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Conference & Fair, EPHEMERA
25, March 18-20, 2005
Schedule of Events
Thursday, March 17th
9 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Board of Directors’ meeting
6 p.m. - 8 p.m.
Board reception for early arrivals. Join us for an evening with
old and new friends, and be fresh for the conference on Friday morning.
Friday, March 18th
Four morning conference sessions:
9 a.m.
Biography via Ephemera: Maurice Glauber &
Globe Clothing Store of Cripple Creek, Colorado
Cal Otto
In 1893 the gold rush City of Cripple Creek was at its peak. The
population had soared to more than 50,000 people making it one of
the largest cities in Colorado. With the boom in gold mining came
a rapid growth in commercial firms. This is the story of The Globe
Men’s Clothing Store and its owner Moritz Glauber. Slides will
tell the story with ephemera found in an abandoned building in Cripple
Creek. A drawing will be held after the talk with gold nuggets as
the prize!
Calvin Otto, who received the Rickards Award in 2002, was a founding
director of both The Ephemera Society (UK) and The Ephemera Society
of America. He resides in Colorado Springs, Colorado where he serves
as President of the Pikes Peak Library District Foundation and as
a trustee on the library board. He is an avid collector of ephemera
relating to Colorado gold mining and related topics.
9:55 a.m.
The Secret Life of Victorian Cards
Barbara Rusch
The Victorians had a sense of occasion and even the most mundane
aspects of daily life were ritualized with the aid of an appropriate
card. From casual afternoon visits to formal balls, from the intimate
conventions of the family circle to the culture of trade and commerce,
cards helped create a sense of ceremony, defining social status
and forming part of the grand narrative of the Victorian era.
Barbara Rusch has been a collector of 19th-century ephemera, both
printed and handwritten, for 25 years. In 1987, she founded the
Ephemera Society of Canada, and still serves as its president. She
is the editor of its publication, Ephemera Canada, writes and lectures
on ephemera-related subjects, and has organized exhibitions of ephemera
at museums, galleries, universities, libraries, and synagogues in
the Toronto area. Barbara is the recipient of the 1989 Maurice Rickards
Award and the 1992 Samuel Pepys Award. She is listed as an ephemerist
in Canadian Who’s Who and Who’s Who of Canadian Women.
10:50 a.m.
A Brief Survey of Early American Book Salesmen’s
Sample Books
Marcus McCorison
Publications of all kinds have been sold by subscription for centuries.
Marc’s talk on 19th century American book salesmen’s “dummies”
will deal with one relatively brief aspect of this age-old practice.
His presentation will be illustrated with examples of salesmen’s
sample books found in the extensive collections of the American
Antiquarian Society.
Marcus McCorison is the president emeritus of the American Antiquarian
Society, having served that institution from 1960 until 1992. An
enthusiastic, institutional collector of American ephemera of the
18th and 19th centuries, particularly relating to the printing and
publishing trades, he was awarded the Samuel Pepys Medal by The
Ephemera Society (London) in 1980 and the Maurice Rickards Award
by The Ephemera Society of America in 2000.
11:45 a.m.
Benjamin Franklin: In Search of a Better
World — Overview of an Exhibition
Barbara Charles & Robert Staples
"Benjamin Franklin: In
Search of a Better World" is a major traveling exhibition,
the centerpiece of the 300th anniversary celebration of Franklin's
birth. It opened at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia
December 15th. Staples & Charles are the designers of the exhibition.
Robert Staples and Barbara Charles will give an overview of the
exhibition and talk about how their interest in ephemera shaped
their ideas for the exhibition. Titles of the exhibition’s
six sections characterize and chronicle Franklin’s life: Character
Matters; B. Franklin, Printer; Civic Visions; Useful Knowledge;
World Stage; and Elder Statesman.
Robert Staples and Barbara Fahs Charles are partners in Staples
& Charles, designers to the museum community for more than 30
years. They were the Rickards Award winner in 1986. In addition
to the Franklin exhibition, current projects include the reinstallation
of permanent collections at Yale University Art Gallery and the
Detroit Institute of Arts. Past projects include The World of Coca-Cola
in Atlanta, The Sixth Floor in Dallas, and The Toy Museum at Old
Salem in North Carolina. Internationally Staples & Charles has
designed the introduction to a historic armory in Austria, the World
of Beer in South Africa, and a major exhibition on the Qing Dynasty
in Singapore. Recently they have led workshops for museum professionals
in Vietnam and Russia.
