Olive Lambert's Autograph Book
posted by Miko on Aug 28, 2009 - 8 comments

Beautifully designed, quirky, colorful late 19th-century "artistic" and "gaslight" printing at Dick Sheaff's ephemera pages. [via, via] [more inside]
posted by mediareport on Jun 8, 2009 - 11 comments

Peace and War in the 20th Century is an ambitious, in progress, massive assemblage of posters, photographs, propaganda, ephemera, letters, diaries, paintings, sketches, stories, letters, music and related items, from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. The collection is international in scope. Some of the nodes lack content, and the navigation is a little confusing, so the jump I list some of my favourite case studies from their site. [more inside]
posted by Rumple on Jan 2, 2009 - 4 comments

The University of Washington has put a collection of Vietnam War era printed ephemera (posters, flyers, pamphlets, magazines, mostly cheap mimeographs or photocopies) online. The browsable collection ranges from Defend the Black Panthers to How to Make a Revolution in the U.S. to the Planetary Citizen Human Manifesto to plain old Do Something. The collection offers a fascinating insight into the passion, energy and graphic sensibilities of grassroots, home-front politics in late 1960s and early 1970s Seattle. [more inside]
posted by Rumple on Aug 16, 2008 - 18 comments

From about 1875 to the 1940s, cigarette cards spurred tobacco sales. Sets offer a glimpse into the popculture of the times, spanning newsmakers, cinema celebrities, and sports stars; cute illustrated subjects, like "frisky" and children with rosy cheeks; handy info like air raid precautions, first aid, and amusing tricks; and neat stuff like famous escapes, exotic races, and figures of speech. Browse more fun sets of vintage images.
posted by madamjujujive on Dec 11, 2007 - 21 comments

Agence Eureka is a French language image-blog with hundreds or even thousands of scanned illustrations, mostly from mid-20th century French schoolbooks, educational material, magazines, and ephemera. The current front page is slightly NSFW. Some of the categories include anatomy 1 & 2 (mildly NSFW); chocolate wrappers/trading cards; bricolage; decoupage (cut-outs); math education; playing cards; books and magazines; cars; cinema; orientalisme; sport; mild pin-ups; and many others (scroll all the way down the right to see the tags). [more inside]
posted by Rumple on Dec 4, 2007 - 12 comments

If you are a fan of longtime MeFite peacay's extraordinary blog, BibliOdyssey - and who isn't? - you can now get the coffee table version, The Annotated Archives of BibliOdyssey. (Or, in the U.S.) Forward by artist Dinos Chapman (NSFW). Kudos, peacay! Via.
posted by madamjujujive on Oct 20, 2007 - 26 comments

"John Smith, Youngest, of Crutherland, was given the honorary degree of LL.D in 1840. In 1842 he announced the bequest to the University [of Glasgow] of his runs of publications from learned societies, and his volumes of ephemeral items. These came to the library on Smith’s death in 1849." Some examples: Playbill, Theatre Royal, York Street. Broadsheet account of an attempted prison break. Radical Party election ballad. See also: Glasgow Broadside Ballads: cheap print and popular song culture in nineteenth-century Scotland and Glasgow Broadside Ballads: The Murray Collection
posted by Len on Feb 3, 2007 - 7 comments

Japan in America: the Turn of the Twentieth Century - an exhibit of ads, cartoons, art and other popculture artifacts from the decades leading up to WWI. (image menu is at the bottom of the page)
posted by madamjujujive on Sep 9, 2006 - 14 comments

The Memory of The Netherlands is an extensive digital collection of illustrations, photographs, texts, film and audio fragments from a large variety of Dutch cultural institutions. There are about 50 collections (in english).
posted by peacay on Feb 19, 2006 - 7 comments

Theatre History is the Theatre Museum of London's vast online collection of ephemera, containing more than 1500 objects that record the history of the performing arts in Britain since the 1600s. There's lots of goodies, but don't miss the goldmine of fabulous photos, posters, and prints.
posted by madamjujujive on Jan 15, 2006 - 5 comments

Without Sanctuary - postcards & photographs of lynching in America. Shocking and sad.
posted by echelon on May 1, 2000 - 4 comments