Display Card For Valentine Maker Jonathan King, London c. 1870's.(All Images Courtesy of Bodleian Library.)A permanent collection of temporary items. That's one way to sum up what libraries and archives call "ephemera." Preserving items that were meant to be briefly used and thrown away seems like an exercise in futility at first glance. But paper ephemera -- such as leaflets, tickets, programs and playbills, posters, bookmarks, trade and calling cards, advertising inserts, and product packaging -- often reflect the day to day history of the average person in a way that more formal historical records can't.The Manufacture Of Valentines As...
"I Am A Seller of Used Ideas"
A mock invitation card to the 1970 Oz obscenity trial over the'Schoolkids Issue'with a note on the back from Richard Neville,one of the co-editors,saying that he was on his way to court.The Judge said that his co-accused Felix Denniswas too thick to warrant a long custodial sentence.Carl Williams, who heads up the Counterculture division of Maggs Bros. modern department, has curated an eclectic spread of over a hundred posters, illustrations, propaganda pamphlets for Maggs Gallery’s current exhibit, Please Do Not Bend.He recently sat down with Daven Wu of The Sixties for an interview about the exhibition and his job, which...