2024 ESA Press Report by Sanford L. Smith + Associates

EPHEMERA FAIR 2024

PULL QUOTES

“For an institution dedicated to the fleeting and short-lived objects of the past, the Ephemera Society of America has been nothing if not enduring.” – Robert Marchant, Greenwich Time, February 8, 2024

“The upcoming show is keenly anticipated.” – Robert Marchant, Greenwich Time, February 8, 2024

“A cultural cornerstone in Connecticut and the surrounding New England and New York area.” –Staff Writer, Antiques and the Arts Weekly, March 8, 2024

"The quality of the event has continued to grow.” – Sophia Muce, CT Examiner, March 13, 2024

“An all-encompassing look into the evolution of everyday life.” – Sophia Muce, CT Examiner, March 13, 2024

“One of my favorite events to visit to find unique, rare, and unusual posters, cards, publications and other paper goods to add to my collection.” – Staff Writer, Arthurious, March 16, 2024

“Driven less by potential profit and more by personal passion.” – Justin Mcgown, Westfair Business Journal, March 22, 2024

“The only thing brighter than the almost-spring sunshine outside of the Hyatt Regency Greenwich on March 16 and 17 was vendors’ expressions throughout what was overall an enjoyable and profitable weekend at the Ephemera44 Paper Fair and Conference.” – Staff Writer, Antiques and the Arts Weekly, April 12, 2024

ESA Ephemera Fair Returns to Connecticut

Dealer news in brief including details of America's largest ephemera event

News in brief

Ephemera Fair in Old Greenwich brings WWII posters, signed Buffalo Bill photo, historic maps to town

‘This is the one you’re waiting for’

ESA Ephemera Fair & Conference Returns For Its 44th

The Power of Love An Exceptionally Hard-Working

A Panorama of Design

Ephemera Society of America to Hold 44th Annual Ephemera Fair in Old Greenwich This Weekend

St. Patrick's Day parades and the circus: 25+ things to do in Connecticut this weekend, March 15-17

Broadway Ephemera: Brando singing; Bernhardt thanked; Irving Berlin and Tallulah Bankhead, Herman and Merman

A Day at the Largest Travel Ephemera Show in the USA

Monthly news & updates

A moment with the Greenwich Ephemera Festival

‘Conflict/Resolution’ Achieves Great

A roundup of news and events from around the trade

By Frances Allitt

Haec City/Also Books brings this early 20th century lace sample book from a Nottingham factory, featuring over 200 large samples in various colours and designs, to the Ephemera Society of America fair.

https://www.antiquestradegazette.com/print-edition/2024/january/2627/dealersdiary/dealer-news-in-brief-including-details-of-americas-largest-ephemera-event/

Ephemera fair

The Ephemera Society of America (ESA) stages its 44th fair from March 16-17 following its annual conference which this year has the theme Conflict/ Resolution (March 15).

The fair, the country’s largest ephemera event, is staged by Sanford L Smith + Associates at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Connecticut. More than 50 exhibitors are set to stand including Evie Eysenburg Ephemera, aGatherin’ and Stephen Resnick, all long-time participants.

ephemerasociety.org

https://www.antiquestradegazette.com/print-edition/2024/january/2627/dealersdiary/dealer-news-in-brief-including-details-of-americas-largest-ephemera-event/

MARCH 11, 2024

A Panorama of Design

By Eve M. Kahn

In an undated photo provided by Phaidon, a spread from “The Tulip Garden: Growing and Collecting Species, Rare and Annual Varieties.” The author planted tulips as a “spontaneous shortcut” to fill beds, then delved more deeply into the flowers. (Phaidon via The New York Times)

NEW YORK, NY.- An Exceptionally Hardworking Valentine

Love’s bonds can be delicate yet feel constraining and require hard work to maintain. How better to express all that than by slicing paper into handmade greeting cards, with whorls that can be pulled up to form gossamer cages for images of lovebirds, bouquets, engagement rings, or even rodents?

