20 years. He curated
the first exhibit of this material in 1988 and subsequently wrote
A Century of Shaker Ephemera. He sits on the boards of Hancock and
Canterbury Shaker villages and chaired the Ephemera Society's board
of directors from 1995 to 1998.
The Ephemera of AIDS
Edward Atwater
What are the ephemera of AIDS? Why collect them? How and where
does one find them? How does one store them? What does one do with
them, once collected? These are some of the questions that will
be addressed. Emphasis will be on AIDS posters drawn from Dr. Atwater's
collection and specifically selected to illustrate the great diversity
of topics found in this format. Some are funny, some are serious.
Others are scary, or outrageous, or beautiful. They all are intended
to inform people how to avoid AIDS and to exhort them to use appropriate
behavior. Looked at chronologically, they reflect changes in our
understanding of the disease. More importantly, they show what widely
different attitudes toward sex and serious dis-ease may be found
in different countries and societies.
Those attending this presentation should be aware that some of
the images are sexually explicit.
Edward Atwater was born, raised, and has lived most of his life
in Western New York. His undergraduate major in history and a medical
degree from Harvard led him into graduate work in the history of
medicine at Johns Hopkins. For 37 years he practiced medicine and
taught at the University of Rochester Medical School where he is
presently emeritus professor of medicine. His historical publications
include articles about the medical profession, medical education,
and early hospitals. Long a collector, his special interest for
many years has been old medical books and ephemera. He began collecting
AIDS posters in 1991 after he saw one for the first time while riding
on the MTA in Boston. It seemed to him that such posters would be
an important part of medical history. A selection of posters from
his collection was recently exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum of
Art in a show titled "Graphic Alert."
Friday, March 20 1-4 p.m.
Victorian History Through the Stereoscope
Michael Hoeflich
This presentation uses stereographic images, primarily produced
in the United States from the late 1850s to the early 20th century,
as an historical source for under-standing Victorian and Edwardian
attitudes about such issues as race, gender, marriage, temperance,
and Manifest Destiny in the United States. Professor Hoeflich attempts
to demonstrate how photographers moved beyond the confines of portraiture
and landscape photography and into significant social narrative
when they began to produce stereographs. He explores why this change
happened and discusses the ways in which stereographs can provide
a very significant historical resource for understanding society
and culture in Victorian and Edwardian America. He includes discussion
of such publishers as E. & H.T. Anthony, Barker, WH. Jackson,
Underwood & Underwood, and others.
Michael Hoeflich is the Kane Professor of Law, professor of history,
and dean of the Law School at the University of Kansas. He holds
degrees from Haverford College, Cambridge University, and Yale Law
School. He is the author of more that 50 articles and 5 books on
law and legal history. His most recent book, Roman and Civil Law
and the Development of Anglo-American Jurisprudence, was published
last year. He has long been a collector of ephemera related to legal
history and has made extensive use of printed and manuscript ephemera
as a source for much of his scholarship. He has recently become
interested in the his-tory of photography. His current projects
include a photographic history of the law in Kansas and a book about
perceptions of law and lawyers from the 18th through 20th centuries.
The Art of Security Engraving
Mark D. Tomasko
Intaglio printing for security purposes is an art brought to perfection
in 19th-century America, developed to meet the needs of the banking
system, which before 1865 allowed most banks to issue their own
currency. While too long dismissed as only of interest to collectors
of bank notes and stamps, intaglio printing for security purposes
is the most difficult and expensive form of printing and produced
some spectacular documents. Mr. Tomasko will review the process
of engraving and intaglio printing, the history and development
of the art, and of the bank note industry in the United States from
the early 19th century to today. He will illustrate the design evolution
of some of the documents, including bank notes, securities, and
other items such as tickets, labels, and advertisements.
Mark D. Tomasko is a corporate attorney who continues to build
a reference collection on security, or "bank note," engraving. He
has written articles and given presentations on the subject. He
curated an exhibit on security engraving at The Grolier Club in
1991 and also curated the 200th Anniversary of American Bank Note
Company exhibit at the Museum of American Financial History in 1995.
