Ephemera Events & Exhibitions

Wish You Were Here celebrates and explores the iconic role the postcard has played in connecting people for more than a century and a half.

The British postcard’s history began in 1870 and 2020 marked its 150th anniversary. An innovation of its time, the postcard meant new and faster correspondence through the post.

They were used to send secret messages of love, to boost morale for soldiers at war and to boast from holidays near and afar.

Visitors can explore the postcard through history and reflect on its future with themes including romance, First World War correspondence, the Great British seaside, contemporary art and the postcard in a digital age.

• The Postal Museum
• 15-20 Phoenix Place
• London
• WC1X 0DA
• UK

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A Century of Dining Out: The American story in menus 1841-1941

Grolier Club online exhibition

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Henry Voigt the foremost authority on American menus -- has released an online preview of his upcoming Grolier Club exhibition, A Hundred Years of Dining Out: The American Story of Menus, 1841-1941.

Originally scheduled to open this month, the real-life exhibition has been postponed until December 7, 2022.

Academic Dress on Picture Postcards Published by Davis’s of Oxford, Their Rivals and Successors

Online article

The Burgon Society, @BurgonSoc, is an educational charity for the study of academical dress around the world.

The most recent edition of their journal is online and has an article about the academical dress on postcards by Alex Kerr and is free to read (PDF)

“Our weapon is public opinion” Posters of the women’s suffrage movement

Library, University of Cambridge, UK

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Display for the centenary of the 1918 Representation of the People Act – the parliamentary act that finally gave some women the vote.

The Art of Advertising

Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, UK

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The Art of Advertising tells the story of British advertising from the mid 18th century to the 1930s through an incredible collection of handbills, trade cards, novelties, posters and much more.

Drawing on the Bodleian’s renowned John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera, one of the largest and most important collections of printed ephemera in the world, the exhibition will reveal how advertisements reflect social attitudes over time while showcasing some of the finest examples of advertising illustration and commercial art.

Art Deco By The Sea

A 15 minute BBC tour of “Art Deco By The Sea” exhibition is on iPlayer

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

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• Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts
• University of East Anglia
• Norwich
• Norfolk NR4 7TJ
• UK
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Wartime London
London Transport Museum

Highlights from the collection

The Underground Group, and later London Transport, produced a wide variety of public information posters during the First (1914-18) and Second (1939-45) World Wars.

The majority of wartime posters advised staff and passengers on emergency rules and regulations. Others were more overtly patriotic, often focussing on the valuable war work undertaken by transport employees.

Some WWI Underground posters urged onlookers to enlist with the armed forces. During WWII, posters were used to explain tube 'etiquette' to war workers and servicemen using the underground for the first time.

Railway posters, notices and handbills

Science Museum Group

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Encounter railway advertising and promotional material in the form of illustrated posters, printed notices and handbills. These works, including many by well-known artists, offer a fascinating record of railway style and graphic design.

Image: Detail from Thomas Cook & Son handbill 22 July 1873