We would like the Ephemera Society of Australia’s website to be a place where you can find out all about ephemera and other collectables. Where the best source of information is another website or another collecting society or institution (public and private), we would to identify that and set up posts about the society, website, public or private collecting institution.
Please assist by suggesting societies, websites, public or private collecting institutions that you have found helpful.
The Ephemera Society of America
The Ephemera Society of America was established in 1980 and is the older sister society to The Ephemera Society of Australia.
The US website has some terrific elements that may be of interest to Australian collectors. These include:
- a great albeit incomplete guide to types of ephemera – short notes and a small number of fine examples of say ‘blotters’;
- notice of their impressive annual 3 day conference and fair – this March 2014 on food and drink (from production, promotion to eating – menus, special occasion menus, recipe books, remedies). The list of speakers is impressive and a guide to other resources;
- a bibliography for different types of ephemera – the strength of course being US publications;
- an index to their long running journal and newsletter. This does not appear to be searchable through the search box on the right hand corner of the site. But the index is not too long to browse through and of course that way you can come across some unexpected items of interests, say tea-bag tags.
If you want to follow updates on this site, you can follow the Society on Facebook.
The Ephemera Society (UK)
This is our parent Society. The Ephemera Society of Australia was established thanks to the efforts of visiting curator, Honor Godfrey, who was a very active participant of the UK Ephemera Society before and after her time in Melbourne. The Society was established in 1975.
This site has quite a modest tone but plenty of interesting material on it:
- ‘News’ includes information about upcoming Society events and new books of interest to ephemerists;
- ‘Links’ is a great list of societies, clubs, museums and other institutional collections. Each entry on the list is usefully annotated with some brief notes;
- ‘Item of the month’ features a range of material, sometimes with notes. There is an archive of these monthly items available via the menu on the right of this web page. Once you choose a year, you get a list of month with item description;
- ‘Articles’ also cover a great range with an archive easily accessed. Examples include: car park tickets; funeralia; invasions; and film;
- ‘Queries’ which follows the same formula of a good illustration with question and answer and an archive.
You can follow the Society on Facebook and get alerts to changes on the site.