Ephemera #4: Keepsakes Printed on Silk

Courtesy of the Otago Settlers Museum

Silk and the book have a long history together. Chinese scribes were using the material as a writing surface in their manuscript books as early as the fourth or fifth century B.C. Silk has been employed in the crafting of textile bindings from the sixteenth century, and was used to make end leaves and doublures in bindings from the nineteenth century.

Entire books have also been printed on silk as special issues, such as a nineteenth-century French edition of Laurence Sterne's Sentimental Journey (Paris, [1841]), and the 1748 edition of Cicero's Laelius and 1751 edition of Anacreon's Odes printed in Glasgow by R. & A. Foulis (Hillyard, 19).

Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, silk was used as a printing surface for a range of ephemera. Publishers had commemorative issues of periodicals printed on silk, such as the 29 May 1865 issue of the Christchurch Evening Mail and the 10 May 1890 issue of the Ovens and Murray Advertiser (McMullin, BSANZB 21:3, 183), and it was used as a printing surface by a variety of businesses and other organisations for special menus, concert and theatre programmes, and to mark birthdays, coronations and anniversaries.

Australasian examples of silk or satin keepsakes have been recorded in the Bulletin of the Bibliographical Society of Australia & New Zealand. In addition to the two specially issued newspapers already mentioned, Harold Love's article 'Early Melbourne Theatrical Ephemera' notes four programme posters on silk with borders of tasselled embroidery (much like the example produced in Dunedin shown above) printed for the 'Lyster opera company ... for Vice-Regal performances in Adelaide in 1879' (Love, 5).

In his trilogy on printed keepsakes, Brian McMullin records the printing of silken keepsakes during three colonial celebration processions held between 1850 and 1863 (these processions included horse-drawn carts carrying a printing press and pressmen, who ran off commemorative sheets, on paper, not silk, and distributed them to the crowds lining the streets). The two examples cited are an 1850 tract that was a 'chronological epitome of the most notable dates and events in Port Phillip', with the likenesses of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert printed above, and a seven stanza poem called The Old Chum's Musings; suggested by the commencement of the Geelong & Melbourne Railway, September 20th 1853 (McMullin, BSANZB 11:3, 98). Though not an Australasian example, McMullin has also noted in the BSANZB a keepsake printed on silk in Malta held by the British Library. The item is an eight-page issue of The Daily Malta Chronicle. And Garrison Gazette, 'published 26 June 1897 ... [and] commemorating the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria' (McMullin, BSANZB 35:2, 114).

Two examples of printing on silk were recently discovered in the Heritage Collections, Dunedin City Library.

The first was this programme printed by Mackay, Bracken & Co. in the Saturday Advertiser office, Dunedin, produced for the Dunedin Choral Society's final concert of the 1878–79 season.

The second (and to me, the more interesting) silken keepsake was found affixed to a page in a date and signature book called ‘Men of ANZAC, 1914–1918'. The book, possibly kept by a New Zealand nurse or foreign correspondent, includes the signatures of numerous First World War soldiers written in the calendar. The last pages contain later signatures, photographs and some ephemera, including one printed on silk:

The soldier was Leslie Waters Dickinson from Opotiki, Bay of Plenty, who embarked aboard the 'Willochra' for active service on 16 October 1916. His personalised Christmas keepsake is the first of its kind that I have seen, and I would be grateful to hear from anyone who knows of other examples.

Here on the South Island, the Otago Settlers Museum holds a fine collection of no less than thirty-four nineteenth- and early twentieth-century keepsakes printed on silk or satin by at least nine Dunedin firms. The Canterbury Museum also holds a collection of silk and satin keepsakes produced in and around Christchurch.

Does your institution hold a collection of items printed (or written) on silk or satin? Aware of other holdings? If so, please leave a comment.

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Brian Hillyard. 'Books Printed on Silk or Linen'. Factotum 20 (1989): 19–20. Vincent Kinane followed up in Factotum 29 by adding one further book printed on silk by the Foulis brothers, and a vellum copy of Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (Parma, 1791), which included a title-page vignette printed on white satin.

Harold Love. 'Early Melbourne Theatrical Ephemera'. Bulletin of the Bibliographical Society of Australia & New Zealand 14:4 (1979): 3–12.

Brian McMullin. 'An Excursion into Printed Keepsakes II: Colonial Celebrations'. Bulletin of the Bibliographical Society of Australia & New Zealand 11:3 (1989): 97–107.

----. 'Bibliographical Note No. 6: Printing Newspapers on Silk'. Bulletin of the Bibliographical Society of New Zealand 21:3 (1997): 183.

----. 'Bibliographical Note: Printing on Silk in Malta'. Script & Print: Bulletin of the Bibliographical Society of Australia & New Zealand 35:2 (2011): 114.

Information on the history of silk and books was drawn from The Oxford Companion to the Book, 2 vols. (Oxford: OUP, 2010), 2:1158.

Ephemera #3: 'Victa et Etona est'

Ephemera is not limited to printed material alone. This handwritten card, measuring just 78 x 38mm, also fits the definition. The Latin verse reads:

Wiccamicorum

Cui paret turba,

Nunc arbitrorum

Accipe verba.

Desine seria

Paullum tractare:

Solita feria

Detur. Sed quare?

Judices urgent

'Feria bona est'

Pueri assurgent

'Victa et Etona est'

G. D. to G. R.

Win: Coll.

Cloister Time 1878

[Translation]

O you who the throng of Wykehamists obey,
Now receive the words of the arbiters.

