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!
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 now be made online via PayPal.
Ephemera Society Fairs 2020
Make a note in your diary for next year's fairs: Sunday 31 May & 6 December 2020
Holiday Inn London Bloomsbury
Coram Street
London WC1N 1HT
United Kingdom
Entry £3 · 11am - 4pm · All welcome
Members from 10am with membership cards
Charity Auction
The Michael Sobell Hospice Charity, on the Mount Vernon Hospital site, is holding an auction to raise essential funds in order to remain at this location.
To be held at Mount Vernon Hospital, Michael Sobell Hospice Lecture Hall, Gate 3, off White Hill, Northwood, Middlesex. Sat Nav WD3 1PZ. Parking available.
Bloomsbury Ephemera, Postcard & Book Fair
24 November 2019 · 9.30am - 3pm
The fair will include all of the following: books, ephemera, maps, prints, posters, postcards, photographs and many unusual printed items across the whole of the Galleon Suite.
27 - 29 March 2020 · Ephemera Society of America Conference
The two-day Ephemera Fair is the premier fair of its kind in the USA.
Friday's lectures are followed by a packed weekend - a banquet, two auctions (silent and live), exhibits, the annual all-members meeting, and the justly famed Ephemera Show.
Ephemera 40 will focus on women's achievements around the world and over the centuries - contributions that are too often overlooked.
Countless women have challenged social expectations to accomplish great things in the arts, humanities, politics, science, sports, and the military. Speakers will cover an array of these contributions, using ephemera (advertisements, posters, menus, correspondence, tickets, etc.) to tell their stories.
Two Last Nights! Show Business in Georgian Britain
Until 5 January 2020
Going to a show flourished as a popular pastime in the eighteenth century and as a result the entertainment industry saw rapid expansion: many theatres were built and music festivals began in both London and the provinces. These growing forms of entertainment contributed to the vast range of audience experiences we know today.
The exhibition explores key venues in London and the provinces, from the theatres of Drury Lane, Covent Garden and Richmond, to the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens and the Foundling Hospital Chapel, as well as the provincial music festivals of other major cities in Britain.
Highlights for the ephemerist include caricatures and drawings of Georgian audience members, who came to see and be seen. Original advertising, programmes and tickets are displayed alongside information about how Georgian audiences purchased tickets and detail the development of the modern-day ‘box office’.
Much of Cuba’s iconic graphic design is instantly recognizable the world over. But alongside the familiar image of Che
Guevara, Cuban artists have produced uncompromising design and illustration to deliver Cuba’s revolutionary message
around the world. These works have rarely been seen – until now.
The House of Illustration will open the first major exhibition of graphic design from Cuba’s ‘golden age’, which
will bring together work distributed across the globe by OSPAAAL: Fidel Castro’s
Organisation of Solidarity of the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America, an organisation founded to promote
cooperation between socialist countries and liberation movements.
OSPAAAL’s designers used the tools of the capitalist advertising industry to create compelling graphics for entirely
opposite purposes. Their work – revolutionary in both style and substance – stands as a prime example of art for
political persuasion. While originally distributed freely in editions of thousands, OSPAAAL posters and magazines are now rare and highly
sought-after.
The works in the exhibition, drawn from a single UK private collection - The Mike Stanfield Collection -
offer a rare insight into this defining period in Cuba’s design history.
An exhibition celebrating the Bank of England’s 325th anniversary through 325 objects featuring some notable ephemera.
From Roman relics to a nuclear fall-out calculator from the Cold War, the exhibition features a variety of fascinating artefacts to celebrate the Bank's 325th anniversary, the objects explore how money and the way we pay for things has transformed since the Bank of England was established in 1694.
This beautiful and exciting show will include around 120 works including paintings, posters, brochures, drawings, photographs, fashion, furniture, ceramics, glass and textiles, drawn from both public and private collections across the UK.
Image: detail from poster by Septimus Edwin Scott, ‘New Brighton and Wallasey’, 1923–1947, London Midland and Scottish Railway company. Courtesy National Railway Museum, York
This exhibition explores the eruption of the poster craze in Paris, bringing to life the exuberant spirit of the Belle Époque.
L’Affichomania: The Passion for French Posters features approximately 62 posters and ephemera dating from 1875 to 1910 by the five grand masters of the medium: Jules Chéret, Eugène Grasset, Alphonse Mucha, Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. These pioneering artists defined a new and unforgettable art form.
Bright, bold, and found everywhere along the boulevards of fin-de-siècle Paris, the colour poster was a brilliant fusion of art and commerce.
It advertised cigarette papers and milk, immortalized stage stars and bohemian cabarets, and won the adoration of passersby and art collectors alike. As pedestrians encountered these lively posters posted on the Parisian boulevards, the pulse of modern life seemed to beat faster, inciting them to acquire the prints– by buying and selling special editions or stealthily removing them from walls and kiosks. This sudden popularity of posters fueled a passion for collecting them, called affichomania.
Currency in crisis: German emergency money 1914–1924
Until 29 March 2020
This exhibition reveals how this temporary currency responded to a national crisis with distinctive designs commenting on German society and politics. These range from the Turnip Notgeld lamenting the disastrous food shortage of 1917, to richly illustrated designs featuring regional landmarks and folk narratives, intended to buoy a population hungry for reassurance.
In its short lifespan, Notgeld's purpose and design changed dramatically. It was introduced as a substitute currency during a coin shortage in the First World War, with patriotic and sometimes subversive messages. Popular with German people, it became highly collectable and then, during the hyperinflation of 1923, regained its role as an alternative currency.
In the chaotic early years of the Weimar Republic (1919–1933), designs often depicted idealised views of German history and culture, as well as exciting travel advertisements, appealing to a people longing to shake off the bitter war years. Intrinsically bound to German identity and the upheaval that followed the First World War, Notgeld is a fascinating microcosm of public feeling in post-war Germany.
Image: Notgeld with value of 25 pfennig, issued in Brocken, Germany, 1922.
The two-day Ephemera Fair is the premier fair of its kind in the USA.
This exhibition explores the eruption of the poster craze in Paris, bringing to life the exuberant spirit of the Belle Époque.
This exhibition reveals how this temporary currency responded to a national crisis with distinctive designs commenting on German society and politics. These range from the Turnip Notgeld lamenting the disastrous food shortage of 1917, to richly illustrated designs featuring regional landmarks and folk narratives, intended to buoy a population hungry for reassurance.