Every four years one form of ephemera is spotlighted: political ephemera and memorabilia. Presidential campaigns, conventions, and elections bring attention to what is produced by the campaigns and by others either in favor of the candidates or against them. Read article >>

Nearly 20 years ago, in 1986, Robert Staples and I received the Maurice Rickards Award for our creative use of ephemera in museum exhibitions. Read article >>

The other day, looking at a set of common trade cards got me to thinking about several things. One was the rich imaginations of Victorian card makers, who often created wonderfully exaggerated - sometimes quite bizarre - images. Read article >>

It makes sense that the world's most popular soft drink has generated tons of ephemeral paper since its debut in 1886. Phil Mooney, director of the Coca-Cola archives, guides readers on a comprehensive tour of Coca-Cola history on paper. Read article >>

For the collector or designer addicted to dramatic, high-quality material, this year's edition of the Ephemera Society of America's annual International Fair and Conferences ("Ephemera 27") was a massive 'fix.' Download article as PDF >>

Art Groten's "Paraphilately Page" has been appearing on page 40 of the ASDA's (American Stamp Dealers Association) The American Stamp Dealer & Collector magazine since its first issue. Read more >>

Companies have brand icons that they protect fiercely by under trademark laws. Industries may have icons using versions of a traditional image. For example, Bacchus and his bunch of grapes represent wine and the growing of grapes. His counterpart, Gambrinus, is not only the spirit, but the King of Beer. Read more >>

There's a series of postcards that is an interesting cross-collectible for those interested in one or more of (i) postcards (ii) Judaica, (iii) military history, (iv) First World War, or (v) ocean liners. Read more >>

This is the story of a 5-year journey in search of an engraving proofing press. Once ubiquitous in small print shops throughout the country, these presses were used to impress small engraved monograms, logotypes and other elements into stationary, envelopes, calling cards, folders and the like. Read more >>

Two 1884 letters from a Utica, New York traveling salesman to a "Miss Lola" are evidence of epistolary "dating" via some sort of 'personals' advertising. Read more >>

Despite its featherweight, printed paper from the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art exerted enough power back in the 1880s to ignite and sustain enthusiastic public interest in a beloved 13,000-pound curiosity named Jumbo. Read more >>

The engraving of social stationery has long been a small but vital industry originating in Western Europe, and subsequently practiced in the Americas and in the more affluent countries of the far East.  Social stationery played a symbolic role in the literature of socially conscious writers... Read more >>

Three years ago I was approached about providing images for the Sunnybrook Veterans Hospital in Toronto for a new program they were launching - Image Therapy. It was based on the premise that familiar images can help slow down the effects of Alzheimer's disease. Read more >>

The First Cruise Around the World
By John G. Sayers

Ephemera -- written and printed letters, documents, etc. -- is the key to primary source research on many historical events. In this case, it's incontrovertible evidence of the first true Around-the-World cruise. The cruise began in October of 1909 on the Hamburg-American Line ship, the SS Cleveland. Read more >>

Gazetteer Advertising
By Diane DeBlois

New York State genealogy and local history of the 19th century owes a great deal to Hamilton Child, a compiler and publisher based in Syracuse. His most prolific output was in conjunction with the 1870 census, but he began his county histories and directories earlier than that. As well, he branched out into other areas of New England. Read more >>

Sunbonnet Babies
By Molly Harris

At ESA 30 and at every postcard show dealers arrange their stock so that one spot is reserved for Sunbonnets. Ever since the early twentieth century when Bertha Corbett of Minneapolis first drew her bonnet-wearing girls they have been a favored collectible. Milady and her daughters had long worn hair-concealing headgear, but what Bertha Corbett drew, in response to a challenge, was different and quickly popular. Read more >>

Gentleman Gunboat Jack
By Dick Sheaff

Gentleman Gunboat Jack was, among other things, a pugilist, a circus performer, street brawler, bar fighter, bouncer, and tap dancer. And Jack was a ladies man. Also known as Jack Lawrence and Jack Colzie, he became a living legend in India in the 1920s. Read more >>

Hitch Up to Luxury
By Diane DeBlois

The first enthusiasts for camping with an automobile spent much ingenuity devising ways to incorporate tents, cookstoves, and other gear into running boards and rumble seats. Elton Jessup's The Motor Camping Book of 1921 was full of the conviction that "the fun of motor camping" was the way "to health and happiness" while following "the gypsy call of nomadic ancestors." Jessup passed on a myriad of nifty ideas including designs for auto-tents. Read more >>

Monuments to Legendary Horses
By Diane DeBlois

Equestrian monuments have been proudly erected all over the United States -- King Jagiello and Simon Bolivar, for instance, ride their bronze steeds in New Yor''s Central Park. And some of these monuments focus on the horses themselves, like the fine new statue honoring the Pony Express in Marysville, Kansas. But I've been intrigued by the roadside attraction of monuments that are actual equine graves. Read more >>

Fantistic Monumental World Fair Globes
By Dick Sheaff

Within the period between 1891 and 1903, plans were made to construct two different monstrously huge iron buildings in the shape of the globe, for two different World Fairs. Neither came to pass. Read more >>

Personal Souvenirs
By Nicolas Ricketts

Because the National Museum of Play at the Strong is the only educational institution in the world devoted to the study of play, we often collect material that other museums might overlook. One of my favorite types of object is the personal souvenir. Travel and tourism is a difficult type of play to represent, generally, yet children, adults, and entire families do it all the time. For many adults--think workaholics--a vacation is the only form of play. This is serious play; so how do we exhibit it at the museum? Read more >>

