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News
Richard McKinstry Proposal Earns First Jones Fellowship
Richard McKinstry, Andrew W. Mellon Senior Librarian at Winterthur, has been awarded the first $1,000 Philip Jones Fellowship to pursue research on New York lithographer Charles Magnus.
Society board member Frank Amari, representing the three-person selection committee, said McKinstry's proposal was outstanding in its depth and detail.
"We independently reviewed the 11 proposals, and when we compared notes, it turned out that each of us had selected Rich's proposal as the one with the greatest merit," Amari said.
McKinstry, who was awarded the fellowship during the Society's annual banquet, said Magnus is best known today as the printer of many forms of paper ephemera, though in his time, he probably simply referred to himself as a job printer.
He issued city views, song sheets, envelopes, maps, scenic prints, board games, playing cards, and valentines. In an advertisement from the early 1860s, he noted that he also produced rewards of merit, wine labels, copy books, and what he called commercial blanks. Larger publications included an atlas of the world and a map on rollers: "Largest Railroad and General Map of the United States and Canada." According to a newspaper advertisement in the Philadelphia Inquirer, in the 1890s he was involved in producing prints for home china decoration.
"Magnus is perhaps best known for his Civil War era printing and for his unwavering support of the Union cause," McKinstry said. "His patriotic envelopes, song sheets, military cartes de visite, and views of army encampments are all evocative of that unique time in our country's history. Magnus is ripe for study because of two things: his prolific career and the fact that nothing serious has been published on him."
The Jones Fellowship will fund travel to Boston for McKinstry to use the R.G. Dun credit reports in the Baker Library at Harvard in which Magnus is mentioned, as well as travel to Washington, DC, to use copyright records in the Library of Congress.
To start McKinstry's research off on the right foot, Phil Jones presented him with a portrait of Magnus and his two sisters from his own collection. McKinstry said he knew of the portrait through poor photocopies but had never seen one in person: "Now I'm holding one in my hand!"
Regional Meeting Scheduled For September 5 in Poughkeepsie, NY
Poughkeepsie is a lot more than a stand-up comedian's punch line!
On September 5, the Society will hold a regional meeting in Poughkeepsie beginning with a tour of Vassar College's ephemera collection and a recently acquired collection of Charles Dickens. Following lunch, Anthony Musso will guide a tour of the WPA murals at the Poughkeepsie Post Office. From there it's on to Marist College to see an outstanding collection of Poughkeepsie ephemera as well as papers from Scenic Hudson whose battle to save Storm King Mountain along the Hudson River was the beginning of the environmental movement in this country.
There will be more details in the summer issue of Ephemera News and on the Society's website, but for now, mark the date on your calendar.
Diane DeBlois, Robert Dalton Harris Earn the Maurice Rickards Award
When they were presented with the Society's Maurice Rickards Award during Ephemera/28, it became clear that it would almost be easier to list the things Diane DeBlois and Robert Dalton Harris haven't done to improve the world of ephemera than what they have.
Save the Date! |
March 20-22, 2009:
Ephemera/29
Presented by The Ephemera Society of America, Inc.
PO Box 95
Cazenovia, NY 13035
General information:
info@ephemerasociety.org
315-655-9139 Phone/Fax
Dealer information:
flamingoeventz@aol.com
Download detailed brochure on EPH/28 here >> |
The notes that Board of Directors member Richard Sheaff had compiled filled two single-spaced pages. They have, Sheaff said, "done everything desirable in a Rickards Award candidate."
"Diane and Robert have spent decades exploring meanings, relationships, and insights gathered from information found on pieces of paper," Sheaff began. "They have done important research. They have published. They have helped others build collections, and they have always shared their knowledge and insights most willingly—and they have done it all with warm smiles upon their faces. They are special people."
The couple met when Diane's car broke down and Robert happened to be the good Samaritan who stopped to help. While the car was being repaired, she learned about his passion for learning everything he could about 18th-century American postal routes. After she returned to her native Canada, in thanks she sent him a family journal of the Indian War. He refused to keep anything so valuable, and, perhaps because he know so much about the mails, insisted on delivering it in person.
As Sheaff said, a partnership was born.
As researching dealers for nearly 30 years, they have worked with institutions such as the Smithsonian and National Gallery of Art. They published the quarterly PS for 15 years, and participated in symposia for the Smithsonian, The Business History Conference, The International Economic History Conference, the French Post Office, the American Library Association, and others.
They've contributed regular columns and articles to the Postal History Journal (which they co-edit), the Journal of Empire State Postal History, Book Source Monthly, Bookman's Weekly, the American Philatelist, Scott's Stamp Monthly, U.S. Stamp News, and many others. They've also edited or contributed to the Society's Ephemera News and Ephemera Journal.
Each has worked hard for the Society and has manned a booth at all 28 of the Society's annual conferences and paper fairs. They also have arranged the programs for several conferences, including the one just past. And when they offer a presentation of their own, they use an almost seamless back and forth dialogue—the same "format" they chose to accept this year's Maurice Rickards Award.
"We feel both humble and proud to join the group of Rickards medalists—the writers of the definitive books, the builders, curators, exhibitors of the great collections," they said. "But we're especially pleased to join our mentors as dealers: Sam Murray and Rocky Gardiner.
"As ephemerists, we celebrate the stuff of daily life: banal stuff, mundane stuff, quotidian stuff. Stuff furnishes us, individually and collectively, with moral compass to navigate the constellations: our markets, our symposia, our lives. A rousing toast to the stuff!"
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