THE EPHEMERA OF BUSINESS

To carry on with the dog theme - enjoy some dogs on paper - from billheads, letterheads, receipts, licenses and even on calling card.

While color trade cards abound and the black and white versions are rarer, that is the exact opposite for billheads. As the popularity of trade cards died out, color became more popular on billheads. Also probably due to the decreasing cost of using color and the increasing importance o billheads as a means of advertising to companies. See below for some neat examples.

As promised, below are pictures and informative information about the wonderful eight billheads I bought online two weeks ago. One item to note about billheads, is while I tend to think of them as letter size or slightly smaller, some of the other UK billheads I own are very small. My guess is that making them smaller was a cost savings and also easier to package along with the article purchased. I also wonder if the standard letter size was not the standard back then - thus the smaller form. Most of the billheads are from business of Lincoln in the UK. Lincoln is a cathedral city and county town of Lincolnshire, England. The Lincoln Cathedral was completed in 1092 and rebuilt after fire and an earthquake in 1185. The Bishops of Lincoln were among the magnates of medieval England. Lincolnshire, the largest diocese, had more monasteries than the rest of England put together. One of the four surviving originals of the Magna Carta is now preserved in Lincoln Castle...