Ephemera collection

Description

Ephemera are materials that are meant to be used once and then discarded, not kept permanently. The Ephemera Collection contains over 5,000 items of a wide assortment of materials: advertising matter, billheads, calling cards, games, greeting cards, menus, pamphlets, playing cards, programs, sheet music, tickets and cards of admission, trade cards, and trade catalogues. These resources provide a wealth of visual documentation for the study of New England's material culture in the nineteentth and early-twentieth centuries. The focus of the collection is concentrated on products used in the construction, finish, or interior decoration of the home, including millwork, wall and floor coverings, paints, furniture, lighting, heating, and wallpaper. Several rare furniture and lighting catalogues are found in this collection.

Additional material is filed among the financial records of various family manuscript collections, especially the Codman Family Papers, as well as throughout the Local History document boxes, in which advertisements from approximately 1850 to 1920 frequently appear in promotional brochures or publications issued for special events. The subjects section of the Clippings Files should also be consulted for the period of approximately 1910 to 1930.

Advertising matter in Boston guidebooks and in a collection of nineteenth-century carpenters' manuals and house plans has also been indexed by subjects. The inventories to these collections supply references to illustrations. After 1848, the Boston city directories are an excellent source of detailed line engravings of buildings and products.

Source: Guide to the Library and Archives, 21.