Selling, Telling, and Yelling

Being a Floridian, you can understand my interest in Florida related Ephemera.

Florida BroadsidesI was surprised this afternoon when I came across the State Archives of Florida and their “Florida broadsides and other ephemera, 1800-2000″.

This online collection consists of more than 200 broadsides and forms of paper communication from the State Library and Archives of Florida.

While originally initiated by state librarian and archivist Dorothy Dodd as a broadside collection, it has since grown to encompass all sorts of printed ephemera from advertisements and announcements to political cartoons and campaign posters. This online collection represents only a small portion of broadsides and ephemera found in the Florida Collection of the State Library of Florida.

The collection is broken down into about 15 different subject such as:

  • Politics and Government
  • Slavery and Race Relations
  • Health and Safety
  • Culture and Education
  • Military and Veterans
  • Hotels and Motels

Florida Ephemeraand other very interesting subjects.

The Library also does a good job of informing the visitor as to just what “broadsides” and “ephemera” are.

Florida Memory, which is the name of the overall collection for the State Archives has a large number of special collections and databases, some of which we will report on in future blogs.

One of the ones we are particulaly intrested in exploring a bit further is entitled “World War Service I Cards”.  As my father was a World War I Veteran, I have a special interest in this collection.

If you are interested in the Florida Broadside and Ephemera collection, you can find it here.

I’m Tom Murphy and thanks for helping me give Ephemera the encore it deserves.

Tom
Click here to see my current Bonanzle items

Technorati tags: Bonanzle, Encore Ephemera, Ephemera, The Ephemera Network, Florida, Broadsides

Surround Yourself with Vintage Advertisements

The following is a guest blog by Rita Holcomb of “Cemetarian”.  Rita, like me, is a member of TEN – The Ephemera Network

Remember that fancy party dress Mom wore to the Country Club, Dad’s favorite fishing lure or the family’s first new car? Those items may be gone but you can take a walk down memory lane with the old ads.

Vintage advertisements are colorful, nostalgic, and are an excellent and inexpensive way to change your décor in just a few moments. Take a simple frame with a simple mat and you can change the ad to fit your mood in the blink of an eye.

Magazine advertisements are a wonderful research tool to confirm a specific date or perhaps the color of an item. And by purchasing a single ad you don’t have to store the entire magazine and can view it anytime you wish. Verify your collection or hang it on the wall just because it makes you smile.

Not everyone can afford an authentic painting or even a print, but through the vintage magazines, we can all afford to decorate our offices, game rooms, nursery’s or any room in the house with fabulous art from yesteryear. Artists such as Norman Rockwell, Everett S Ward, Joyce Ballantyne, Francis Tipron Hunter and Lynn Bogue Hunt created art pieces that have become icons of our culture. You will find some ads are signed and some are not. Ballantyne was famous for her Coppertone Ad in 1959. “It was hardly the only art I ever produced,” she told the St. Petersburg Times in 2004. “But that’s what everybody remembers.”

Have a look at Rita’s site and find hundreds of Vintage Ads at – cemetarian

This article originally appeared at Ephemera.ning.com

Tom
Click here to see my current Bonanzle items

Technorati tags: Bonanzle, Encore Ephemera, Ephemera, The Ephemera Network, Magazines, San Francisco Chronicle

San Francisco archive gets grant to preserve ephemera

SF ChronicleHere’s a story I almost missed in my never ending Internet search.

Apparently city archivist Susan Goldstein and her 15 staffers at the San Francisco Public Library’s history center have been busy preserving and cataloging the history of the city.

The library has just won a grant from the Mellon Foundation to preserve historical items originally intended to be thrown away, but for whatever reason weren’t – old menus, theater programs, wine labels, political flyers and other tidbits. They will become a part of the California Ephemera Project.

The diary of Lillie Coit. Photographs of Joe DiMaggio. Impassioned love letters written by Harvey Milk. Reams of papers from the San Francisco’s mayors. Artifacts from the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, the Indian occupation of Alcatraz and the first pot clubs… all and more are part of the collection.

You can read the San Francisco Chronicle article here .

Tom
Click here to see my current Bonanzle items

Technorati tags: Bonanzle, Encore Ephemera, Ephemera, The Ephemera Network, San Francisco Library, San Francisco Chronicle

Six Tips to Preserve Your Election Collections

IMLSThis is the lead paragraph from a Press Release by the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Washington, DC—Across the nation, Americans are saving newspapers, posters, buttons, and bumper stickers to commemorate the historic election and inauguration of Barack Obama, America’s first African American president. Anne-Imelda M. Radice, Director of the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), encourages citizen-collectors to make sure that their presidential inauguration collections will be preserved long into the future.

If you have collected any election ephemera (or even if you haven’t) this article gives some  great suggestions on how to  keep your treasures safe and sound for the next generation.  Have a look here.

 I’m Tom Murphy and thanks for helping me give Ephemera the encore it deserves.

Tom
Click here to see my current Bonanzle items

Technorati tags: Bonanzle, Encore Ephemera, Ephemera, The Ephemera Network, Election Ephemera, Institute of Museum and Library Services

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Site last updated December 11, 2011 This page last updated February 2, 2009