GUSN-165854
Ephemera are materials that are meant to be used once and then discarded, not kept permanently. The Ephemera Collection contains over 5,000 items of a wide assortment of materials: advertising matter, billheads, calling cards, games, greeting cards, menus, pamphlets, playing cards, programs, sheet music, tickets and cards of admission, trade cards, and trade catalogues. These resources provide a wealth of visual documentation for the study of New England's material culture in the nineteentth and early-twentieth centuries. The focus of the collection is concentrated on products used in the construction, finish, or interior decoration of the home, including millwork, wall and floor coverings, paints, furniture, lighting, heating, and wallpaper. Several rare furniture and lighting catalogues are found in this collection.
Additional material is filed among the financial records of various family manuscript collections, especially the Codman Family Papers, as well as throughout the Local History document boxes, in which advertisements from approximately 1850 to 1920 frequently appear in promotional brochures or publications issued for special events. The subjects section of the Clippings Files should also be consulted for the period of approximately 1910 to 1930.
Advertising matter in Boston guidebooks and in a collection of nineteenth-century carpenters' manuals and house plans has also been indexed by subjects. The inventories to these collections supply references to illustrations. After 1848, the Boston city directories are an excellent source of detailed line engravings of buildings and products.
Source: Guide to the Library and Archives, 21.
furnishings (artifacts)
interior decoration
trade cards (advertising)
billheads
trade catalogs
advertisements
visiting cards
card games (game sets)
greeting cards
menus
pamphlets
playing cards
programs (documents)
sheet music
admission tickets
ca. 5,000 items
EP001
Ephemera collection
EP001
1800s-2010s
Boston (Suffolk county, Massachusetts)
New England (United States) [general region]
trade cards (advertising)
billheads
trade catalogs
advertisements
visiting cards
card games (game sets)
greeting cards
menus
pamphlets
playing cards
programs (documents)
sheet music
admission tickets
Collection
Locke-Ober Cafe collection, undated
Ephemera collection, 2011 donation
William Sumner Appleton had a passion for saving not only New England architecture but also the artifacts typical of the region's daily life. To that end, he began collecting ephemera for the organization almost immediately upon founding it in 1910. In the ensuing years, the organization has steadily added to its ephemera holdings. The approximately 25,000 documents that currently make up the collection constitute a major resource for the study of New England's social and cultural history.
Appleton's concern for things was less for their rarity than for their value as documents of cultural history. He saved and solicited small paper memorabilia - postcards, clippings, programs, broadsides, advertisements, guidebooks, menus - rightly anticipating they would interest future historians and shed light on contemporary popular culture. Tickets, greeting cards, rewards of merit, invitations - scraps not intended to be saved but happily escaping destruction - bring historical events and personal daily lives into focus.
The trade cards and billheads are arranged by subjects and are indexed by the names of Boston businesses, pre-1835 advertisements and works by Boston printmakers. Otherwise, these items have not been separately cataloged. Trade catalogues are individually listed in a separate inventory, arranged by subject.
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