As many of you know.. this blog originates most of the time from Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.  That’s about 230 miles south of St. Augustine, Florida which is the nations oldest city.  In St. Augustine there are a number of attractions.. quite many actually, and of course Orlando and Disneyworld is not far away.

A blog entitled “Visual Ephemera” has posted a recent article about one of those attractions.. the La Leche Shrine.  As the blog says,

“It is hard to visit St. Augustine and not be aware of the La Leche Shrine because it is marked by a 208 ft cross.”

The blog also has a large number of photos of the Shrine, both indoors and out. In terms of Ephemera, have a look at this brochure which is on the site.

I am sure there are many other Ephemera collectors out there who specialize in travel brochures or similar items.  Tell us a bit about your collection.  Is it strictly US related or have you expanded into International travel and attractions.

The one thing that always amazes me, and interests me.. is the diversity of Ephemera.  There are so many different avenues and areas into which Ephemeral collections have gone.  We have people who collect railroad ephemera… and some have restricted their collecting to just timetables, some have focused on railroad postcards, others have collections specific to Indian tribes, I even chatted with a man who focused only on ephemera related to a small company that once had it’s headquarters in his small, upstate NY town.  Travel ephemera has so many different areas to explore… so drop me a line.. and tell me about YOUR specific collection or area of interest.

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

Have a look at my eBay Ephemera store
or have a look at my eBay Auction site
(Due to travel, there may not be any items listed at this point in time)

Technorati tags: Encore Ephemera, Ephemera, Ephemera Network, New York Public Library

I’ve written about this blogger before.. and I continue to follow his posts.

Enough from me on this wonderful Thanksgiving Day… time for you to do some surfing.. and visit some of these interesting sites.

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

Tom
Have a look at my eBay Ephemera site
or have a look at my eBay Auction sites

Technorati tags: Encore Ephemera, Ephemera, Visual Ephemera, Florida

Have you ever heard of the Wolfsonian Collection?  To be honest, neither had I until today.  And to think, it’s located right here in my back yard.. Miami, Florida.

Actually, Wolfsonian is a part of the Florida International University - It’s a museum located in the heart of historic Miami Beach, within easy walking distance of the world-famous Art Deco hotels.

I was primarily attracted to their Worlds Fair and Exhibitions section where they say:

Another central element of the collection is materials produced for or exhibited in world’s fairs and expositions since 1851. The Wolfsonian collection remains unique as an all-inclusive compilation of world’s fair materials, encompassing catalogs and rare books, furnishings, sculpture, paintings, and ephemera (such as scarves, postcards, pamphlets, toys and ashtrays). Imbued with nationalistic implications, these objects stand out as some of the best examples of their kind in the world.

Having originally come from New York, this 1939 Worlds Fair poster caught my eye both for its location, and the design of the poster itself.

Along with that poster, the Wolfsonian also exhibits this vintage post card, also from the 1939 Worlds Fair.  It’s described on the site as

The Theme Center was the central display of the Fair. Designed by the architecture firm of Harrison and Fouilhoux, the structure was a symbol not only of the Fair itself, but also of modernism.

Using huge, unadorned geometric forms, the Theme Center dominated the grounds and clearly established the Fair’s overriding message – that a positive future was possible thorough modern technology.

When the design was first presented to the Fair’s president Grover Whalen, he commented: “We promised the world something new in Fair architecture and here it is – something radically different and fundamentally as old as man’s experience…We feel that simplicity must be the keynote of a perfectly ordered mechanical civilization.”

“Simplicity a keynote of perfectly ordered mechanical civilization” … hmmm, let me mull over that a while.  In any event, have a click over to the Wolfsonian.  If the Worlds Fair’s are not your thing, perhaps something else will catch your eye.

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

Tom
Take a look at my current Bonanzle items or
Visit my storefront.

Technorati tags: Bonanzle, Encore Ephemera, Ephemera, The Ephemera Network, Florida International University, Wolfsonian, Worlds Fair

Are you interested in Space?  How about Space Ephemera?

John Sisson, a biology librarian out of California has a rather new blog entitled “Dreams of Space – Books and Ephemera“.

He tells us in his blog that he has been collecting children’s non-fiction books about space flight for some 19 years, and has lots of Ephemera to supplement his collection. It’s worth a visit to his blog … but perhaps even more interesting is a visit to his website, also entitled “Dreams of Space” where he has sectioned it off into 5 general categories:

• Imagination: 1883-1948
• Pre-Flight: 1949-1953
• Countdown: 1954-1956
• Liftoff: 1957-1960
• Flight and Touchdown: 1961-1974

He also has sections for:

• non-English Space Books
• Artists and Illustrators
• Authors and Editors
• Book descriptions
• History of Space Art and Space Art links

On his site you can find many wonderful items, mostly book covers from as far back as about 1883.  But he also has some fine Ephemera like the poster on the left talking about “The World Tomorrow”.  John dates it at about 1940 and shows many of the things we take for granted today – helicopters, high speed trains, flyovers etc.

In yet another section of his website John talks about all the artists and illustrators as well as the authors and editors of the various publications he has shown, giving a brief biography of each and a list of some of their publications.  He goes on further  to write a very interesting “History of Space Art”.

As I said,  if you are into Space and Space Ephemera, John’s site is certainly one place you will want to visit.  But be warned, it will take some time to do so as John has such an extensive collection of images and stories.

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

Tom
Take a look at my current Bonanzle items or
Visit my storefront.

Technorati tags: Bonanzle, Encore Ephemera, Ephemera, The Ephemera Network, John Sisson, Space Travel, Space Ephemera

Wow, it’s hard for me to believe it has been so long since my last posting here.  I have been all consumed in chores, trips, events and other miscellaneous time consuming activities that have kept me away from the keyboard.. and from this blog.  Sorry!

