Samuel PepysWelcome to The Ephemera Society Website

 

Events and Exhibitions

  • The Ephemera Society Special Fairs 2010

  • Sunday 5 December

  •  
  • Holiday Inn London Bloomsbury
  • Coram Street
  • London WC1N 1HT
  • United Kingdom
  • Admission £3   11.00 - 17.00
  • Members from 10am with membership cards
  •  
  •  Note change of venue
  • The Ephemera Society
    Bazaars 2010

  • 1 August · 3 October

  •  
  • Holiday Inn London Bloomsbury
  • Coram Street
  • London WC1N 1HT
  • United Kingdom
  • Admission £2   11.00 - 16.00
  • Members from 10am with membership cards
  •  
  •  

  • The Ephemera Society presents
    The Birmingham Ephemera Fair 2010

  • Image of motor bike and sidecar
  • Sunday 19 September

  •  
  • The National Motorcycle Museum
  • Coventry Road
  • Bickenhill
  • Solihull
  • West Midlands, B92 0EJ
  • United Kingdom
  •  
  • Admission £3   11.00 - 17.00
  • Members from 10am with membership cards
  •  
  • Junction 6 on the M42, Solihull, West Midlands
  • View PDF file for more information (305KB).

Enquiries

 

 

Become a member - click here !

 

Philadelphia on Stone: The First Fifty Years of Commercial Lithography, 1828-1878

Until 15 October 2010

This exhibition explores the history of 19th-century Philadelphia lithography and its impact on contemporary visual culture. Philadelphia on Stone explains the history and process of lithography, documents the professional and personal lives of premier and journeymen lithographers, and includes lithographs from the collections of the Library Company and several other institutions whose collections were surveyed.

  • Library Company of Philadelphia
  • Louise Lux-Sions and Harry Sions Gallery
  • 1314 Locust Street
  • Philadelphia
  • USA
  •  
  • www.librarycompany.org/

 

Image of Philadelphia on Stone poster detail
 

Salon du Livre et Papiers Anciens

22-31 October 2010

In the region of 130 European dealers will be offering a profusion of handwritten and printed documents of every sort and kind for this acclaimed paper fair. The metro is an easy ride from central Paris to Porte De Champerret. The theme on this occasion is La Vigne.

  • Salon Du Livre Et Papiers Anciens
  • Paris 17ème
  • Espace Champerret
  • France
  •  
  • www.organisation-joel-garcia.fr/

 

Image of pretty grape holding bunch of grapes
 

Rude Britannia: British Comic Art

Until 5 September 2010

Gasp, cringe, or have a sly chuckle: Rude Britannia will certainly cause a reaction. See politicians brought down to size and the great and the good exposed; blush at the saucy postcards and laugh out loud at the slapstick fun - but watch out for that banana skin!

Put together with some the country’s best-known cartoonists and comedy writers, this exhibition explores British comic art from the 1600s to the present day. Bringing together a wide array of paintings, sculptures, film and photography, as well as graphic art and comic books, the exhibition celebrates a rich history of cartooning and visual jokes.

Image of rude postcard, by W Stocker-Shaw 1919,illustrating use of the double entendre The room on the Absurd is curated by comedian Harry Hill, and includes such diverse materials as Alice in Wonderland illustrations, David Shrigley’s sculpture, and films by Edwina Ashton and Oliver Michaels . Within the Bawdy, Donald McGill’s smutty seaside postcards can be seen with works by artists as different as Aubrey Beardsley, Sarah Lucas, and Grayson Perry.

The rooms exploring Politics, Social Satire and Cruikshank's Victorian masterpiece The Worship of Bacchus, have been put together with Gerald Scarfe, Steve Bell, and the cartoonists from Viz. These show the power of comic art as a form of social and political commentary throughout history, from satires of Georgian society by Rowlandson and Gillray to Spitting Image's damning Thatcher puppet.

  • Tate Britain
  • Millbank
  • London
  • SW1P 4RG
  • UK
  •  
  • www.tate.org.uk/britain/

 

Victorian Comic Valentine
In reality they were masterpieces of the grotesque, venomous in humour, spiteful and rude, expressing anything but love.

Image of Victorian comic valentine
  • So Misses Dab-out,
  • I hear 'tis your hope,
  • That the duty will be taken off soap,
  •  
  • Not then, that you'll get
  • your clothes better up,
  • But of nasty, Gin,
  • an extra good sup,
  •  
  • I wonder they patronise
  • such a scrub,
  • A ducking you need
  • in your own wash-tub,
  • You dirty Devil,
  • you shall ne'er be mine,
  • You're unfit for any man's Valentine.
 

Victoria & Albert: Art & Love

Until 31 October 2010

This major exhibition is the first ever to focus on the unique partnership of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and their shared enthusiasm for art.

Bringing together more than 400 items from the Royal Collection, it celebrates the royal couple’s mutual delight in collecting and displaying works of art, from the time of their engagement in 1839 to the Prince’s untimely death in 1861. The exhibition also challenges the popular image of Victoria – the melancholy widow of 40 years – and reveals her as a passionate and open-minded young woman.

