ROMA Photo Souvenir

Here's an old "Photo Souvenir" from Rome. I love these little pocket time travelling glimpses into the recent past especially when the subject matter concerns the relics of the distant past. The concept is so simple and the construction follows suit - tiny snaps in a simple paper wrap.  There is something gratifying about opening the wrap each time and ritualistically putting the photocards back after viewing them. The other simplistic joy they offer is the minor irregularity in size of the cards - they all fit into the paper but as they are of slightly different dimensions they form a unique deckled edge each time they are viewed and returned to the paper wrap. As with many of these items, you can't buy the modern equivalent today - at least not with the same exquisite simplicity. As with old type printed items there is a slight impression in the printed text - the text possesses the surface it is printed into. This rarely happens in modern printing where the print is seemingly digitally pasted into the surface. You get something extra from these objects just from running your fingers over the print. How aptly romantic for such a souvenir from one of Europe's most enchanting of cities. When I look at these cards I am nearly always reminded of the excellent short story "Roman Fever" by Edith Wharton. Short stories are similar to ephemera in that they are brief but tangible and can remain in your conscience long after you think you've disregarded them. Similarly they can be retrieved and revisited and brought to life by other imagery. You can read Roman Fever here. Items like these have always inspired me in my own work - see here - my version captures the essence, but perhaps not quite the romantic side of a place.

 

 

 

 

Paper and photographs with letterpress. Comprises of 16 photo cards. Approx. 55mm x 45mm x 6mm

Brooke Bond Teacard - Wild Birds In Britain

Tea  and cigarette cards, once given free in packs of well known brands are the epitome of ephemera. They can be collected and treasured or treated as mere rubbish and discarded with the empty box or packet. For me, there is in these tiny cards, a poetry. Not unlike a haiku, they are complete in wisdom and beauty. The small and compact size demanded tight and concise design and typesetting and the result is almost always a perfectly balanced combination of illustration and information. The narrative aspect flows from image to text in a continuous loop - just keep turning it over and over.
Portable and instant they serve as a cache of facts more immediate and intoxicating than any search engine hit for the same information.

Like a flock of visiting winter birds, the set of these cards, illustrated by C.F. Tunnicliffe 

are beautiful both as a collection and as individual cards 

Brooke Bond issued these cards in 1965, they measure 68mm x 36mm

 

A large flock of waxwings have been visiting my local area since November. As it says on the back of the tea card, the birds are driven south by bad weather in a search of food, it could be years before they visit here again. Even though they are fleeting visits, I look out for them, despite that they may be long gone to another berry tree on a distant moor. Along with the trivia from daily events, rare bird sightings become catalogued in the memory as cerebral ephemera, stored away and ready for retrieval for some future query of time or place, or just for the pure joy of remembering an ephemeral event.

Naylors of Bakewell Glass Dish

Can a piece of glassware be regarded as ephemera? The advertising on this little glass tray seems to make it so. The gorgeous hand rendered text - which on its own is a joy to look at after the eye has been  numbed by the vulgarity of digital type - and the red on white demand attention by default. Even the cheeky everso slightly creepy humanoid-porcine face looks directly at you from within the litho. It's not often that you get the animal's face on the advert for the meat it belongs to these days.  Supermarket packaging seems to assume we don't want to associate the animal with the food as if it will somehow make it distasteful.

Naylors of Bakewell Glass dish 12 x 9 cm C. 1950-60's maybe later.

By its nature an unbroken glass object is potentially ephemeral. It's always poised to become changed and fractured yet still recognisable in parts as its original self. Bakewell, the small Peak District town from where this dish originates is much the same. I spent many childhood summers in and around Bakewell, blissfully unaware that as time and progress advanced the place would change so much from the way I knew it.

The Bakewell of the 21st Century is a pastiche of the place I knew as a little girl. Doubtless the Bakewell of my Childhood in the 1980's was a different one to that of my Father's or Grandfather's and indeed my Great-Great Grandfather who farmed in the area, but I can't help feel that things have changed just a little too far beyond reasonable progress. The life blood of the place has been let, and what remains is a pale mirage amongst the ruins of the original. Although there is still a cattle market every Monday and a traditional Lammas cattle fair in the guise of Bakewell Show, the redevelopment of the market square and the placing of a supermarket in the heart of the farmer's exchange somehow seems to sum up the slow exsanguination of this ancient working rural town.

I've never worked out if this dish was intended to be an ashtray, or simply just an object with an advert on it. Naylors the butchers is long gone from Bakewell, but it's good to know that local butchers in the area still go to market every week and pick the finest beasts for their handmade pies and sausages.