One of the trips we took was to Toronto, and while there we had the pleasure of visiting a very interesting museum… The Bata Shoe Museum.  While I had hoped to perhaps see some Ephemera related to shoes, there was none to be found.  But the Museum still proved to be quite interesting.. perhaps bordering on fascinating.   The museum was founded in 1995 by Ms. Sonja Bata, the wife of the late Thomas Bata (who died during the time of our visit to Canada).  Mr. Bata was a well-known Czechoslovakian shoe manufacturer who had emigrated to Canada at the beginning of World War II. His family enterprise in Czechoslovakia had been nationalized under the Communist occupation. From the beginning, Sonja Bata shared her husband’s determination to rebuild the organization and took an active interest in what was to become a global footwear business.

The Museum celebrates the style and function of footwear in four impressive galleries. Footwear on display ranges from Chinese bound foot shoes and ancient Egyptian sandals to chestnut-crushing clogs and glamourous platforms. Over 4,500 years of history and a collection of 20th-century celebrity shoes are reflected in the semi-permanent exhibition, “All About Shoes”.

If you happen to be in the Toronto area, I highly recommend a visit to the The Bata Show Museum.

The site is the creation of a magazine editor from the West Village who recalls stepping over winos to enter the Grand Union on Bleecker Street, a happily chaotic class packed with 35 other first graders at PS 41, and that Mays, not Whole Foods, was once the flagship shopping destination of Union Square. Sometimes wry and often wistful, she feels the presence of the city’s ghosts everywhere.

If you have any roots in New York City (as I do) then you’ll certainly want to check out this blog with me.  I’ll review it a bit more in a future article… but it you have time, stop by and let me know what YOU think of it… Ephemeral New York

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

Tom
Click to see my current eBay items

Technorati tags: eBay, Encore Ephemera, Bata Shoe Museum Ephemeral New York.

A bit more on hotel Ephemera…

Michael Lebowitz of the “Big Spaceship” blog has an interesting display today.  When his grandfather passed away the family found a whole wall in his study filled with hotel door hangers.  His father had travelled the globe in the foreign service.

The 55 piece display has hotel Ephemera from Beirut to Sydney to Yugoslavia and even Angkor Wath.  They are all lovely, and have great variations of graphic design.

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

Tom
Click to see my current eBay items

Technorati tags: eBay, Encore Ephemera, Hotel hangers.

I may well be wrong, but I seem to note that travel related Ephemera, in many cases, outlast other forms of “transitory written and printed matter“. I continually notice old cruise ship brochures, train and airplane schedules, travel related advertising, adventure brochures and similar items.

Today I ran across an interesting article in a blog entitled AM New York. This particular blog article under the sub heading of Urbanite was entitled: Gotham’s Gems – Urbanite visits the New Yorker Hotel. Its an interview with a fellow named Joe Kinney, who is both the hotel’s engineer and its historian. The hotel closed in 1972 and was purchased by the Unification Church. In 1994, it reopened under its original name and is now reclaiming its lost history.

The article is filled with pictures of some of the printed items from the hotel of the past. We found this one particularly interesting because it boasts 2500+ rooms and “television too!” Was there really a time when every hotel room did not have a television?

If you are planning a trip to New York City, perhaps the New Yorker hotel might be just the place for you.. even if only to try and discover some of its long lost Ephemera.

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

Tom
Click to see my current eBay items

Technorati tags: eBay, Encore Ephemera, Hotel New Yorker.

I recently ran across a newly published book entitled “Mostly True: The Story of Bozo Texino” written by Bill Daniel.  Daniel began some 25 years ago by researching railcar graffiti tags along with the transient hobo communities and rail worker fraternities that created much of that unwelcome artwork.   Through his travels he documented the neglected art form first with black-and-white photography, and later on film. He took to the rails, riding freight cars with the old-timers and looking on as a new generation of train-hoppers began assuming the hobo mantle, bringing their own aerosol aesthetic along for the ride.

In 2006 he compiled sixteen years of footage, shot mostly from moving railcars, into a film entitled Who Is Bozo Texino?  Bozo Texino apparently was a fellow named J.H. McKinley, an early-20th-century trainman stationed in Laredo, Texas best known for his widespread railroad graffiti.

Mostly True: The Story of Bozo Texino is what Daniel calls the “paper-based ephemera” of his quarter-century exploration.  The book carries the date of April 1908 as well as Vol. 19, No. 7 and the subtitle “The West’s Most Popular Hobo Graffiti Magazine”.  However, searching Amazon.com we find that it was published in April of 2008 and is in fact Daniel’s first book.. and that of course Volumes 1-18 never existed… in fact there is no indication that any hobo graffiti magazine ever existed at all.  As the title says it’s “mostly true”.

Putting all that aside, we find that the contents of the book includes Daniel’s collection of antique railway advertisements, letters to the editor alleged to be from the railroad hobos, a recipe for a cocktail called the Hobo’s Wife, historical musings, interviews with rail riders, newspaper clippings, a poem about freight graffiti, handwritten testimonials, napkin maps, hobo signs, sketches, doodles, diary entries, cartoons, pencil rubbings of water-tank carvings, and lots and lots of photos of hobo graffiti.  Stuff that you and I call “Ephemera“.

While I have not yet put my hands on a copy of this book.. I have ordered one from the publisher – Microcosm Publishing. If the book is as good as the hype, I have a feeling it will be yet another enjoyable read.

If you have an interest in railway ephemera, I’d suggest you head on over to Microcosm Publishing yourself and have a look. By the way, there are numerous other interesting titles available at this independent publisher and distributor based in Bloomington, IN. You might just find others that pique your interest.

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