He is particularly interested in documenting the picture engravers,
vignette artists, and bank note companies, and is one of the few
people interested in collecting and researching all periods of the
work.
Saturday, March 21 7:30 p.m.
Banquet
Scandalous Ephemera
David Tatham
Illicit sex, religion as a profit-making business, shady politics,
rumored pay offs-all these involving a national leader and reported
to a sensation-seeking public by a scandal-loving media. This all-too-familiar
scenario of our times had its modern beginnings with the Beecher-Tilton
Scandal of the 1870s. With a cast of characters that included not
only the nation's most prominent preacher (Beecher) and one of its
most promising editors (Tilton), but also such luminaries of the
era as Susan B. Anthony, Victoria Woodhull, and General Ben Butler,
the scandal and its aftermath generated a fascinating variety of
mostly satiric ephemera, from song sheets and trade cards to comic
weeklies and broadside cartoons, many of which will be shown in
this illustrated presentation on one of the most memorable events
of the Gilded Age.
David Tatham, former dean and professor of fine arts at Syracuse
University, has published widely about the popular and fine arts
of l9th-century America. Among his books are The Lure of the Striped
Pig: The illustration of Popular Music in America, 1820-1870; Winslow
Homer and the Illustrated Book; and, most recently, Winslow Homer
in the Adirondacks.
Sunday, March 229 a.m.-Noon
Home Away from Home: Motels, Tourist Cabins, and Auto Camps
John Margolies
This slide presentation brings to life the new types of roadside
hostelries that evolved to serve automotive travelers, starting
out with the days of camping out beside the road in the early part
of this century. Auto camps were succeeded by colorful "mom-and-pop"
tourist cabins, then elongated motel structures, and finally, the
modem chains such as Holiday Inn, which made the creation of motel
rooms an almost scientific art. These topics are brought to life
by combining rare archival photographs, postcards, and other motel
artifacts and documents along with Mr. Margolies's own color photographs.
John Margolies is a commentator, photographer, and lecturer on
American popular culture and commercial design. For more than 20
years he has explored the highways and byways of the United States
in search of unique and typical examples of roadside, main street,
and resort architecture. Among his numerous books is the most recent
Fun Along the Road: American Tourist Attractions. His photographs
and articles have been published in The New York Times Sunday Magazine,
Smithsonian, and Esquire. He has delivered lectures and conducted
seminars at major colleges and universities; taught at the California
Institute of the Arts and Pratt Institute; and has curated exhibitions
at the National Building Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Hudson
River Museum, and Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.
Paths of Promise and Trails of Team: Land Promotion in the American
West
David Farmer
Printed ephemera from 19th- and 20th-century western land promotion
reveals much about the way Americans approached the expansion and
settlement of their country. The motifs of national identity, bounteous
and productive land, opportunity for all, and the promise of success
in a new locale play out in a variety of ways, all calculated to
motivate people to pull up stakes, spend hard-earned money, and
risk failure in ventures they may have been ill-prepared to undertake.
The promotional ephemera that led people down new paths and trails
also reflects a variety of design and printing techniques, some
predictable, others highly imaginative. In an illustrated lecture
on land promotion ephemera, Dr. David Fanner will discuss examples
of the motifs found in the collections at DeGolyer Library, Southern
Methodist University.
David Farmer is the director of the DeGolyer Library at Southern
Methodist University, a major repository of Western Americana, Spanish
Borderlands, and railroad history col-lections. He presently resides
in Southlake, Texas, and is the author or editor of 11 books rang-ing
in subject from D.H. Lawrence to the North American Indian. He has
alto written or edit-ed exhibition catalogues, articles, and reviews;
delivered lectures at conferences and meetings in the United States
and abroad; and teaches in the master of liberal arts pro-gram at
SMU and Fort Burgwin. |