The cards, known to fans as cobwebs or beehives, became popular in the 1800s. Some will be for sale March 16-17 at the Ephemera Society of America’s annual fair at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Old Greenwich, Connecticut. Eclectibles, a local dealer, is bringing a piece made in 1817 (and priced at $2,400), with watercolors of a calico cat on the cobweb’s surface and two anxious mice inside. Nothing is known about its maker, Eleanor Green, who signed

https://artdaily.com/news/167401/A-panorama-of-design

Sheryl Jaeger, the co-owner of Eclectibles, said watching it open brought “a real sense of wonder.” A video of the cat in motion will be shown on-site, so visitors will not be tempted to pull the string of the delicate piece themselves.

Nancy Rosin, an expert on valentines who helps the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York catalog its collection, said the card’s feline imagery was unusual. For Green, did the cat perhaps represent herself, or a confidant?

“We can read all kinds of messages into it,” Rosin said. She added that Green laboriously cut the paper, noting that it seems that for some cobweb makers, “love was all-empowering.” (ephemerasociety.org)

EVE M. KAHN

When Sneakers Became a Serious Asset Class

When did athletic shoes turn into collectibles? True sneakerheads have been scouting rare treasures for decades, but in July 2019, when Sotheby’s sold a pair of 1972 Nikes for $437,500 at its first dedicated sneaker auction, the shoes became an asset class to reckon with.

The auction of Important Sneakers and Modern Collectibles at Sotheby’s in Paris on March 14 will include a pair of Nikes designed in collaboration with (and signed by) rapper MF Doom, who died in 2020. The estimated price is 5,000 to 10,000 euros (about $5,500 to $11,000). Other lots will feature objects that, like sneakers, fall at the intersection of high fashion, pop culture and sports, such as a Louis Vuitton foosball table and a limited-edition sculpture Lady Gaga designed to enfold a bottle of Dom Pérignon Champagne.

But would anyone actually wear sneakers with such a rare provenance and hefty price? Zaki Vanderlip, a 26-year-old specialist in streetwear for Sotheby’s, said it all depended on the collector and shoes. Some buyers will lace up, say, a pair of Virgil Abloh Nikes, of which only 200 were ever made.

“The average price was somewhere around $150,000 per pair,” Vanderlip said. “Of course, everyone thought no one would wear these but, lo and behold, I’ve seen them around.” (sothebys.com)

SARAH ARCHER

Preparing to Do Battle With Your Toilet, in Style

In 1995, when super-designer Philippe Starck unveiled a toilet brush called Excalibur, the news was reported in a front-page article in the Home section of The New York Times. The brush, so named because its handle resembled that of a sword (which users pulled from a base), found its way into museum design collections before its manufacturer, Heller, discontinued it in 2006.

But like a production of “Camelot,” Excalibur was ever ripe for revival. In 2022, John Edelman, the former head of Design Within Reach, bought Heller, and is now reissuing the brush.

https://artdaily.com/news/167401/A-panorama-of-design and dated her work.

“We had requests for this product from all over the world,” he said.

Reached in Paris, Starck, 75, said he was thrilled. “It’s a very nice reward for me,” he said. “When you work with honesty, humility and fantasy, you hope it will be well liked. When you help a person with the humblest object of the day to clean their toilet, for me it was very important. It was an obsession.”

The new Excalibur will be produced in off-white, light gray, chocolate and light yellow. It has a $100 price tag, which Starck declined to discuss. “I don’t know the price,” he said. “For me, everything is too expensive.” (hellerfurniture.com)

ARLENE HIRST

An ‘Utterly Bewitching Flower’ Gets Its Due

A kaleidoscope of tulips blooms in spring on Polly Nicholson’s land in southwest England, the base for her organic cut flower business Bayntun Flowers. Her new book, “The Tulip Garden: Growing and Collecting Species, Rare and Annual Varieties” (Phaidon), shares how she mixes new and pedigreed types of what she calls an “utterly bewitching flower.”

Nearly 20 years ago, when her family moved to the property, she planted tulip bulbs as what she describes as a “spontaneous shortcut” to fill beds. Then she delved into the flowers’ back stories. Some had originated a millennium ago in the Middle East and Asia and are shown in old master paintings and Ottoman tiles. She also seeks out recent experiments, in shades of palest pink or deepest indigo. The book details all aspects of the plants, whether “mottled, undulating leaves,” or crinkled petals with “a freakish, feathery appearance.”