12:30 - 1:30
Lunch Break
Three afternoon conference sessions:
1:30 p.m.
Labeling America: The popular printed art
produced by four generations of the George Schlegel Lithographic
Company, New York, 1870-1963
John Grossman
This important early lithographic firm continuously chronicled American
life over a 90-year period by the labels - primarily for cigars,
one of the important products for men of the period - which it produced
in the course of its daily business life. The labels also form a
visual record of the evolution of graphic art styles over those
years. Beginning with that used by unknown artists employing the
crayon or stipple dot method on stones in the 1880s, and culminating
in the modern work of the well-known graphic designer Paul Rand
in the 1950s, reproduced by the photo mechanical process and printed
on the company's newest large offset presses. The majority of the
material that has survived from the Schlegel company archives now
forms a Special Collection within The John Grossman Collection of
Antique Images. It comprises a wide variety of office and shop file
copies of labels, posters, business letterheads, business cards,
and trade cards, as well as the working materials of the trade:
original watercolor paintings, proofs, keylines, progressives, and
litho stones. John's presentation will feature a selection of the
most striking and important material, through both digital and slide
projection images.
In addition to being the founder and director of The John Grossman
Collection of Antique Images, comprising some 250,000 ephemera images
assembled over 30 years, John is a graphic designer, author, lecturer,
and accomplished painter. He was president and art director of The
Gifted Line, a Victorian gift paper products company that he and
his wife Carolyn Grossman co-founded in 1985. John and Carolyn now
own and operate The John Grossman Collection, an image and design
licensing company in Point Richmond, California. John has been a
member of The Ephemera Society of America since 1981 and received
the Society's Maurice Rickards Award in 1990. A member of The Ephemera
Society of the UK since 1980, he gave that Society's Maurice Rickards
Memorial Lecture in 2000.
2:25 p.m.
Ephemera of the Civil War
Georgia B. Barnhill
In the past several years, the National Endowment for the Humanities
has funded a project at the American Antiquarian Society (AAS) to
catalog single sheet broadsides of the second half of the 19th century.
Georgia B. Barnhill will speak about ephemera of the Civil War in
the AAS collection. This collection includes song sheets, elegies,
cartoon envelopes, and related materials.
Georgia Barnhill is the Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Graphic Arts
at the American Antiquarian Society where she has worked since l968.
Among the collections at AAS is the very large and diverse collection
of ephemera that is part of the graphic arts department. Georgia
has always assisted scholars and collectors who have an interest
in these collections. She has lectured internationally and published
many articles and books on American prints and book illustrations.
In addition to serving on the Society's board of directors, she
has served the boards of the American Printing History Association
and the American Historical Print Collectors Society. Georgia received
the Maurice Rickards medal in 1987.
3:20 p.m.
Sensationalism in a Revealing Pink Dress:
The Police Gazette in the Richard K. Fox Years, 1876 - 1933
John C. Dann
As Director of the Clements Library, John takes particular pride
in having acquired the largely complete publisher’s file of
The National Police Gazette. The parent of today’s supermarket
tabloid, it was also, for a time, one of the most popular, brilliant,
and innovative periodicals in American journalistic history. It
was and is, John maintains, misunderstood by detractors and fans
alike. Because it was intentionally sensational, no respectable
library would subscribe. And therefore, except for scattered issues,
it is quite scarce today, despite a readership of more than 200,000
in its heyday. In a well-illustrated talk, the speaker will bring
this delightfully provocative publication back to life in all its
sinful glory!
John Dann, former member of board of The Ephemera Society of America
and Rickards Award winner in 2004, has been Director of the Clements
Library of the University of Michigan since 1977. He was curator
of manuscripts at the library from 1971 to 1977. Born in Delaware,
John is a graduate of Dickinson College (B.A.) and William and Mary
(M.A., Ph.D. in History). He has published award-winning books on
the American Revolution and 18th century naval history. Having grown
up in a world of Americana, he has a well-earned reputation as an
exceptional and imaginative collector — with particular enthusiasm
for ephemera. An article that he wrote for Antiquarian Bookman appears
on the Society Web site: www.ephemerasociety.org
After 4 p.m.
Dealer Set-up
7 p.m.
Opening of Exhibition in Winthrop
7:30 p.m.
Collectors’ Forum in Winthrop—Experienced collectors share
their enthusiasm & knowledge.
9 - 10 p.m.
Auction Preview in the Roundhill Room
Saturday, March 19th and Sunday, March
20th events >>
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