Cease dealing with serious matters for a while;
Let the customary holiday be granted. But why?

The judges are insistent: 'It is a good holiday'.
The boys will rise up [and shout]: 'Eton is beaten'.

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Who were 'G. D.' and 'G. R.'? What event caused the author to compose this short verse?

It is believed that 'G.D.' was the judge and politician George Denman (1819–1896), who 'from his schooldays found verse writing easy and continued to read Greek and Latin classics for pleasure' (ODNB). The recipient was either George Ridding (1828–1904), headmaster of Winchester College from 1867 to 1884, or George Richardson, who was second master from 1873 to 1898 (though the headmaster seems more likely). 

Denman was not an Old Wykehamist, having attended Felsted and then Repton School before entering Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1838. He was, however, present at the assizes courts, which were held in Winchester in early July 1878.

According to Suzanne Foster (Winchester College Archives), who identified Denman and Ridding/ Richardson as author and recipient, it was customary for Winchester prefects to write to the judges and ask for an extra day's holiday.

The reason for the desired holiday, noted Foster, was based on a cricket match. Winchester plays Eton each year and, in 1878, beat Eton for the first time since 1871. This match was, and still is, one of the most significant days in the school calendar. Denman's verse, therefore, asks Ridding to grant an additional day's holiday, at a time when the boys were celebrating their success on the cricket field and looking forward to the end of term.

The card was found in 2008 among the contents of an unprocessed box of manuscript material (now fully catalogued) in the Reed Autograph Letters & Manuscripts Collection.

Ephemera #2: 'Lest We Forget'

Cover designed by
Warrant Officer A. E. Darling

ANZAC Day is the national day of remembrance in Australia and New Zealand. The day (25 April) originally honoured the members of the combined Australia and New Zealand forces who fought at Gallipoli in the First World War, but has since come to commemorate all who served and those who have given their lives in active service.

Despite being imprisoned in Stalag 383 during the Second World War, the interned Commonwealth soldiers managed to remember the anniversary in 1944 with a dawn service, a march past with military band, and a series of sporting competitions.

The commanding German officer allowed the men to produce this souvenir programme outlining the day's events (busy prisoners are not planning their escape). The programme was printed by a local firm in Regensburg, and its inside cover is stamped 'Stalag 383 4 Geprüft', marking the programme as 'examined' by the Stalag authorities. Eighteen of the soldiers present were also veterans of the First World War.

One New Zealand prisoner, George T. Seccombe, had the presence of mind to post his copy to the Dunedin R.S.A. The envelope, stamped with the Stalag 'Geprüft' stamp and the Red Cross emblem, was kept, and remains with the programme along with a letter by Seccombe describing the day.

The Dunedin Public Library copy of the souvenir programme (part of its Troopship Journals Collection) is one of just two copies recorded as being held by any institution. The other copy is in the University of Canterbury special collections. If any readers are aware of other copies in existence, please send me an email.

Ephemera #1: 'Printed on the Thames being Frozen'

Last week I returned from Melbourne and a very enjoyable/ informative Rare Books Summer School session on the importance of printed ephemera for historians of the book. On the flight back to Dunedin, my thoughts turned to some interesting examples of ephemera in the Heritage Collections, and so decided to begin a new series around this interesting, wide-ranging, and subjective topic.

The first in the series is the earliest piece of printed ephemera in the Reed Collection, a frost fair keepsake printed on the River Thames in 1683/4.

The Thames had frozen over near London and Westminster a number of times since at least 1092. According to Brian McMullin, the winter of 1683/4 was 'the earliest recorded occasion on which printers took to the ice', and it must have been a true test of ingenuity to stabilize the presses for printing.

The keepsake in the Reed Collection was printed for the attorney Richard Blackall (d. 1743) of Wallingford, Berkshire (Wallingford is now located in Oxfordshire). Blackall later used the keepsake as a book label, affixing it to the front pastedown of a quarto Bible and Prayer Book (London, 1712; ESTC T89271) acquired by the Dunedin Public Library in 1973.

Unfortunately, the name of the printer who produced this keepsake was not included. The only frost fair printer known to McMullin by name is George Croom, active in London between 1671 and 1707, who printed a variety of frost fair keepsakes including one for Charles II and the Royal Family on 31 January 1684. Phrasing and typographical differences, however, suggest that Croom was either not the printer of the Blackall keepsake or allowed some visitors to try their hand at setting their own type.

The 1683/4 Thames frost fair was documented by the writer and diarist John Evelyn (1620–1706), who wandered its booths constructed of blankets and poles, and recorded in his diary for 24 January 1684:

The frost still continuing more & more severe, the Thames before London was planted with bothes in formal streetes, as in a Citty, or Continual faire, all sorts of Trades & shops furnished, & full of Commodities, even to a Printing presse, where the People & Ladys tooke a fansy to have their names Printed & the day & yeare set downe, when printed on the Thames: This humour tooke so universaly, that 'twas estimated the Printer gained five pound a day, for printing a line onley, at six-pence a Name, besides what he gott by Ballads &c: (4:361-2).

See Brian McMullin's "An Excursion into Printed Keepsakes: III: 'Printed on the Thames Being Frozen'" in the Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand Bulletin vol. 11 (1987; issued Nov. 1989) for further details on the printing of frost fair keepsakes.

For the Evelyn reference see The Diary of John Evelyn edited by Esmond de Beer, 6 vols. (Oxford: at the Clarendon Press, 1955).

For other seventeenth-century printed ephemera in the Reed Collection, see my post 'Upon beat of Drumme' from early last year.