She fertilizes her soil with organic seaweed and sprinkles it with chili powder to fend off squirrels. She reassures readers that, “if a combination really jars you” a bed’s colors, shapes, and textures seem cacophonous it should be seen as “a temporary aberration,” destined to last just one spring. “And you may even come to love it,” she added. “Every garden needs a bit of bad taste.” (phaidon.com)

This article originally appeared in The New York Times

EVE M. KAHN

https://artdaily.com/news/167401/A-panorama-of-design

MARCH 16, 2024

A Day at the Largest Travel Ephemera Show in the USA

By Staff Writer

The yearly fair by the Ephemera Society of America in Old Greenwich, CT is one of my favorite events to visit to find unique, rare, and unusual posters, cards, publications and other paper goods to add to my collection. Recognized the the country’s largest ephemera show (with 50 dealers presenting their large collections), this year’s event took place in Hyatt Regency hotel in Old Greenwich, CT some 45 minutes from Manhattan.

https://arthurious.com/ephemera-show-2024/

Tickets are $12 if you buy them online or $15 at the door

https://arthurious.com/ephemera-show-2024/

https://arthurious.com/ephemera-show-2024/ A first edition of Observations book by Truman Capote and Richard Avedon

An original antique tote bag featuring logo of Liberty magazine

https://arthurious.com/ephemera-show-2024/

Cableship, a rare Onboard Magazine of the CS Mackay-Bennett. This shipboard journal was published by the crew of the cable ship *Mackay-Bennett* while on service in the Atlantic in 1913 and 1914.

https://arthurious.com/ephemera-show-2024/

An antique pergume bottle package

https://arthurious.com/ephemera-show-2024/

44th Ephemera Fair

March 15 17, 2024

Hyatt Regency in Old Greenwich, CT

https://arthurious.com/ephemera-show-2024/

Tickets: $12 online

See exhibitor floor plan

https://arthurious.com/ephemera-show-2024/

MARCH 13, 2024

By Sophia Muce

David Cohn

GREENWICH – The annual Ephemera Fair will be offering a vast variety materials from century-old fabrics, cookbooks, photographs and trade cards.

https://ctexaminer.com/2024/03/13/ephemera-society-of-america-to-hold-44thannual-ephemera-fair-in-old-greenwich-this-weekend/

From March 16 to 17, the Ephemera Society of America will hold its 44th annual fair at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Old Greenwich. This year, collectors can sort through more than 10,000 pieces of memorabilia displayed by at least 50 different exhibitors.

ESA President David Lilburne told CT Examiner that many sellers and educational institutions travel every year to the fair to buy and sell memorabilia. But Lilburne said his hope is that the event will continue to bring in people beyond the collecting community.

https://ctexaminer.com/2024/03/13/ephemera-society-of-america-to-hold-44thannual-ephemera-fair-in-old-greenwich-this-weekend/

Sunflower, 1970 (Mare Booksellers)

“That’s the objective of the Ephemera Society – to get the word out there,” Lilburne said. “You will find every price range at every subject with ephemera. There’s not an area that you can’t touch.”

Lilburne, who is a bookseller by trade, said he stumbled across his own love for ephemera at a fair in the 1990s.

Hunting for novels to fill his storefront, Lilburne said he would often get discouraged at other fairs as he would see copies of the same books over-and-over again. But when he attended his first ESA Fair, he said his passion for buying books was reignited.

“I was finding things that I’d never seen before,” Lilburne said.

Along with books, Lilburne said his visits to the ESA Fair allowed him to feed his love for items like tea and historic maps. About 20 years later, he said he now has a collection of about 4,500 tea packets, illustrations and postcards, and maps of explorations like James Cook’s expedition to the Pacific and the discovery of Hawaii.

HAEC City

As membership on the society’s Board of Directors has expanded beyond dealers to include representatives from the Library of Congress and the American Antiquarian Society, Lilburne said the quality of the event has continued to grow.

https://ctexaminer.com/2024/03/13/ephemera-society-of-america-to-hold-44thannual-ephemera-fair-in-old-greenwich-this-weekend/

This year, the society highlighted long standing exhibitors like Evie Eysenburg – who specializes in trade cards, social history and folk art – and aGatherin’ – which assembles collections of specific items such as tags sent with flowers for Valentine’s Day in 1951.

