Ephemera articles and stories that will
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I am regularly amazed at the reckless abandon of so much Victorian imagery. In an era that has somehow became labeled as staid, convention-bound and repressed, ephemeral evidence often testifies otherwise. Here is an engraved image, in full Aesthetic Movement style, of a hippogriff, a mytholo…

Perhaps the most spectacular exhibit at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition held in Chicago was the truly giant replica of a cast-iron stove at the Michigan Stove Company booth, in the Manufactures Building. Constructed and sculpted of painted oak, the huge stove had room underneath to…

“If you are really thankful, what do you do? You share.” W. Clement Stone The Ephemera Society of America cultivates an interest in ephemera, and in the spirit of this fine November holiday, we want to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving. The postcard fad of the …

The field of ephemera includes, of course, manuscript material . . . a particularly rich historical and cultural resource. Below is a heart-wrenching personal situation brought to life by a letter mailed on December 15, 1823, and in the personal note to their son folded inside. A father and moth…

One aspect of collecting manuscript material and/or postal history is the challenge of deciphering vintage handwriting. But there is also the occasional joy of coming across handwriting that is eye-catching . . . sometimes because of its elegance, sometimes because of it’s unusual and quirky nat…

One of the primary attractions of ephemera is that we are given glimpses into the way we were. Here are a few examples. A card distributed by agents of the circus, almost a half-century ago now, to alert potential customers of upcoming dates and places . . . No app for this, in those d…

Horse-drawn commercial delivery wagons are an interesting subject and a rich topical collecting area. Vintage delivery wagons (as well as many other types of wagons, carriages, carts, horsecars, coaches, and drays) can be collected as trade cards, advertising covers, industry periodicals, trade …

Last week’s post was about 19th-century commercial delivery wagons; this week’s moves ahead in time a bit, to show some creative, motorized commercial advertising vehicles. (These unattributed images were forwarded to me from somewhere on the web.) …