Celebrate the New Year with these 19th and early 20th-century postcards, featuring lucky pigs, pensive pansies, and menacing snowmen.
ephemera
Posted inArt
How a Magician Preserved the Ephemera of Victorian Entertainment
The British Library exhibits selections from its archive on Victorian entertainment, all collected by the 19th-century magician Evanion.
Posted inArt
The Freaks and Fascinations of 18th-Century Entertainment
Last week, the Bodleian Libraries at the University of Oxford launched an online portal to over 115,000 open-license images from their collections.
Posted inArt
Getting Intimate with Strangers’ Lost Notes
It’s fun to imagine what an archaeologist of the future might make of the found notes — including shopping lists, personal reflections, and angry scribbles — currently on view at Stour Space Gallery in London.
Posted inBooks
The Lost Beauty of Book Endpapers
Bookbinding developed gradually, with the availability of materials and prevailing tastes dictating the details. One of the more overlooked aspects of book design was the creation of endpapers, when what was long a blank space or slice of vellum was replaced by exuberant patterns.
Posted inArt
Past Actions, Past Gestures: Conflux 2012
Expectation and experience seldom end up at the same destination, especially when you walk down a subway platform and see a sign that reads “To Breuckelen” and realize — no, no, the MTA hasn’t sold the L line back to the Dutch to save money; rather, you are seeing a sign hung by artist Daniel Bejar (not that one) as part of his Get Lost! installation.
Posted inArt
Artists and Their Ephemera
Have you ever wondered why it’s so intriguing to explore an artist’s studio? Aside from their work, we get a glimpse into not only their artistic process but their valued possessions, inspirations and snippets of their lives. Input/Output pairs artists’ work with their personal collections. Exhibited at Booklyn, a small one-room gallery space in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint neighborhood, Input/Output feels intimate — actually less like a studio visit and more like a peek into the artists’ bedrooms.
