THE EPHEMERA OF BUSINESS

I purchased a lot of paper from a hibid auction out of California and I was intrigued by the lot of fraternal business cards in it. I'd never much paid attention to these items before, but boy are they great! I think I might be starting a new collecting area for myself. 

I'll never forget the words of a dealer at a local flea market I attended years ago. He had lots of cartons of ephemera and he said to me as I paid for my items, "Paper people love to dig." I'd never thought of myself as a digger, but on reflection, that is exactly what I loved about collecting and selling paper ephemera. I loved finding that gem in a bunch of paper. It is this digging that lead me to purchase this piece of advertising scrap. I know its not complete, but I loved the graphic image on it and it was free from the dealer with the purchase of other items.  I loved the volcanic eruption and well of oil liniment that had "healing" virtues. As you can see this is for Dr. JH McLean's Volcanic Oil Liniment patent medicine.  You can even buy this product today! 

I regularly purchase goods and paper at a local online auction. In December, I noticed that a lot of random estate / household goods also had a small pile of what looked to be calendars. I won the lot and sure enough it included many advertising calendars. Many of those were for the Capewell Horse Nail Company of Hartford Connecticut. These calendars were damaged, but the color and graphics were still very bright. Last week, I happened on a lot of paper through ebay that included a billhead for the company. Attached are photos of all for your enjoyment.

I was reading the New York Times online several weeks ago and an article caught my attention as I have a billhead for the business mentioned. The article is "The Toxic Secret Underneath the Seaport"  Guiseppe Tagliabue was a maker of thermometers, hydrometers, pyrometers, and barometers from New York City. Another website I use a lot is Find A Grave. I highly recommend it for research purposes. Here is Tagliabue's page .

Newspaper print advertisements seem to me to be "uncool" to collectors of graphics / typography. Today I was doing research for a soon to be listed ebay item and stumbled across the digitized " The Tobacco Leaf " journal. It is eight pages loaded with tobacco advertisements.  Ads for interest: Page 2: Simon Strauss' store front advertisement with signage that he was a manufacturer of cigar boxes and also did ship ornamental carving. I looked up Strauss and he was a carver of cigar store Indians. He was also arrested in 1869 for setting fire to his store. Page 3: Heppenheimer & Maurer Lithographers, Engravers and Printers of cigar, tobacco, wine and liquor labels. Example tobacco label on ebay: The Banker's Daughter. Page 7: Large factory graphic for Lichtenstein Bros & Co. cigar manufacturers. Antique poster for sale through George Glazer Gallery. Page 8: Far left side near bottom is an advertisement for a woman's business. Mrs. G.B....

I recently purchased a large lot of letterheads and other paper ephemera from an online auction was from a Rockford Illinois family. That family was the Brolins . The patriarch was Willard A. Brolin Sr. He had is hand in numerous Rockford businesses and was a millionaire before the 1929 stock market crash in which he lost everything. Amongst that lot of papers was a rather benign looking letterhead for an R.L. Beckwith of Center Harbor New Hampshire. The typed letter discusses business. I always do a quick research of the items I sell on ebay just to make sure I am not missing anything. To my surprise, Richard L. Beckwith was a Titanic survivor! There is a market for Titanic survivor signatures and I was fortunate to be able to market this as such. What also helped me to link this to the Beckwith Titanic survivor was other paper in my lot from William Monypeny Newsom - who was Beckwith's stepson. Without that link, I would have had to put a caveat on my listing as a "possible...