Ephemera Events & Exhibitions

The Ephemera Society Winter Fair

Sunday 4 December 2022

A window into the past for both the curious and the collector — find rare, unusual and historic paper items, priced from £2 to over £2000. A huge range of ephemera will be on display. The fairs will be on for one day only so make a note in your diary now, we look forward to seeing you there!

• Holiday Inn London Bloomsbury
• Coram Street
• London WC1N 1HT
• United Kingdom
• Entry £3 · 11am - 4pm · All welcome
• Members from 10am

Interested in booking a table for the fair? Reserve your space - download the booking form

For more details call 01923 829079 or email

Join us! The Ephemera Society is always pleased to welcome new members. Payment can be made online by PayPal.

Cardboard Gothic: Damsels, Demons and Heroes

Until 14 September 2022

Pollock’s Toy Museum presents: ‘Cardboard Gothic: Damsels, Demons and Heroes’, which bring Horace Walpole’s imaginary world of Gothic to life through a House trail of fourteen miniature theatres dispersed across the main rooms of Strawberry Hill House.

Successive generations of Strawberry Hill owners, from Anne Damer to Lady Waldegrave, have owned miniatures theatres and have also used the house for their own domestic theatre performances.

Plays covering the range of Gothic genre and several decades of toy theatre publishing will be shown in a collection of wooden theatres from Pollock’s Toy Museum, originating from Benjamin Pollock’s shop in Hoxton where toy theatres and their accompanying plays were sold, up to the Second World War.

A unique theatre, the earliest known to survive, is on loan from Guildford Museum, together with a set of characters and scenes that show how early Victorian children customised the products of the trade.

• Strawberry Hill House & Garden
• 268 Waldegrave Road
• Twickenham TW1 4ST
• UK

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Looking at women looking at themselves being looked at

Until 9 September 2022 · Open weekdays, 10 am to 5 pm. Closed bank holidays.

This exhibition, now open in the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication, University of Reading, explores the concept of the male gaze in twentieth-century British illustration, and is curated by Catalina Zlotea.

The exhibition analyses the work of the British illustrator, Charles Mozley (1914–1991), through a contemporary lens. It does so by foregrounding two female stereotypes depicted in advertisements, ephemera, and fine art lithographs made by Mozley between the late 1940s and the early 1980s.

The exhibition arrangement creates contrast and conflict between the image of the middle-class “virtuous” woman – a virgin goddess placed on a pedestal – and the “loose” woman – an anonymous sex object signalled through hair colour and scanty clothing. This female presence, recurrent in Mozley’s work, demonstrates the quality of the artist’s draughtsmanship while connoting middle-class masculine virtues, follies, and sexual desires.

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Jubilation: 200 Years of Royal Souvenirs

Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee

In honour of Her Majesty The Queen becoming the first British Monarch to reach 70 years of service, the Museum of Brands will be showcasing a temporary display of over 200 years of Royal-inspired packaging and Jubilee souvenirs.

The display will feature products and brands that show how UK consumer culture and Royal history has changed since the Victorian era.

There will be a focus on past Jubilees and celebratory events such as Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation, as well as a new display on contemporary limited edition packaging to celebrate her Platinum Jubilee.

Image: Cover of National Savings Stamps card

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• Museum of Brands
• 111 – 117 Lancaster Road
• Notting Hill
• London W11 1QT
• UK

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The Drawing Book Project

A bibliography of United Kingdom published drawing books,
from the 16th century to 1900.

For over 30 years Tony Fothergill(Ken Spelman Rare Books) has been keeping records of institutional holdings of these books, suites of plates, ephemeral publications &c. These are augmented with variants and additions which have appeared in commerce, in booksellers' catalogues over the last 70 years, as well as auction records.

It includes instruction manuals on all forms of painting, drawing, engraving, colour theory, perspective, anatomy for artists, &c., and currently runs to some 4,000 entries on over 900 pages.

Home-page for the Drawing Book Project

Delights of Transport: Milwaukee Transit Passes

Letterform Archive

In the 1930s–60s, Milwaukee Electric Railway & Light Company offered trolley and bus riders a weekly burst of colour and hand lettering.

Milwaukee claims to be the inventor of the weekly transit pass, and for several decades they could also boast to have some of the most beautiful ones.

Read more and view the tickets

Curious Creatures: Victorian attitudes to animals

Until 31 December 2022

An exhibition that explores the many ways in which the Victorians interacted with and sometimes exploited animals. Focussing on the period 1810-1914, the exhibition looks at ethical issues about our relationship with nature that are still relevant today.

Objects on display in Curious Creatures will include taxidermy animals and items made from animal skin or bone.

Get ready to meet a gallery of pet lovers, lion tamers, pigeon fanciers, colonial hunters, offal eaters, feather-hat wearers and more.

• Abbey House Museum
• Abbey Walk
• Kirkstall
• Leeds LS5 3EH
• UK

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