Tom’s Curiosity Shop

Before the fair, the society will also hold its annual conference on March 15, which will feature eight presentations related to the event’s theme – conflict and resolution.

Lilburne urged the importance of the preceding conference, as it allows the presenters to delve further into their collections. Under this year’s theme, he said he attendees will not only learn about, but also experience culture both during and after major historic conflicts.

“We don’t want just speakers. We want the talk to be illustrated with ephemera,” Lilburne said.

Through both the fair and the conference, Lilburne said attendees will have a distinctive look into the history of art, culture, and life. While one movie ticket or one book may not seem significant on its own, he said the annual event provides an all-encompassing look into the evolution of everyday life.

https://ctexaminer.com/2024/03/13/ephemera-society-of-america-to-hold-44thannual-ephemera-fair-in-old-greenwich-this-weekend/

MARCH 14, 2024

By Joseph Tucci

The Greater Bridgeport St. Patrick's Day Celebration was held on Friday, March 17, 2023. Mike MacLauchlan

This weekend brings a chance to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with a parade or witness highflying stunts at the circus.

Miscellaneous

The ESA Ephemera Fair, Old Greenwich

https://www.ctinsider.com/things-to-do/article/25-things-to-do-march-15-17connecticut-18707047.php

The Ephemera Society of America's Ephemera Fair will bring around 10,000 items such as baseball cards, business cards and luggage tags to the Hyatt Regency Old Greenwich on Friday, March 15 through Sunday, March 17. The event runs each day from 10 a.m. 4 p.m. 1800 E Putnam Ave., Old Greenwich

https://www.ctinsider.com/things-to-do/article/25-things-to-do-march-15-17connecticut-18707047.php

By Staff Writer

https://www.finebooksmagazine.com/fine-books-news/esa-ephemera-fair-returnsconnecticut

The ESA Ephemera Fair – officially sanctioned by the Ephemera Society of America (ESA) and produced and managed by Sanford L. Smith + Associates – is set to return to the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Old Greenwich, Connecticut March 16 - 17 for Ephemera 44, its 44th Edition.

The ESA’s annual conference – themed Conflict/Resolution – will precede the fair on March 15, featuring eight presentations addressing diverse topics related to conflict and/or resolution. Morning lectures include:

• Looted and Supplied: Ephemera Travels to the Enemy with Richard Thorner

• Interactive Political Ephemera: Making a Statement with Mechanical Paper with Ellen G.K. Rubin

• The American War In Vietnam: The Pro-War and Anti-War Movement with Stuart Lutz

• Printing 1960s High School Student Activism with Jennifer Hoyer

The four afternoon conference sessions will be:

• English Suffrage: Ephemera of Militancy and Response with Ken Florey

• How the Union Printing Industry Promoted Patriotism and Profited During the Civil War with Vinnie Vaicekauskas and Heather Locklear

• Strikethrough: Typography as Protest with Stephen Coles

• Gay Liberation Movement of the 1970s and 1980s with Corey Serrant

According to the organisers: "While war, national and international, may first come to mind, our topic will also include significant social or political movements where ephemera has been produced to advance an argument or as evidence of what transpired. Ephemera has also been a crucial component in propaganda and disinformation campaigns in a variety of conflicts."

The Ephemera Fair features more than 10,000 items ranging from advertisements, banknotes, baseball cards, business cards and cookbooks to fans, greeting cards, luggage tags, rare maps, playbills, receipts, sheet music, and wood engravings. Examples include:

* an early 20th century lace sample book from a Nottingham factory featuring over 200 large samples in a plethora of colors and designs

* The Adventures of David Simple. Volume The Last published in London in 1753 and signed “John Hancock 1757” on the title page

* a Buffalo Bill Cody signed oversized photograph

Recognized as the country’s largest ephemera show, The Ephemera Fair will showcase more than 50 exhibitors from across the country, including longtime participants such as Evie Eysenburg Ephemera, aGatherin' and Stephen Resnick. Many of the 2024 exhibitors have been part of The Ephemera Fair since its inception, although the event continues to attract new dealers.

