Ephemera articles and stories that will
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One of the most appealing things about collecting printed ephemera is that anything and everything can fall into your field of interest, that fascinating and unusual items can appear as if by magic in the most unlikely of places. Here are a few random odds and ends that caught my eye somewhere a…

I have long been a fan of design which incorporates embossing. In my own graphic design work, I often included a blind-embossed element. Strong embossing requires the making of a male die and a female die, in perfect alignment; for each impression, one sheet of paper or cardstock is compressed b…

A: A needle! http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ntq8rcB8SJA Needle booklets are an interesting category of collectible . . . they encompass a wide range of topical areas, are often graphically interesting, and come cheap. …

The mid- to late-nineteenth-century saw the beginnings of advertising agencies (most, at first, simply placing newspaper ads for their clients), of compiled mailing lists and pre-printed labels . . . and of junk mail fishing for fresh, new contacts. For a variety of reasons, the first junk mail …

Nancy Rosin is President Emerita of the Ephemera Society of America and the President of the National Valentine Collectors Association. Now in its 40th year, the National Valentine Collectors Association preserves and communicates the history of this beautiful material, and enable collectors to …

Dartmouth’s annual Winter Carnival has been a major celebration since 1911. It is a long weekend filled with ski competitions, hockey games, a dogsled race, ski jumping (in years past), skating, parties, ice sculptures, receptions, talks . . . all sorts of events. I once met (twice) and talked w…

From 1924 until his death in 1986, in his 93rd year, Thomas J. Lyons (“TJ”) was a collector of vintage wood and metal type fonts who designed and printed using those fonts. Considered a lovable, energetic, colorful Boston character, TJ loved to put multiple typefaces together in an “old-timey” k…

Every fourth year, an extra day in our calendar resynchronizes earthly time with cosmic time, creating what is officially called a bissextile year, or Leap Year. This year, February 29, 2016, is that Leap Day. Since the thirteenth century, tradition has allowed ladies to legally propose marriag…

One of the great joys of collecting ephemera is that each time we go to a paper show or to an antique mall or onto eBay, we come across interesting things we’ve never seen before. Here are a few recently encountered odds-and-ends. Given the current highly politicized season—and the theme of t…