Scrappy's Theater
By Diane DeBlois

Breakfast cereal and giveaways for children were a mainstay of popular culture for much of the 20th century. In 1936, the Pillsbury Flour Mills Company of Minneapolis, in cooperation with Columbia Pictures Corporation, issued "Scrappy's Animated Puppet Theatre." Read more >>

Mah Jongg
By Bruce Whitehill

Mah Jongg, a game that was a craze in the U.S. throughout the 1920s, feels like a game that should have ancient roots, although the game as we know it today dates back only to the late 1800s. One source (a Google Mah Jongg timeline) places the game's Chinese antecedent at around 500 BC, but it has been the game of China for little more than a century. In fact, The People's Republic of China banned the game when it took over in 1949, outlawing all gambling activities, considered symbols of capitalism; the prohibition was rescinded in 1985, following a revival of the game--without the gambling elements--after the Cultural Revolution.Read more >>

Valentine Pioneer at Mount Holyoke
By Diane DeBlois

In July 1848, the corresponding secretary of the class of 1847 at Mount Holyoke Seminary, sent the report of their class president to classmates still at the school in South Hadley, Massachusetts.Read more >>

1862 Dakota Sioux Indian War Mass Execution
By Thomas Cardaropoli

On the gallows scaffold are 38 Sioux Indians, each wearing a hangman's noose. A large American Flag flies from a towering flag pole next to the scaffold. Surrounding the gallows are double ranks of U. S. Army foot soldiers and an outer ring of mounted cavalry. At the foreground right there is a crowd of civilian onlookers and at the left horse drawn, open wagons awaiting to remove the bodies of the condemned men. This lithograph captures the moment just before the floor of the gallows was to drop open with the cutting of a single rope. The large crowd seems to convey an eerie sense of "pause" and "silence". Read more >>

The Most Ephemeral of Paper
By Diane DeBlois

I know I'm not alone in having formed a collection of toilet papers over the course of my first European travels in the 1960s. This was before the soft, bleached white sheets-separated-by-perforations-on-a-roll American style was as widespread as today; when there were gritty or shiny, slippery or crisp versions of folded or single sheets dispensed in odd ways in public lavatories in England, France, Italy, Greece.Read more >>

Brought to You by the House of Farnum
By Doug Clouse

A few minutes of digging at a stamp fair can uncover gems of design and the printing arts. Most appealing for the low-budget, adventurous ephemera collector are the bins and boxes of postcards, used stamps, first day covers, and even old personal mail. Letters from Nigeria and Honduras on delicate blue stationery edged in red and blue stripes are there for their stamps, but also offer voyeuristic glimpses into ancient business deals and the plans of long-deceased pen pals. Read more >>

Docket Clue to a Petition Spoof
By Diane DeBlois

Docket information often provides the identity of a correspondent (if the signature fails); the date of the receipt of the letter (which, if the postmark is illegible, or the dateline missing its year, is often valuable). And, sometimes, it provides a clue that helps interpret a piece of ephemera. Read more >>

Wouldn't That Be Something!
By Dick Sheaff

What if somebody in, say, 1865 had decided to gather up every bit of interesting ephemera he/she saw, in crisp, clean mint condition, and carefully store each piece away under archival conditions? What if he accumulated every interesting ticket, invitation, trade card, poster, advertisement, mailed letter or envelope, piece of store currency, lottery ticket, booklet, pamphlet, almanac, sales brochure, price list, letterhead, billhead and store card he came across? And what if, further, he tried his best to concentrate on the most graphic, striking, well-designed items he could find? And what if he had persisted in doing this for twenty or thirty years, until it became his turn to be shelved in that Grand Archive in the sky? Read more >>

1876 Japanese Allure
By Diane DeBlois

The year is 1876; the place, Philadelphia. The great Centennial exposition (formally, the International Exhibition of Arts, Manufactures, and products of the Soil and Mine) had been open since May 10, but it was now June and the city was suffering in a heat wave. On the promenades of the fair, and in the buildings, ladies were cooling themselves by fluttering large paper folding fans. The fans were available, inexpensively, at newsstands and city shops, and were given away as souvenirs at exhibits throughout Fairmont Park. Most of the fans were printed with some image of the fair -- fine chromolithographs, crude woodcuts, or appliques. Read more >>

"Comin' Thro' the Rye" (Whiskey)
By Jack Sullivan

In 1782, the Scottish poet Robert Burns (1759-1796) wrote a poem that spoke of the sweetness of young love. It is the inquiry of a young swain of his girl friend that if they should happen to meet while coming through a field of grain, and he should kiss her, would her eyes well up in tears? The scene and the verse is shown on a Victorian-era trade card. Ironically, this image was issued by a company selling a laxative called "Sanative Pills." Read more >>

Swiss Communications Calculations
By Diane DeBlois

On the eve of the Great War, in 1914, a clever Swiss businessman invented and manufactured a "Posttaxenschieber" -- an ingenious sliding scale that could calculate the cost of every form of communication available. The device was patented, was available at Huber's shop on Tödistrasse in Zurich, and cost two and half Swiss francs. The franc was similar to our dollar, and was divided into 100 rappen, or centimes. Read more >>