https://www.finebooksmagazine.com/fine-books-news/esa-ephemera-fair-returnsconnecticut

FEBRUARY 8, 2024

By Robert Marchant

Michael Russo of Guilford looks at letter envelopes with hand-drawn cartoons at the Ephemera Fair at the Greenwich Hyatt Regency Hotel on Saturday, March 16, 2019. The latest ephemera fair will be held at the Hyatt Regency Greenwich in March of 2024. Lindsay Perry / for Hearst Connecticut Media

GREENWICH For an institution dedicated to the fleeting and short-lived objects of the past, the Ephemera Society of America has been nothing if not enduring.

https://www.greenwichtime.com/news/article/old-greenwich-ephemera-fair-202418653972.php?src=gthpdesecp

The Ephemera Society of America is once again holding its annual conference and fair, the largest in the U.S., in Old Greenwich next month.

The 44th annual show at the Hyatt Regency Hotel will attract roughly 50 exhibitors, 10,000 objects from the past and hundreds of collectors and curiosity seekers. The term ephemera refers to old maps, posters, advertisements, letters, calendars, cookbooks, photographs and other objects that were meant to be used, not saved. Many types of those transient historical objects have since become collectibles.

The upcoming show is keenly anticipated, said an exhibitor and organizer with the Ephemera Society, Diane deBlois.

"All of the dealers will be there, bringing their best stuff," she said, "This is definitely the flagship. This is the one you're waiting for."

The exhibition of objects will run March 16 and March 17 at the hotel. The ESA’s annual conference will be held March 15 and feature eight presentations addressing diverse topics related to the concept of "conflict and resolution." The conference will also include presentations by young people, in high school, college and graduate school, on various topics related to ephemera, called the "Young Scholars Presentation."

DeBlois said the Greenwich site was a good one, due to its easy access to the New York metropolitan region and New England. The site also offered plenty of parking and comfortable accommodations, she said, and plenty of room to catch up with old friends and colleagues.

"It's great to see people there, and there's a lot of energy, too," said deBlois, who lives in the Albany, N.Y., region, and specializes in stamps, telegraph equipment, letters, objects related to "communications history" and other works.

She said she would be bringing to Greenwich a set of letters from a British Royal Navy sailor from the 1820s and a number of World War II posters. DeBlois was one of the founders of the Ephemera Society in 1980.

This year's exhibition will include a signed photograph of William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody; a poster advocating for the abolition of liquor production in Massachusetts from 1835; a "broadside" celebrating the American victories in the final year of the War of 1812; and a World War II propaganda poster seeking aid to Norway.

Single-day tickets are $12 in advance purchased online, or $15 at the door. Students are admitted free with a valid identification at the door.

https://www.greenwichtime.com/news/article/old-greenwich-ephemera-fair-202418653972.php?src=gthpdesecp

https://newyorktheater.me/2024/03/16/broadway-ephemera-brando-andbernhardt-irving-berlin-and-tallulah-bankhead-herman-and-merman/ MARCH 16, 2024

By Jonathan Mandell

Marlon Brando singing “Luck Be A Lady” in rehearsal with “Guys and Dolls” composer Frank Loesser. Fifteen pairs of Liza Minnelli’s false eyelashes. A first edition of “West Side Story” signed by Stephen Sondheim. Autographed photographs – one by President Franklin Roosevelt “For Ethel Merman,” one by Gertrude Stein for the Broadway conductor of her “Four Saints in Three Acts,” one by Coco Channel for the Broadway producer of the musical “Coco.”

For which of these would you pay $10,000?

That’s the price of the Coco Chanel photograph – the Gertrude Stein is going for $4,500; FDR, $4,000; Sondheim-signed book, $2,800; the eyelashes, $1,500, the Brando photograph a mere $350. They are for sale by one of the more than fifty exhibitors who are showcasing more than 10,000 items this weekend at the Hyatt Regency Greenwich in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, as part of Ephemera 44. Ephemera 44 is the fair and annual conference organized on behalf of The Ephemera Society of America, which was founded in 1980 as a “fellowship of collectors, scholars, researchers, archivists, and dealers” of ephemera – defined as items not initially expected to be retained or preserved, but which are now cherished.

https://newyorktheater.me/2024/03/16/broadway-ephemera-brando-andbernhardt-irving-berlin-and-tallulah-bankhead-herman-and-merman/

It makes sense that there’d be a market for such items connected (directly or indirectly) to the theater, which itself is routinely called an ephemeral art form, and praised for being so: “I like the ephemeral thing about theater,” actress Maggie Smith has said, “every performance is like a ghost; it’s there and then it’s gone.” Playwright Christopher Shinn has said: “When we interact with people most of those interactions are ephemeral and once they’re over, all we have are our memories. Theater replicates this aspect of our life in a very interesting way.”

