The Design and Printing of Ephemera in Britain and America 1720-1920

This book is new in that it discusses ephemera as an aspect of design history, showing how function, process and period have affected the changing appearance of leaflets, tickets, posters, trade cards and other ephemera. The printing histories of Britain and America are closely woven. Colonial printers and engravers imported British type and equipment and took instruction from the same manuals, a relationship that continued through the first half of the nineteenth century. It was in the years following the Civil War that American and British graphic design and typography began to establish their own identities as developments in colour printing brought an explosion of colourful ephemera. Richly illustrated with letterforms, engravings, drawings and the reproduction in colour of 200 items of ephemera, this is a book for collectors, students, design historians and all those with an interest in the visual arts.