The next Ephemera Society Bazaar is on this Sunday (3 October), at the Holiday Inn, Coram St, London WC1N 1HT, from 11am until 4pm.
If you’ve not been before, the Ephemera Fairs & Bazaars are rather special events, where traders gather to sell printed ephemera dating from roughly the 1800s to the 1960s. There’s a mix of posters, travel brochures and labels, theatre bills, invoices, and all manner of printed goodness. A bit like a jumble sale crossed with a bookshop. But good.
A few more bits of ephemera for your viewing pleasure, all from the days when people used to take photos using something called ‘film’. It came in small ‘rolls’ which you put into your camera, and generally allowed you to take 24 or 36 ‘exposures’. You would then take the film to a chemist, or specialist ‘photo lab’ to be ‘developed’, which could take between 1 hour and 1 week, and you would then get back a pack of ‘prints’. Happy days.
We trundled along to the latest Ephemera Society Fair on Sunday, and stumbled upon a whole stack of labels from the Leicester chemist W. T. Hind. Some lovely stuff – we’ve uploaded it all to our Flickr Ephemera Set.
Postal happiness! This little package of loveliness arrived this morning from Richard at Ace Jet 170, as a swap for one of our Twickenham Carnival posters. Tastily wrapped in a French route-map, it held a stack of lovely print stuff, including a Penguin book with a cover illustration by Milton Glaser. Very lovely all round – so thanks Richard!
Ben Olins from Herb Lester Associates has dropped us one of their You Are Here maps (you might have seen it on AceJet170), which feature places for folk unencumbered by offices to meet and work, and a lovely little thing it is too.
The writing is particularly fine:
"The creators of this guide have spent hours at sticky tables having meetings or waiting for appointments, always with the niggling thought that there must be somewhere nicer to pass the time. After all, there are thousands of places to meet in London, why put up with something wretched?"
"Nine out of ten self-employed layabouts agree that spending a day at the British Library delivers a feeling of accomplishment out of all proportion to work actually done."
Ben used to edit The Guide for The Guardian, and was later at Channel 4, where he worked with Jane Smillie; and the pair of them make up Herb Lester Associates. They're still working on their website, but he tells us they're going to focus on producing books, magazines, journals and such like. Should be worth keeping an eye on.
Meantime, if you'd like a copy of the map, they're £3 – just drop them an email.
And oh yep, the rather lovely illustration work – that's by Michael Newhouse.
We recently picked up this rather lovely sign at The Old Cinema in Chiswick, but we're not really sure where it's originally from. We thought maybe it used to be on a train? Any ideas? It's about 600mm long, and the typeface is a little bit Gill, a little bit Granby, a little bit Johnston. If you've got any knowledge, answers on a postcard to the usual address. Or, you know, in the comments section below…
(More of the same over on Alistair's Signs and Lettering Flickr set.)
Oop, bit late notice on this, but the latest Ephemera Society Bazaar is nearly upon us – the perfect place for picking up piles of printed goodness (stuff like this). It's this Sunday, 28 February, at Park Inn, 92 Southampton Row, London WC1B 4BH, from 11 till 4. See you there.
Some lovely stuff in the post this morning, including this rather tasty sample pack from image & type library Veer, which contains a set of six dry transfer sheets (you know, like the Letraset stuff, from the olden times).
The pack's been produced as a PR device to shout about some new typefaces they've added to their library (including Alejandro Paul's Business Penmanship, for which they've also created a bells & whistles flash page.) Though, oddly, the pack doesn't feature the new typefaces, but some of their older ones, including Rian Hughes' lovely Mellotron. But heck, free type transfers, we're not about to complain… and we've always liked Veer anyway. They just have a good vibe about them, and their copywriting hits that warm 'n' fuzzy spot without being too cutesy, which can be a tricky balance in a world where everyone seems determined to absorb the very essence of Dan Germain.
You can pick up one of the packs by registering with Veer. (Though only if you're in the UK or Germany – so bad luck to all our readers in Nauru.)
Get rubbing.
We made our way to East Dulwich today to visit one of our favourite shops in London (in fact, it's one of our favourite shops just about anywhere).
North Cross Vintage (on the corner of Fellbrigg Road, just off North Cross Road, London SE22) is one of those perfect treasure troves, stuffed to the rafters with a fantastic collection of books, signs, packaging, tins, woodblock lettering, furniture and other assorted ephemera.
It's run by the lovely John & Belinda, who hand pick all the stuff. The shop was originally tucked away in a basement on the nearby Lordship Lane before they were flooded out – but the enforced move ended up being a good thing, as their new location has far more space.
While they replenish their stock after the Christmas rush the shop is only open on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays (from 11 to 6), but from February they'll generally be open Thursday through Monday each week.
There are a few more shots on Alistair's Flickr set. Do pop along if you get the chance – tell them we sent you.
Well, crikey, Happy New Year to one and all! Hope you had a glorious festive season.
We had one of those hectic run-ups to Christmas (three parts work, one part social), which is why things have been a bit quiet on here.
But between the turkey and the christmas pudding we did manage to dig through the archives, and tracked down a few fantastic bits of ephemera, including (rather ironically, given all the feasting) this Ration Book from The Ministry of Food, which belonged to Alistair's grandmother.
We hadn't realised that rationing went on so long (it finally ended in 1954), and can't help but wonder if a similar system will be necessary again one day; and if it does come back in, what form the rationing 'book' of the future might take.
Check out more scans from this, as well as a few other new bits and bobs, over at Alistair's Ephemera and Second World War ephemera Flickr sets.