Below are some of the items by the exhibitor Schubertiade, some of which are captioned with excerpts from the exhibitor’s description. (Click on the encircled “i” to read each clearly.)

The photograph of Brando and Loesser was taken in December 12,1955.

https://newyorktheater.me/2024/03/16/broadway-ephemera-brando-andbernhardt-irving-berlin-and-tallulah-bankhead-herman-and-merman/

A look at design-world events, products and people.

By Eve M. Kahn

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/09/style/design-products.html

A cobweb valentine, made in 1817 by Eleanor Green, to be displayed at the Ephemera Society of America’s annual fair in Old Greenwich, Conn., March 16-17.

An Exceptionally Hard-Working Valentine

The cards, known to fans as cobwebs or beehives, became popular in the 1800s. Some will be for sale March 16-17 at the Ephemera Society of America’s annual fair at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Old Greenwich, Conn. Eclectibles, a local dealer, is bringing a piece made in 1817 (and priced at $2,400), with watercolors of a calico cat on the cobweb’s surface and two anxious mice inside. Nothing is known about its maker, Eleanor Green, who signed and dated her work.

Cobweb valentines featured paper carefully cut into whorls, each of which could be pulled up to form a cage containing the drawing inside. Ms. Green designed her cage to hold two gray mice.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/09/style/design-products.html

Sheryl Jaeger, the co-owner of Eclectibles, said watching it open brought “a real sense of wonder.” A video of the cat in motion will be shown on site, so visitors will not be tempted to pull the string of the delicate piece themselves.

Nancy Rosin, an expert on valentines who helps the Metropolitan Museum of Art catalog its collection, said the card’s feline imagery was unusual. For Eleanor Green, did the cat perhaps represent herself, or a confidant?

“We can read all kinds of messages into it,” Ms. Rosin said. She added that Ms. Green laboriously cut the paper, noting that it seems that for some cobweb makers, “love was allempowering.” ephemerasociety.org

EVE M. KAHN

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/09/style/design-products.html

MARCH 17, 2024

Monthly news & updates March 2024

Ephemera Fair

By Anastasia Mills Healy

If the thought of browsing through 10,000 vintage posters, cards, photos, records, and other ephemera is exciting, head to the Hyatt in Old Greenwich this weekend for the Ephemera Society of America’s Annual Conference, Show, & Sale.

MARCH 22, 2024

A moment with the Greenwich Ephemera Festival

By Justin Mcgown

The Ephemera Society of America (ESA) held its forty-fourth annual fair at the Greenwich Hyatt from March 15 to March 17. The three-day event gathered collectors in the hotel’s ballroom to buy, sell, and trade ephemera, a broad class of items which can include antiques and collectibles, but largely consists of things that were not intended to last.

“Ephemera is something that was intended to be short lived. An advertising flyer, a campaign button, a ticket,” said Sheryl Jaeger, the co-owner of Eclectibles, based in Tolland, Connecticut. “Anything that anyone would receive and most likely throw away.”

Among the items Jaeger was selling at the fair was a “cobweb” valentine made in 1817, recently featured in the New York Times and worth $2,400. The card features a painting of a cat when flat but reveals mice in a cage when a string in its center is gently lifted up.

https://westfaironline.com/arts-leisure/a-moment-with-the-greenwich-ephemerafestival/

https://westfaironline.com/arts-leisure/a-moment-with-the-greenwich-ephemerafestival/ Sheryl Jaeger demonstrates a “cobweb” Valentine at the Greenwich Ephemera Fair. Photo by Justin McGown.

