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DEBLOIS - Ephemera: A window on the quotidian

Fig.1

Fig. 1: Letter of the Librarian of Harvard College, to the committee of the association of the alumni appointed to take into consideration the state of the college library … July 16, 1857, Cambridge (US) 1859, 8 pages. [Collection of the author]

Fig.2

Fig. 2: Lithographed trade card for a steamship agent in Strasbourg ca1840. SS Sirius, such a sidewheel steam packet, was the first ship to cross the Atlantic entirely under steam, inaugurating a new era in communications. Stone lithography was superseding steel engraving for inexpensive job printing. [Collection of the author]

Fig.3

Fig. 3: Thanksgiving Day menu at the Tontine Hotel in 1852. Letterpress printed, with a woodcut of the building shaded by elm trees (New Haven, Connecticut was known as Elm City). No prices, but the fifty-cent corkage fee (about $14 today) indicates the affluence of the clientele. Marlborough pie was a traditional Thanksgiving dessert, probably baked at Amos Munson’s pie factory established three blocks away in 1844. [Collection of Henry Voight]

Fig.4

Fig. 4: An illustration, wood engraved by Bartlett & Co. of New York, appearing in the 1895 edition of Pope Manufacturing Company’s trade catalog for Columbia bicycles, made in Hartford, Connecticut. Such ‘aerial’ views of factories surrounded by their transportation links were a staple of 19th century advertising – emphasizing at once the size and industrial efficiency of the business. [Collection of the Hagley Museum and Library]

Fig.5a

Fig. 5 a & b: Illustrated letterheads from the decades of the 1840s and 1920s, each prominently showing the product but in a printing and advertising style characteristic of the respective period. The 1840s example is letterpress printed on wove paper with a woodcut image. Shepard’s stove is promoted with a serious 6-point instruction for use [Collection of the author]

Fig.5b

Fig. 5 a & b: Illustrated letterheads from the decades of the 1840s and 1920s, each prominently showing the product but in a printing and advertising style characteristic of the respective period. The 1920 example is four color offset printed on standard sized bond paper. Fleischmann’s yeast is given a slogan and the image of a happy homemaker displaying the outcome of using the product. [Collection of the author]

Fig.6

Fig. 6: Woodcut cover image, in two colors, to a 1930s brochure advertising a Los Angeles bank. The Pacific coast highway, the Monterrey Cyprus tree, and the Mission all evoke the romantic ideal of life in California. [Collection of the author]

Fig.7

Fig. 7: Trade card chromolithographed ca1880 by Forbes of Boston for a glue manufacturer shows a chaotic parlor scene – the children pasting items in a scrap album under mother’s gaze, while father mends a chair. [Collection of the author]

Fig.8

Fig. 8: A sub genre of 19th and early 20th century scrapbook is the Paper Doll House – with figures and furnishings cut from advertising ephemera, or created from wallpaper samples, fabric pieces, and sketches. [Collection of David Freund]

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