A fantastic exhibition that shouldn't be missed by the collector of royalty ephemera.

  • The Queen's Gallery
  • Buckingham Palace
  • London SW1A 1AA
  • UK
  •  
  • www.royalcollection.org.uk

 

 

Image of Victoria and Albert
 

Performing Arts Book & Ephemera Fair 2010

Saturday 9 October · 10.30-19.00

Specialist dealers will display for sale books and ephemera including playbills, posters, autographs, programmes, prints and photographs, ballet, dance, circus, memorabilia, and much more at prices ranging from a few to several hundred pounds.

The Performance on Stage & Screen Fair is unique and attracts collectors from all over the UK and is a bonus feature for those attending performances at the National Theatre. The fair is organised by the Provincial Booksellers Fairs Association and the Ephemera Society.

All are welcome.

  • Olivier Stalls Foyer
  • Royal National Theatre
  • Southbank
  • London
  • United Kingdom
  •  
  • Enquiries: +44 (0)1453 757107

 

 

 

OUTBREAK 1939

Until 5 September 2010

Seventy years after the announcement that signified the start of the Second World War and changed the lives of millions, this special exhibition explores how being a nation at war shaped the lives of ordinary men and women as well as those who were actively involved in the political negotiations and their aftermath. Historical material and personal memorabilia will illustrate the build-up to war and the early months of the conflict.

  • Imperial War Museum London
  • Lambeth Road
  • London SE1 6HZ
  • United Kingdom
  •  
  • www.iwm.org.uk/

 

Image of Outbreak 1939 Poster
 

The Ministry of Food

Until 3 January 2011

Seventy years ago the wartime government announced the introduction of food rationing - a control that was to remain in force for the next fourteen years.

To mark this event Imperial War Museum London is opening The Ministry of Food, a major new exhibition to show how the British public adapted to a world of food shortages by ‘Lending a Hand on the Land’, ‘Digging for Victory’, taking up the ‘War on Waste’, and being both frugal and inventive on the ‘Kitchen Front’.

Visitors will discover that growing your own food, eating seasonal fruit and vegetables, reducing imports, recycling and healthy nutrition were just as topical in 1940 as they are today.

  • Imperial War Museum London
  • Lambeth Road
  • London, SE1 6HZ
  • UK
  •  
  • www.iwm.org.uk/

 

 

Image of card promoting the Land Army
 

The book trade and the classical world from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century

Friday 26 & Saturday 27 November 2010

Image of Cicero in an 18th-century libraryFollowing the revival of interest in classical languages and history during the Renaissance, Latin and Greek texts provided the common foundation for education, culture and scholarship for the next 500 years. In this two day conference, to be held at the Warburg Institute Woburn Square, London WC1H 0AB, leading authorities in their field will describe and discuss classical publishing and book collecting in a European context from the sixteenth to the later nineteenth centuries.

The Speakers

David Butterfield is the W.H.D. Rouse Research Fellow at Christ’s College, Cambridge. He has published various articles on Latin literature and the history of classical scholarship, has co-edited the Penguin Latin Dictionary (2007) and A. E. Housman, Classical Scholar (2009) and is editor of the Housman Society Journal.

Freyja Cox-Jensen is a Junior Research Fellow at Christ Church, Oxford. She has worked on the reception of Roman history in the early modern period, and is currently researching the early modern trade in classical texts.

Ceri Davies is Professor of Classics at Swansea University. He has published extensively on Latin writing in Wales in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and has also written a more general study, Welsh Literature and the Classical Tradition (Cardiff, 1995). He is currently working on an edition, with translation and commentary, of Sir John Prise, Historiae Brytannicae Defensio (first published 1573).

Jos van Heel is a curator of the historic collections of the Museum Meermanno-Westreenianum in The Hague. He also is a curator of Special Collections at the Library of the Free University in Amsterdam.

Dirk Imhof is curator of rare books and archives at the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp. His research focuses on sixteenth-century book history in Antwerp and the Plantin Press in particular. Together with Karen Bowen he published Christopher Plantin and Engraved Book Illustrations in Sixteenth Century Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2008). In the same year he earned a PhD in history at the University of Antwerp in 2008 with a thesis on the Antwerp publisher
Jan Moretus I.

Nicholas Poole-Wilson is Managing Director of Bernard Quaritch Ltd.

Christopher Stray holds honorary positions at Swansea University and at the Institute of Classical Studies, London. He has published on the history of Classics, institutional slang and the Cambridge Wooden Spoon, and is a contributor to the forthcoming History of Oxford University Press.

Early booking is recommended and places will be offered in order of receipt. For fees, booking form and more information please contact:

  • Antiquarian Booksellers Association
  • t: +44 (0)20 7439 3118
  • www.aba.org.uk

 

 

Ephemera - minor transient documents of every day life