Ephemera Journal, Volume XII

This issue of the The Ephemera Journal has three very different articles that, as serendipity would have it, include some common themes.

Gejus van Diggele, a collector from The Netherlands, has amassed some 3,000 antiquarian playing cards whose second lives, as receipts, promissory notes, clothing reinforcement, even heart-wrenching notes from destitute mothers forced to abandon their infants, are far more interesting than their first. Van Diggele is more than a collector, however. He is driven to know the background of each playing card, and, if it can be determined, the circumstances of those who chose (or were forced) to reuse an abandoned ace or a discarded deuce. He digs with the tenacity of a TV detective waiting for the Eureka! moment.

Among the treasures of Washington, D.C.’s Folger Shakespeare Library, Curator Erin Blake, Ph.D., is building an important collection of paper ephemera with Shakespearean themes. Images include a bicycle ad featuring the Bard as well as a Shakespearean-themed book whose spine was reinforced by (you guessed it) old playing cards.

From the beginning Dr. Blake faced the same conundrum encountered by many other institutional curators presented with orphaned scraps of paper that defied easy classification. Step by step she has devised ways in which the library’s ephemera can be found and used. Along the way she has boosted the status of the collection among her fellow curators and scholars.

Also in this issue, Nancy Rosin documents the innate human desire to chronicle the events of our lives in scrapbooks ranging from simple Commonplace books to elaborate, color-filled masterpieces of the mid-19th century. But what’s the connection here? Shakespeare, Rosin says, was a “scrapbooker” himself. Although she has no Shakespeare scrapbooks in her collection, she does have hundreds of others that illustrate creative ways in which we capture both the important and inane moments we’ve chosen to pass along to future generations.

As a sidebar to these lovingly crafted scrapbooks is John Grossman’s 41-pound opus whose chromolithographed bits and pieces mark the Jubilee of Queen Victoria. All we need now is a bookish detective willing to retrace the collector’s lineage.

– Eric Johnson, Editor

Ordering Information:
Available for $18.00; $15.00 to members of the Ephemera Society; plus $3.00 for postage. Order from the Ephemera Society of America, PO Box 95, Cazenovia, NY 13035 or visit the online store.