Celebrating its 30th year, the Ephemera Society of America conducted its annual Conference and Paper Show over the weekend of March 19′1. The gala event began with lectures and conferences on Friday and they continued through Sunday afternoon. The ephemera show, hosting 80-plus dealers, opened to society members early on Saturday afternoon, to the public an hour later, and continued through the weekend.
The weekend began with formalities with a board meeting bright and early on Friday morning, and then moved on to the lectures. Topics of the lectures ranged from “Where Will You Stay Tonight? African Americans on the Road in the Era of Jim Crow,” presented by Dr Gretchen Sullivan Sorin and exploring the ephemera-related side of travel for blacks in the early-to-mid-Twentieth Century, to “William Tod, Carriage Maker to America’s Founding Fathers” offered by Frank Amari.
Some of the other lectures presented included “The Ephemera of the Titanic : Touchstones to a Tragedy” by Barbara Rusch, “Fly Away †Images from the John Grossman exhibit at Winterthur” by Laura Parrish and “Teaching at Harvard with Ephemera,” presented by Katharine Martinez, which illustrated the “cornucopia of ephemera that is beginning to be used by faculty and students.”
While the lectures and conferences are popular with society members, the main attraction throughout the weekend is the show, managed by Flamingo Eventz. All things paper are presented and they include a wide variety of items that range from fun and fanciful to enlightening and historical. Among the items seen on the floor were classic pulp Santa figures, attractive and innovative fold-out Valentine’s Day cards, a wide assortment of books and the ever-popular selection of signed documents and broadsides.
Show manager Tina Bruno pointed out an emerging collecting area that is attracting a new brood of collectors to the event †rock and roll posters. A large selection was on hand, including bands such as the Eurythmics, the Grateful Dead and Rod Stewart. “Hopefully the young collectors that come in to look for the posters will eventually become attracted to some other things,” reasoned Bruno.
Arrowsic, Maine, dealer James Arsenault was on hand with a quality selection of early Americana-related historical ephemera, highlighted by a folio titled Brooks Locomotive Works, Dunkirk, N.Y., Locomotive Photographs . The rare volume, priced at $15,000, was filled with 27 albumen photographs documenting the locomotives manufactured between 1871 and 1880. “As a whole, the album is highly evocative of American industry and ingenuity, and the role of the locomotive in the growth of the nation,” wrote the dealer in regard to the rare book.
A “spectacular manufacturer’s sign” was offered at Tamerlane Books, Havertown, Penn., a chromolithograph circa 1880, by Gies and Co., Buffalo, N.Y. The colorful piece depicted the four manufacturing plants of Whitman and Barnes with each of the images relating bustling production through the illustration of billowing smokestacks, freight trains departing the premises, ships being loaded and carriages and businessmen coming and going. One of numerous interesting pieces, it was priced at $3,000.
Trade cards were the specialty of Larry Graf, Smyrna, Del., with a wide assortment of the colorful examples offered. Included was a rare Knoll and Prichard card with a colorful trout emblazoned across the front of it. Marked at $1,700, the card advertised everything from bait, seafood and turtles to cod liver oil. A rare Parker Gun Company card illustrated two gentlemen involved in a handicap trap shooting competition, $200, and a rare photograph postcard depicting Charles Lindbergh and his brother on a motorcycle with a sidecar was $600. Other cards for toy banks, Halloween and hardware were also among the large assortment.
John Grammer, Montgomery, N.Y., was one of the dealers looking to appeal to the tastes of a younger crowd. Among the numerous posters offered by the dealer was a large Rod Stewart poster advertising a concert and an advertising poster for the record album Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles.
Jean Kulp’s stand is always a popular spot for those who enjoy a good book, or should we say a good children’s book. The Hatfield, Mass., dealer specializes in rare children’s books and among the selection this time around was a charming “Nister” pop-up book from the turn-of-the-century titled What The Children Like . The book featured double-page pop-up images of children riding bikes, sleds, running, jumping and engaging in all sorts of fun. Another treasure from her assortment was a boxed book, The Jingle of a Jap , illustrated and written by Clara Bell Thurston, that retained the original box and the original Japanese doll that was attached to the front cover.
Historical items were featured at The Caren Archive, Lincolndale, N.Y., with a rare “first printing in any form of The Bill of Rights as proposed by James Madison,” 1789, among the items offered. Also on display was a full printing of the Declaration of Independence and also a “boldly signed” letter and photograph of Robert E. Lee.
For information, contact the Ephemera Society of America at www.ephemerasociety.org or 315-655-9139, or Flamingo Eventz at 603-509-2639 or www.flamingoeventz.com .
