It’s my bedside bookmark tin of course! I thought I’d take you on a tour of some of its contents. I’ll begin with my most treasured ones… It’s all in the family My late mum was a huge opera lover, and kept a lot of her ticket stubs. These are two contrasting ones I use Read More
Category: Ephemera
The World of Ephemera: Learning Your Scales
You know I love ephemera, (see here for lots of posts on the subject). It’s amazing, the bits of paper you find, when rooting around for things. Today I found this: I bet you thought slide-rules were just used for maths! Actually most of you will never have come across a maths slide-rule. By the Read More
The World of Ephemera: A Classic Crochet Pattern
Something away from books today as a palate cleanser from all those best of lists! Plug the word ‘Ephemera’ into the search bar or click here, and you’ll bring up a rich variety of bits of vintage paper, most of which hail from my late mum, who was an inveterate newspaper clipper. I found this Read More
The World of Ephemera: Before Z Cars…
Time for some more ephemera, Found in amongst a pile of old theatre programmes, this edition of the school mag of M.C.B. – Methodist College Belfast from June 1949. My mum went there, and must have been in the sixth form when this edition was published. Sadly, despite being a classics scholar and singer she Read More
The World of Ephemera: A Swiss Folklore Evening
I love ephemera, (you can see a summary page of all my previous posts on the subject here), and I can’t resist sharing more bits with you as I find them. Today, we’re off to Switzerland, Luzern to be precise, and what could be more exciting than going by motor launch on the lake to Read More
The lost post archive: The World of Ephemera
Among all my recent ‘lost posts’ (more on that here), are some older series which I’d like to add back into the blog. I plan to add each series of posts back into their original places in the timeline with comments disabled, but with a live linking post here. The first lot I’m republishlng are those on Ephemera, including Read More
A Miscellany led by more marginalia …
Having dipped into this book often and read all the interviews I wanted to, this tome which I’d got from the charity shop was destined to go back there. Brief Encounters, subtitled ‘meetings with remarkable people’ is a collection of Gyles Brandreth’s interviews carried out for the Sunday Telegraph – he’s an engaging interviewer and Read More
The Wonderful World of Ephemera
A few years ago, I used to have a regular series of posts on ephemera – I even made a little button for it (above). Select ‘ephemera’ in the category search box on the right hand sidebar – and these posts will all come up, alongside a few more recent ones. I was mostly finding Read More
Panto season … 1951
Looking through some really old theatre programmes again, my eye was caught by the advertisement below on the back of one. Dating from 1951, the ad is for a pantomime – Aladdin – put on my impressario Emile Littler at the London Casino. Cast your eyes down to the bottom left and see who is Read More
What a cast!
A vintage theatrical diversion for you today… Sorting through a pile of assorted clippings, programmes etc of my late mum’s I found this theatre programme … and my first thought was ‘What a cast!’ You can see for yourself … The Way of the World is one of the very best Restoration comedies, first performed in Read More
Generations of family photos …
Doing some sorting out this afternoon whilst watching the Olympics, and found some family photos that had belonged to my Great Aunt. I adored this one, so I thought I’d share a few with you. It shows my maternal Grandmother Ethel (known as Ettie) on the left and my Great Aunt Muriel on the right. Read More
Knit one, purl one and all that …
(republished into its original place in the time-line from my lost post archive. See the rest of this series of posts here.) I haven’t done one of my ephemera posts on old papers and clippings found in my late Mum’s hoard for ages, but came across these two knitting patterns recently which piqued my interest… A Read More
The World of Ephemera #9
The Cockney Alphabet & Railway Porter’s Prayer I rediscovered these whilst sorting out a pile of cuttings and other assorted papers I’d built up the other day. They come from articles in old editions of the Folio Society magazine. The Cockney Alphabet I love this, yet apparently there are millions of variations on it – so Read More
The World of Ephemera #8
Wool This week’s ephemera post is about a piece of paper that has hidden secrets! Who would have thought that an unpreposessing leaflet like this on the right which appears to be the equivalent of a paint chart for wool would open out into something as glorious as this below … In fact it opens Read More
The world of Ephemera #7
The word is ‘dirndl’ A dirndl, just in case you’ve never heard the word before, is the name for a traditional peasant dress worn in Bavaria, the Tyrol and the surrounding areas. It consists of a fitted bodice, blouse, full skirt and apron. I’m talking dirndls today because I have one – read on … Read More
The World of Ephemera #6
Family Photos I love looking at old family photos. Amongst all my Mum’s was a small album she inherited from my late Great-Aunt Muriel. This one shows Muriel and friends strolling down the street in Llandudno in 1929. Muriel is the third from the left, she was twenty-three when this was taken. I’ve no idea Read More
The World of Ephemera #5
Medical Matters It’s time for another post in my series on paper finds – and I have three things to share that are all linked by being of a medical nature. First is my Mum’s discharge certificate from the evocatively named Purdysburn Fever Hospital after suffering a bout of scarlet fever back in 1939. Scarlet fever Read More
The World of Ephemera #4: Childhood drawing
Sorting through mountains of papers, one happy discovery has been a folder containing many of my childhood drawings and doodles that my Mum had kept. It has been absolutely wonderful to be reunited with them, and indeed a real trip down memory lane as I can remember many of them. My daughter has been especially Read More
The World of Ephemera #3: The Department at Work
In the days of brown coats and drawing boards. My parents worked for the Customs & Excise for just about all of their working lives in one post or another. The C&E is now incorporated with the Inland Revenue into HM Revenue & Customs or HMRC. We tend to associate C&E with catching smugglers and inspecting Read More
The World of Ephemera #2
I have a stunner of a spoof letter for you today. This was found in amongst my Mum’s papers, but not just one copy – I’ve come across several during my filing! What makes it even funnier is that this copy had a typed circulation list attached plus a handwritten note from my Mum explaining how Read More
The World of Ephemera #1
Welcome to my first post in my new series on the world of Ephemera – featuring rescued pieces of paper that are just too interesting to recycle. Today our subject is knitting and crochet patterns. Yes, back in the late 1960s they had knitting patterns for outfits for fashion dolls – not busty Barbie, the much Read More
My new favourite word …
One of the joys in sorting out all my late Mum’s stuff, was encountering so many interesting pieces of paper. From 50yr old concert programmes to her autograph book; newspaper clippings on the value of prunes in your diet (yes, really) to all those postcards I described before, not to mention the notebooks monitoring her Read More
Raise a glass …
Still going through a forest of papers, and I’ve found a bundle from my late great-aunt Muriel which my Mum had kept. For many years Muriel worked as Secretary to the Chairman of Beatson Clark in Rotherham – a company which makes still makes glass containers. I found the programme for the Society of Glass Read More
Boring Postcards is anything but!
Boring Postcards by Martin Parr This was a book I rescued from a local charity shop for just £1 and fell in love with instantly. Martin Parr is, I discover, an amazing photographer in his own right, specialising in capturing everyday life. In Boring Postcards, he has turned editor, selecting a bunch of vintage postcards Read More
In Praise of Good Old-Fashioned Autograph books
These days your average school leaver gets everyone to sign their shirt with marker pen on their last day as a souvenir of their time at school. Turn the clock back a few decades and you reach the time when people kept autograph books, and their friends wrote silly little poems, or drew pictures, or Read More
