Posts tagged “ephemera”

ChittahChattah Quickies

  • The Ephemera Society is a non-profit body concerned with the collection, preservation, study and educational uses of hand-written and printed ephemera. – The term ‘ephemera’ covers a wide range of documents including leaflets, handbills, tickets, trade cards, programmes and playbills, printed tins and packaging, advertising inserts, posters, newspapers and much more. In the words of the society’s founder, Maurice Rickards, “the minor transient documents of everyday life”.

    Essentially produced to meet the needs of the day, such items reflect the moods and mores of past times in a way that more formal records cannot. Collectors of printed ephemera vary in their approach. Some focus on the ephemera of a particular trade or profession, others are interested in its social or graphic history. Other ephemerists collect documents simply as evocative reminders of the past.

  • What does it mean when getting access to medical care looks like getting tickets for a popular concert? – Ottawa's chief medical officer of health announced Thursday that the city will start issuing single-use, non-transferable wristbands in place of tickets to indicate each person's place in the queue. He expects that to make things fairer than the ticket system for others in line. "People are picking up tickets and then disappearing, picking up more than one ticket, just generally misusing and gaming the system," Levy said.

    Until now, some healthy people have been picking up tickets ahead of time so their children or other vulnerable relatives won't have to spend hours waiting in crowds at the clinics, where they could be exposed them to diseases such as swine flu. The new system could prevent them from taking such measures.

Archives of American Ephemera

I recently discovered the Prelinger Archives of American Ephemera-
an amazing collection of advertising, educational, industrial, and
amateur films.

For anyone into these types of artifacts, this is a veritable buffet.

Design fans, I heartily recommend checking out American Look:
a lovely piece of Chevrolet-sponsored cultural self-definition from 1958:

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American Look Part One

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American Look Part Two

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American Look Part Three

Series

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