A Venture by Ephemerists - Diane DeBlois and Robert Dalton Harris
Welcome to
aGatherin'
Gatherings of Ephemera
Some highlights of our current collections, studies, and materials.
Prices upon requests. To see where we are next, check out our news page!
Stove Cat Trompe
Chromolithographed trompe l’oeil cover to 1888 trade catalog for Fuller & Warren Co., Clinton Stove Works, Troy NY., printed by Charles Van Benthuysen & Sons., Albany NY.
A Collection of Images of Time and Space
Encompassing the period 1800 to 2021. Every form of paper ephemera, this collection includes over 75 types (including 188 poster stamps, 257 postage stamps, and 600 examples of other ephemera formed by a retired physicist, fascinated with change associated with the Copernican/Cartesian/Newtonian revolution in scientific thinking.
Postal Cards with Advertising
We have a large selection of postal cards printed with advertising that served different postal functions. We challenged our summer interns, Sara Rybitski and Abner Velazquez from Russell Sage College BFA program, to choose one each to animate. Spiegel of Chicago printed a promotion for its 1928 catalog on both sides of a one cent postal card; Archer's of Greece NY printed an invitation for free dog delousing to mail in 1965 to its local customers. Contact us for examples and prices.
Questions or interest?
Contact [gather@agatherin.com] to get more information on the projects
Field Research
Remembering the First Globe Theatre
The first Globe Theater was built in London in 1599 and burned in 1613. The staging directions of Shakespeare’s plays are the principle source of evidence for its appearance and construction. We do know that it was built of materials from the demolition of a nearby inn. Otherwise, a tradition of remembering, that has been practiced since the Greeks adopted the alphabet and feared losing their oral traditions, emphasizes theater’s role in cultural survival. At Arts Letters & Numbers, beginning July 1, we shall model what is known of the Globe. We shall use a suite of available materials likewise salvaged to model the Globe in different ways: at two scales of one inch to one foot, and in the scale of the available materials themselves on a site above the house and barn. We shall use tools and techniques appropriate to post and beam architecture in a Dutch style: an H-frame element with stub tenons topping each post, girted together, mortised to plates, and standing on stone. The only iron will be in the tools, the only power by hand - sawing, chiseling, drilling, splitting for trunnels.
A first gathering on Father's Day "This Other Eden", inspected the "table" of barn timbers, assessed the quality of the soil towards re-greening, and looked for appropriate rocks for pillar foundations. Our inspiration for this gathering was John of Gaunt’s garden deathbed speech in Shakespeare’s Richard II - the lines: “… This other Eden, demi-paradise / This fortress built by Nature for her self / against infection and the hand of war, / This happy breed of men, this little world …” See below for photos of subsequent days.
The paper based on this talk was published in The Congress Book 2023, pages 7 to 30. See below: