At auction recently, I came across a 1902 Christmas catalog from Strawbridge & Clothier, and it spoke of a time when this store and its counterparts were the place to go for shopping in Philadelphia. The gifts…
Category: Ephemera/Paper/Documents
Inspecting an immigrant “girl” for work as domestic, 1870s style
Posted in Asian, Black history, Ephemera/Paper/Documents, and history
The young woman stood hopefully, her eyes downcast, as a fashionable woman with a little girl looked her over. Behind the young woman were other women dourly etched in an illustration on the cover of…
Frederick Douglass on cover of Harper’s Weekly, 1883
Posted in Black history, and Ephemera/Paper/Documents
Frederick Douglass was the main speaker at the 1883 National Colored Convention in Louisville, KY, using his great voice to rally against the injustices still encountered by former slaves in the era of Reconstruction. Black…
A time when you got a prize in your washing powder
Posted in Advertising, dishware, Ephemera/Paper/Documents, and Glassware
On first glance, the fronts of the small trade cards were not very impressive. They held lithographic color images of children tending cows, riding horses, riverboating and fishing. “Kazine Card, Over” was printed on the…
Questions from a 1930s “Negro History” contest
Posted in Black history, Ephemera/Paper/Documents, and School
The bound sheets of paper had faded with age and the text had been typed with a typewriter whose ribbon needed changing. That told me a lot about the time period of this document, along…
Inkwells recall a different era of keeping in touch
Posted in collectibles, Ephemera/Paper/Documents, and Personal items
The emerald green inkwell caught the eye of my auction buddy Janet. She had intended to bid on it, but she was in another room waiting for a sweet little antique Underwood typewriter to come…
Early 20th-century take on Wedgwood’s slave medallion
Posted in Black history, Ephemera/Paper/Documents, and history
The pencil drawing had all the hallmarks of the famous Wedgwood slave medallion from the 18th century. It showed an African American man, chains around his wrists and the words “Am I Not a Man…
Faces from an early black movie poster, but whose?
Posted in Ephemera/Paper/Documents, Movies, and Photos
The image of the black police officer with a raised gun was the first to spark a memory. I had seen that image somewhere, but where? Someone had cut the picture from another poster and…
I don’t usually look at clothes at auction, but the auctioneer was practically giving away some lovely coats and suits at this one. I could donate them to charity, I pondered, as I listened to…
Even a missing address couldn’t stop delivery of mail
Posted in Ephemera/Paper/Documents, and history
How on earth did these letters ever make it to through the mail, both I and another auction-goer wondered as we thumbed through a stack of old letters in cardboard boxes on a table at…