The ephemera of fireworks

(C) Bodleian Library: John Johnson Collection: Music Tites 3 (42)

Guy Fawkes Day (November 5) has generated a lot of ephemera: fliers and posters for events, prints, and, above all, the promotional material, packaging and labels for the fireworks themselves.

These resources are somewhat scattered, but there is much to be found online, through flickr and various virtual archives, mounted by specialist enthusiasts. Examples are: Maurice and Steve's virtual firework heritage museum and the fireworkmuseum.co.uk/.

More can be found through Google images, with contributions from, for example, The Museum of British Folklore. It is the hope of the Director, Simon Costin that this museum will acquire premises. It does, however, have material and has mounted a series of exhibitions, including (in 2011) Remember, remember: a history of fireworks in Britain, which I visited at Compton Verney. The webpage has embedded a You Tube video of the exhibits. On October 31 (appropriately) The Museum of British Folklore acquired the Museum of Witchcraft

There are also, of course, resources in major libraries and museums: The British Library, the V&A and also via image libraries such as the Look and Learn site (notably in the Peter Jackson collection), and the Mary Evans Picture Library, which has a feature on Guy Fawkes Night.

The John Johnson Collection includes four folders of material relating to fireworks not yet catalogued or digitised. One of our prize firework-related items is, however, online: a  ticket for the Royal Fireworks at St. James's Park in April 1749, the fireworks for which Handel wrote his famous music.

(C) Bodleian Library: John Johnson Collection: Tickets Show Places various (46)

There are also trade cards for 'artists' in fireworks

(C) Bodleian Library: John Johnson Collection: Trade Cards 26 (53)

(C) Bodleian Library: John Johnson Collection: Trade Cards 26 (32)

Another major source of information about fireworks and pyrotechnic effects in the John Johnson Collection (mostly unrelated to November 5) is playbills. Fireworks often formed part of entertainments, both indoors and outdoors. Not all have illustrations (as the example below) but the full text searching of the The John Johnson Collection: an archive of printed ephemera (ProQuest site  with access via HE, FE, public libraries and schools) facilitates finding entertainments which included fireworks.

(C) Bodleian Library: John Johnson Collection: 

London Play Places 7 (19)

(C) Bodleian Library: John Johnson Collection:

Dioramas 6 (8)

This handbill  of c. 1896 relates to a panorama of the life of Guy Fawkes, complete with 'a grand display of thousands of fountains of fireworks'.
 
There are also ballads in the Bodleian (and, of course, elsewhere) relating to Guy Fawkes. The new Bodleian Broadside Ballads online site is well worth exploring.

If you know of further collections of firework-related ephemera, please email jjcoll@bodleian.ox.ac.uk and I will write a supplementary post.

Look and Learn: the collections of Peter Jackson, Valerie Jackson Harris and more

The collections of the late Peter Jackson and of Valerie Jackson Harris are among the very finest in private hands.  Peter Jackson collected ephemera relating to London: many of his items are not represented in any museum or library. Valerie, who trades as Quadrille and who is Chairman of The Ephemera Society, is a connoisseur of ephemera and collects only the finest, specialising in embossing, valentines, trade cards, dance and the unusual or exquisite.

Valerie is very aware that these are both museum-quality collections and that they deserve to be known and used by scholars and enthusiasts. Digitisation and the Look and Learn platform have enabled that to happen without compromising the condition and private nature of the collections. The results are a truly stunning resource, testament to Valerie's generosity of spirit and her wish to transform her late husband Peter's work and skill as a collector into a living resource for present scholars.  Work is still in progress to digitise and catalogue both collections, but there are already 19,919 images from The Peter Jackson London Collection and 629 from The Valerie Jackson Harris Collection with many thousands more to come. It is a serious and very exciting  resource for ephemerists and researchers.

Peter Jackson Collection  © 2005-2012 Look and Learn

Valerie Jackson Harris Collection  © 2005-2012 Look and Learn

I have to confess that I had never heard of the Look and Learn history picture library, which provides images for scholars and teachers but, quite apart from Valerie's and Peter's collections, it is a superb resource. Based on classic illustrated children's magazines, it has diversified to include 64,766 images from Bridgeman Education, 21,572 images from the Library of Congress and 2,161 images from IPC media.

The formula is simple. Anyone can browse free of charge.  Downloads (apart from the Library of Congress, which is free) cost £2 per image for personal or educational use.  A licence must be obtained before any usage.  There are also fees and licences for commercial use and items from the Original artwork collection may be ordered as cards (including e-Cards), posters, prints, etc.

The Peter Jackson Collection was also the subject of a beautiful and informative book, which he co-authored with Felix Barker: The pleasures of London (London, London Topographical Society, 2008).

Women's Suffrage Banners and Ephemera from the Women's Library

For International Women's Day!

The Women's Library, formerly the Fawcett Library, is the major repository of women's suffrage material in this country. Images from these collections are available in two ways:

The VADS (Visual Arts Data Service) currently hosts 55 institutional collections (including two John Johnson Collection sections: Political Prints and Trades & Professions) which can be cross-searched or searched within individual collections. Included in the site are the Women's Library: Suffrage Banners (248 banners, including artwork) and The Women's Library Suffrage Collection.

(C) VADS and Women's Library

 

(C) Mary Evans Picture Library Ltd. and Women's Library

The latter is a taster of 67 choice images from a full range now delivered through the Mary Evans Picture Library, which hosts 2113 images from the Women's Library.  Not all are ephemera, but photographs, banners and artefacts can be excluded by confining the search to 'Illustrations only' (515 results).

Stop press: For today, the Women's Library has just mounted an online exhibition: Women and the vote.

 The Women's Library ephemera collection is not restricted to suffrage and contains much contemporary material.

More information about Women's Studies archives and resources is available through the Genesis portal, including 152 results for ephemera.

The Advertising Archives

The Advertising Archives is a commercial site, with over 1 million catalogued images from the mid-19th century to the present.  It was started in 1990 by Larry and Suzanne Viner. The site exists to sell high resolution scans for a variety of uses including editorial, academic and personal, and thumbnails are also available for research.

The site includes posters, postcards, menus, theatre programmes & other ephemera, British & American press adverts, magazine covers and artwork, mail order catalogues, French and Spanish magazine art and British television advertising stills.

Collections can be searched by keyword (with the facility to refine the results by country and decade). You can browse The Advertising Archives by decade and a range of themes (John Bull, or Coca-Cola for example). There are also selections of topical images in 'Hot off the press'.

A full range of associated services is offered (picture research, sales of whole original magazines, valuations, prints from images, etc) to those who register.

The Advertising Archives also has a blog and can be followed on Twitter: @AdArchives

(C) The Advertising Archives

Mary Evans Picture Library

I visited the Mary Evans Picture Library many years ago and loved it.  There is a wealth of ephemera, enthusiastically collected by the late Mary and Hilary Evans, initially as a hobby and then as a business. The images are beautifully presented by theme,date, etc.

(C)Mary Evans Picture Library Ltd

In addition to its own collections, the MEPL holds images from the National Archives, Women's Library, Weimar Archive, the work of Ernst Dryden, the Illustrated London News, material which has passed through Onslow Auctions, political cartoons (mid 1790s-1810) from The Reform Club, and many other photographic and other archives. These can be viewed individually from the Collections page or cross-searched with other collections.  

The Features section is one of my favourites, with pre-selections of material relating to nearly 200 tantalising themes.

(C) Mary Evans Picture Library Ltd

You can also subscribe to an online Newsletter, download ME and You Magazine, and follow the MEPL on Twitter: @Mary_Evans