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Ephemera, by the dictionary’s standard, refers to paper or printed items meant to be used for only short periods, then to be discarded, but saved form the wastebasket by collectors. This can include various items like concert or theater tickets, movie posters, catalogs and magazines, calendars, ink blotters, postcards and greeting cards. Paper collectibles can also include some things that do not necessarily fall into the ephemera standard, because they were intended to be saved, and include items like wedding certificates and military papers.
Collections of this type can be from your own family’s history and gathered from shoeboxes, closets, and attic corners, or picked up here and there. It can be very interesting to discover a stack of papers at a rummage sale for a few dollars. Many people pass this right by as just garbage. If you discover a stack though, and are a lover of paper, you know that bits and pieces of lives can be discovered among them. Letters home during the war, or from a son or daughter newly on their own. Wedding certificates from years past were often elegantly decorated, as were baptismal records. Old stacks of magazines can offer similar wonders. Old advertisements can bring back memories long forgotten of a first car or favorite childhood toy.
Before computers, a paper trail was left for nearly every transaction. Company’s letterheads and early motor vehicle titles are often very decorative. Ads sent to prospective customers before the advent of television advertising are interesting collectibles. One such leaflet offers the cure all O-Jib-Wa Bitters, for everything from rheumatic pains to kidney ailments, indigestion, headaches, and even bad breath. Early postcards are favorites, depicting scenes from the East Coast to the West Coast and every stop in between. Also among paper collectibles is a whole class of give-a-ways. These include calendars, ink blotters, paper rulers, and reference items like the seeding schedule given to farmers visiting the feed mill, from ‘Northland Farm Seeds’ it states, given when purchasing their yearly seeds for planting. These items all contained advertising, and were often given at the end of the year, so the people being given them would remember to shop and frequent their establishments throughout the coming year.
When someone collects paper and ephemera, the one problem they often run into is what to do with what they have collected. How do they display their collection? Different display options will depend on what exactly you have. Magazines are one of the most difficult to display, especially if the collection is large. Ones collected for their covers can be framed and hung in groupings. Those that you collected because you enjoy the interior of them can be placed out in small amounts on a side table, with the remainder stored. Be sure to keep small children away if you cherish these though.
Postcards and greeting cards are also perfect items to frame. If these are older cards, be sure to use glass that will protect them from fading. A popular way to display assorted paper collectibles, such as a wedding certificate, accompanied by a baptismal certificate, along with other important papers, is a memory album. Made of materials to help protect the paper from yellowing, and keeping them protected from their worst enemy next to the sun, our own hands, they allow you to share these without having to worry about them becoming damaged. A memory book can be displayed open on a table or shelf. If you decide to frame a favorite item, your father’s military papers for example, this becomes a perfect way to display associated collectibles. Along with the papers, incorporate his medals in the matting, or if you decide to frame your grandmother’s baptismal papers, that along with her christening gown could be framed together in a shadow box style frame. Movie posters, along with ticket stubs to the show represented on the poster, make a great grouping.
What if you do not want to frame something? Then wing it! A collection of sewing books could be displayed atop an old sewing cabinet. Ink blotters could be displayed with an old pen and inkwell on the corner of a desk. Trading cards, often collected in large quantities, can be stacked on an end table with a few fanned out in front. Odds and ends of paper, say a receipt for a watch repair, could be placed next to an antique watch. The fun of ephemera and paper collecting is that your options for display can be as simple or as detailed as you make it. Remember, paper that is nothing more than trash to one person, is often a pile of wonder to another. So, leave no box unopened, or attic corner not fully searched, when on the hunt for additions to your collection.
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