Tag: Ephemera

Obscure Publications for Sophisticates

I found a few pieces of naughty book trade ephemera that I thought I’d share.

First this set of bookstore tickets / trade labels from The Coffee N’ Culture Book Shop in Corydon, Indiana. Both were pasted into a 1964 Grove Press paperback of City of Night by John Rechy.
The upper label seems fairly above board, and even community oriented, since they produced the town’s local paper.

Below that though is another label–same typeface, same border–offering “Obscure Publications for Sophisticates – Adults Only” with a PO Box in Denver, Colorado. I’m guessing the Indiana obscenity laws were strict and this bookseller had a little something on the side out of state and used this second label to inform worldly readers who were browsing things like the Grove Press.

Next this bound in subscription card “inaugurat[ing the] happy American exile”of the Olympia Press, found in a Bee-Line release of The Demon’s Feast by Louise Walbrook in the Traveller’s Companion Series:

(click for larger version)

I just listed a tall stack of the New York Ophelias and Traveller’s Companions. Check them out if you’re feeling sophisticated.

Parenting Aid and Summer Reading List

Received this semi-threatening Sunday-school prop as a gimme with a lot of mixed ephemera.

Distributed by First Federal Savings and Loan Association of Peoria, Ill (mid 50s-early 60s I’d guess), it shows two angelic/obedient children over the text “Silent Worship”.

(click on image for larger version)

I think even secular parents might want to print this one out and give it a try (though they may want to paste the image on–ahem–heavier stock).

And before I run out for a desperately needed vacation, here’s my reading pile for the holiday:

Not totally finalized yet. I imagine either the Hughes, the Flynn bio (or both) will prove indigestable but we’re traveling with three cartons of books (staples like Graham Greene, AC Doyle, and Agatha Christie) to upgrade and supplement the cabin library, so I’ll have a lot to fall back on.

Enjoy the dog day folks.

Dutch Treat

I just cataloged the hell out of this book because it’s beautiful and absolutely worth it.

Dutch Treat Club: Year Book 1941 “Total Offense”, 1941. First edition.

Privately printed yearbook for the “The Dutch Treat Club”, a society of illustrators, writers and performers established in the early 1900s and still going today.

(click on images for larger, NWS versions)

Wartime issue. 8″ X 5.25″. Paper-over-board, pictorial wraparound cover. Laminated/glossy. Photo EPs of nude women cavorting on a cannon. Unpaginated but approx 100 pages. Edition page jokingly states: “This edition is strictly limited to 12,500,00 copies (Berlin), 12.5 (London), of which every copy is number 1” (numeral “1” hand lettered).

Elaborately printed and illustrated. Filled with pin-up / girly art and cartoons from member illustrators including:

  • Rube Goldberg
  • Dean Cornwell
  • Carl Mueller
  • Arthur William Brown
  • Otto Soglow
  • Harry Beckhoff
  • John J. Floherty, Jr.
  • Frank Godwin (creator of the strip “Connie”)

Because this was a privately printed publication, the art is racier than other work from these artists and more explicit than comparable pin-ups of the time (i.e. pubic hair). Also includes a pop-up illustration by Tony Sarg.


Famous members of the Dutch Treat Club include:

  • Robert Benchley
  • Robert M. McBride
  • Isaac Asimov
  • William Morris
  • Ogden Nash

and more. Some of the club officers/members listed in this volume:

  • Clarence Budington Kelland (president)
  • Edward MacNamara (actor)
  • Harold Ross (founder of the New Yorker)
  • Whitney Darrow (cartoonist)
  • J. P. McEvoy (Dixie Dugan creator)
  • Westbrook Pegler (journalist)
  • Lowell Thomas (broadcaster)
  • Frank Crowninshield (editor Vanity Fair)
  • William Beebe (Naturalist/Author)
  • William De Beck (cartoonist “Barney Google”)
  • Cliff Sterrett
  • Rex Stout
  • Efrem Zimbalist

and more. Other features include: A list of club speakers and events, news/current event parodies, and a full list (with addresses and phone #s) of current members. Pencil inscription from previous owner “W. R. Steinway” dated “April 4, 1941”. Covers lightly rubbed/scuffed showing light tanning to spine. Bump with slight exposed board to lower front cover. Binding slightly shaken but solid. Very Good. Hardcover.

Apparently these yearbooks were well-known for their girly art but this is the first I’ve seen (though hopefully not the last). Listed for sale here but I’ll be sad to see it go.

And more Dutch Treat Annuals.

Magic Ephemera

I finally listed the collection of stage magic books and ephemera that’s been collecting magic dust next to my desk for months. I kept waving the bone folder over the pile and chanting “librum catalogum!”, but no dice. I’m a muggle of a bookseller.

