Ephemera Society Winter Fair

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
Early admission for members from 10am with membership card.

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.

Bracing Air, Abundant Amusements: The Travel Posters of Charles Pears

Until 25 February 2022

Bustling beaches, bathing belles and bold Art Deco design. Be transported back to the heyday of rail tourism, day trips and the British seaside holiday with the vibrant travel posters of Pontefract-born artist, Charles Pears.

A renowned marine artist, illustrator and member of the Royal Academy, this exhibition celebrates Pears in the town where he grew up and began his initial training. Focusing on his career as a commercial artist, it features works kindly lent from national collections, including designs for London Transport and British rail companies.

Admire peaceful scenes from the banks of the Thames, enjoy the bright lights of the city and soak up plenty of sun, sea, sand and sky.

• Pontefract Museum
• 5 Salter Row
• Pontefract
• WF8 1BA
• UK

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This Is What Democracy Looked Like: A Visual History of the Printed Ballot

Online Exhibition

This bureaucratic piece of paper represents our long struggle to make elections free, fair, and honest. Printed ballots embody the material history of our democracy: its ideas, routines, and abuses. These ballots have a story to tell.

By the 1880s, the public demanded reforms to a clearly corrupt voting system. A new format from Australia introduced parameters that seem obvious to us now: an official ballot administered and distributed by the state, a nonpartisan layout that listed all the candidates on one sheet, and the most radical innovation: the ballot was to be marked in private.

This new format was not an immediate hit. While it offered equality and privacy, its adoption initiated our enduring history of contested voter intent and disputed mark making—and the end of freewheeling ballot design.

View the online exhibtion

Presented by the Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design and Typography, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, USA.

Image: Detail from People’s Party Ticket, 1884, Massachusetts. Courtesy American Antiquarian Society.

Round the World with Thomas Cook

Until 14 November 2021

This exhibition explores the assertion that Leicester is the ‘birthplace of popular tourism’ and explores the history of the man and the company through objects and material from the museum collections and the Thomas Cook Archive.

Tourism in Leicester is believed to have begun in 1841 when Thomas Cook organised a day trip to Loughborough for members of his Baptist Church. A party of 485 travelled to Loughborough, on the Midland Counties Railway, in open tub-style carriages. This day marks what was to become the oldest travel company in the UK until its demise in 2019.

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

The material from the Thomas Cook Archive has until recently been held in a private collection. The exhibition offers the first opportunity for people to see the archive now that it is in public ownership. The archive contains material from throughout the company history, from very early tickets to brochures from the height of the company’s success. The exhibition will be a vivid display of what was one of the most recognised travel companies in the world.

More details

• Leicester Museum & Art Gallery
• 53 New Walk
• Leicester LE1 7EA
• UK
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Wish You Were Here: 151 Years of the British Postcard

Until 2 January 2022

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.

Imperfect History: Curating the Graphic Arts Collection at Benjamin Franklin’s Public Library

Online exhibition

Inspired by the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of the Library Company of Philadelphia’s Graphic Arts Department this exhibition is a candid exploration of the history of the social dynamics and cultural biases affecting the construction of an American popular graphic arts collection developed within one of the oldest cultural institutions in the country.

The over 100,000 prints, photographs, original works of art on paper, and ephemera epitomize the evolution of this pivotal public library founded in 1731 by Benjamin Franklin and his discussion group, the Junto.

Originally comprised of gifts and bequests starting in the 1730s from mostly white, privileged, male Library members, these graphics became the core holdings of an intentionally curated collection begun in 1971, an era when the role of art history in society was in flux and the relevancy of many of the country's democratic institutions was in question.

The visual materials dating from the late 16th through early 20th centuries represent the culture, politics, and unconscious and conscious biases of the eras in which they were created and acquired, as well as a spectrum of collecting and curation practices over nearly 300 years.

Imperfect History makes visible the often unseen people, places, meanings, and aesthetics — “the hidden lives” — of the pictorial records representing the Library Company’s distinct and multifaceted history. Recognizing the complexity of these materials and their stories is fundamental to acquiring the visual literacy skills necessary to understand the American nation’s complicated history.

“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.

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.