“A flower is ephemeral,” Jaeger said as she displayed what might be her most notable piece. “A flower is only intended to last for a couple of days.”

Sheryl Jaeger with some of her offerings at the Greenwich Ephemera Fair. Photo by Justin McGown

Despite the considerable monetary value of many of the things on sale at the Greenwich Ephemera Fair, many of those who hold down booths also find themselves engaged in swaps and trades driven less by potential profit and more by personal passion.

David Lilburne, the current president of the ESA is a bookseller at Antipodean Books by trade owing to a lifelong interest in paper. He feels a special connection to the Greenwich Ephemera Fair as it led him to discover the subject of his personal collection shortly after he relocated to the US from London, England.

“I was playing Rugby in White Plains, and one of the guys I was playing with was a tea taster,” Lilburne recalled. “He had a birthday coming up and invited me to the party. In between that game and the party this fair occurred so I came here and said, ‘who has some tea bits?’”

Lilburne managed to find the perfect gift for his friend, antique tea packets, a relevant photograph, and some other paraphernalia.

“I put them in the package, I took them over to his birthday party, as I gave it to him I said, ‘oh I want them back,’” he recounted with a dramatic moan. “I’ve been trying to get them ever since, but he loved them, so I went ‘I’m going to collect tea.’”

“Now I have four and a half thousand pieces of paper on tea.”

https://westfaironline.com/arts-leisure/a-moment-with-the-greenwich-ephemerafestival/

Despite his passion for tea ephemera driving his hunts at the fair, Lilburne said he keeps a strict line between pleasure and business when it comes to ephemera, only selling the occasional duplicate item through his own stall at the fair.

“When you’re selling you shouldn’t be collecting,” he said. “See, the beauty of the ephemera society is we’ve got different groups. We’ve got the dealers like me and then you’ve got the collectors and then you’ve got the institutions. We all come at things from different angles.”

Another aspect of history which has produced a considerable amount of ephemera is entertainment. Brooklyn-based Gabe Boyers who runs Shubertiade Music and Art as well as the “B” Dry Goods Gallery described his focus as “music and the performing arts predominantly, but other things as well.”

Those other things range from a wallet used by Hans Christian Anderson, letters sent by Truman Capote, and a pair of boxers once worn by Brad Pitt during a photo shoot for Vanity Fair.

Boyers with his display case at the Greenwich Ephemera Fair. Photo by Justin McGown Boyers, who is still a performing violinist and among the younger vendors at the fair, said that his business grew out of learning more as an arts student.

“I started collecting stuff related to the performers and composers that I was sort of consumed with thinking about,” Boyers explained. “Like most collectors that eventually led

https://westfaironline.com/arts-leisure/a-moment-with-the-greenwich-ephemerafestival/

to some wheeling and dealing, just trading up to support the habit, then when I finished music school one thing led to another and I sort of decided to go into business.”

Lisa F. Bouchard, who runs Melrose Books & Art based in Providence Rhode Island, discussed another facet of the business, the increasing presence of librarians and archivists at the event.

“We do a lot of archives these days because they’re things that tell the story. They’re not one piece anymore but like an archive of 50 photos or 80 letters,” Bouchard said.

“Our business has become a lot more institutional. There are a lot of colleges and universities who have been given grants and endowments to really beef up their holdings around social justice.”

She also explained that while modern ephemera is distinct, there is still plenty of physical evidence being produced that will fuel future collections. Signs from protests ranging from the Black Lives Matter marches of several years ago to the physical signs calling for a ceasefire in Gaza today. Those items will one day become opportunities for somebody to touch a piece of history.

And unlike some fields which explore the past, at the Ephemera Fair there is often encouragement to literally touch the past.

“We want you to have clean hands,” said Lilburndismissing the idea of using white gloves which he said can cause more damage than they prevent, “but we’re not holding things in perpetuity like a museum is.”

“You come here. You actually touch the paper, and paper will talk to you. I encourage anybody to pick it up, look at it, hold it to the light, look through it, see it from the back. Think of the history. It invokes all these passions where a digital presence does not,” Lilburn said.

“Something’s going to talk to you and you’re going to pick it up.”

https://westfaironline.com/arts-leisure/a-moment-with-the-greenwich-ephemerafestival/