Thought I’d share some of the great graphics and hand lettering (click on images for larger versions):

First this 1922 ad for Houdini’s Magical Rope Ties & Escapes from Practical Patter for Practical Magicians by Oswald Rae (1922)

Next the cover to Stage Illusions, compiled and edited by Will Goldston, Magician Ltd., c 1920. Signed by (it looks like) “F. Velhsco”


The cover to Magical Mentalia by G. E. Arrowsmith, Max Andrews, London, 1942. Cover design by Max Andrews (wish I could make the silver highlights pop a bit more in the scan).


And this label affixed in the back of Magic Mentalia from the “L. Davenport & Co.” (London) Magical Supply company which offers free issues of the periodical “The Demon Telegraph”.


Next this emblem/seal from Brooklyn-born magician/writer/publisher, Joseph Ovette (1885-1946) from the reverse of the chapbook Arthur LeRoy’s Futuristic Fantasies , 1931.

Lastly this great embossed devil-themed book ticket from the “Demon Series: Tricks, Jokes, Puzzles, London”


If interested you can see all the items from this collection in my “Games, Hobbies, Crafts, and Collectibles” Catalog (which I must admit is getting a bit broad) or email me for a list.

New Uses for Books: Fallout Shelter


I attended an estate sale this past weekend in one of the grottiest and most mold-ridden houses I’ve ever been inside, but it was exciting because it featured my first fallout shelter! Everything in it was rusted out and damp (looking like something out of Tarkovsky’s Stalker) but I managed to salvage this pamphlet.

Facts About Fallout Protection (Page: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) Sorry for the lack of a better nav bar. I’m html challenged.

Among the useful tips I found these:
If you’re on the road “a culvert that can be blocked off at both ends will furnish protection. A trench or ditch will also protect you if it can be quickly covered with three feet of earth.”

and for those in the trade “In a pinch…stacks of books, magazines, newspapers, or filing cabinets” can be “put between yourself and the fallout”.


Try doing THAT with a Kindle.

Newish Blogs

In my extended period of summer blogging interia I found some new resources that having been awaiting a plug.

Here’s two newish projects from Jim Linderman, author of Take me to the Water: Immersion Baptism in Vintage Music and Photography 1890-1950 (blogging at Dull Tool, Dim Bulb):

1. A blog supporting his up-coming book on the lost art of hand-painted photographic backgrounds The Painted Backdrop–still under construction but already featuring some tantalizing imagery like this:


2. Camera Club Girls: The Work of Rudolph Rossi (tame but probably NWS). Jim’s description:

“The extraordinary hand-painted photographs of Rudolph Rossi. Rossi was an informal member of the New York City Concorde Camera Club in the repressive 1950’s. For a ten dollar fee, he photographed Bettie Page and a plethora of interracial models, then later meticulously hand-painted the photographs creating the illusion of color photography. An exceptional body of work by a previously unknown and unrecognized photographer and erotic artist from a time when such activity was taboo.”


Both are worth a look and I’ll add them to the side-bar in the appropriate categories.

WWII Ephemera

I stumbled on an interesting WWII-era collection at a local thrift shop and found a few interesting items worth sharing:

First this pamphlet of “Recommended War Books…Planned and Selected by The Council on Books in War Time” (Their motto was “Books Are Weapons in the War of Ideas”), distributed by the Brooklyn Public Library.

Page 1, Page 2

This is “List 14” of recommended war books. I’d be curious to see the other lists.

Next, “Honorable Spy” by John L. Spivak, a 1939 digest-size PB original “Exposing Japanese Military in the United States” with a great sinister, xenophobic cover.


This will go well with my recently acquired copy of Punch Below the Belt, The: Japanese Ruses, Deception Tactics, and Antipersonnel Measures.

Friday Linkage

Designer/Blogger Michael Newhouse and the proprietor of Windy Hill Books left comments on one of my old posts about Young People’s Records perhaps identifying the mystery artist of this charming record cover:

Abe Ajay is the often unsigned artist of the majority of the YPR And CRG covers, according to the book Revolutionizing Children’s Records by David Bonner. Bonner has a blog here.

Bonner’s book looks like a fascinating reference on this storied series of records–which recorded talents like Raymond Scott and Groucho Marx–and came under the eye of Joseph McCarthy. Must read more.

Engraver, bookplate artist and blogger, Andy English shows off his designs for the Oak Tree Press limited edition of Philip Pullman’s A Outrance (“To The Death”) a lost chapter from the Golden Compass series.

Looks like a stunner. Sign up for an email publication notice here.

And collection development blog The Private Library explains why a pile of well-preserved science fiction paperbacks is more bibliographically valuable than “fine press publications, printed on handmade paper using hot metal type, bound in full Niger goatskin or similar materials, with no title having been produced in more than 100 copies”…and therefore more worth collecting and buying.

Seems obvious to me but it’s a good argument.