This website seeks to encourage researchers and collectors to discover and study obscure ephemera that document American culture and life.  Worldcat reveals that most of the items that I post cannot be found in more than a few research libraries–often none at all.  Alternately, research libraries do not bother to catalog ephemeral publications like these.  I believe, however, that because these were distributed free, or at nominal cost, to consumers, they were the publications most likely to make their way into homes and be read by large numbers of Americans.

I acquire pre-1960 examples of the kinds of publications that prove so useful when scholars study 19th-Century America.  The limited competition that I encounter for them suggests that libraries, which could easily outbid me, have little interest in post-Civil War and 20th-century ephemeral publications in general.

I try to anticipate what materials future historians will find useful.  Being an historian first and a collector second, I organized this website to encourage others to do this too—even if this means new competition for me. I am aware that I could be wrong in prizing particular ephemera or even whole classes of ephemera.  I may even be wrong to encourage scholars to study obscure ephemeral publications; these may be obscure for good reason.

Ephemerastudies.org will permit me to share with others the information and imagery that I am acquiring, and to benefit from the knowledge, intelligence and experience of other scholars and collectors.  Please contact me with your impressions of the site.

~ Saul Zalesch

Title

Norman Rockwell & War Bonds 1944

Category
Booklet, gallery
Date

1944

Why It's Interesting

This is a page from a small brochure given out at the New Orleans venue of a traveling tour of Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedom paintings co-organized in 1944 by the U. S. Treasury and the Saturday Evening Post.  This exhibit was called the “Four Freedoms War Bond Show.”  The booklet has a one-page statement about Rockwell and the paintings; statements about why the show was organized; a description of a further exhibition of original art from the Saturday Evening Posts, examples of which art would be awarded as prizes in a drawing among bond purchasers; discussion of the “Freedom Scroll,” that would be presented to President Roosevelt inscribed with the names off all bond purchasers; and much more.  The back cover asks–against the background of the torch of the Statue of Liberty–”Exactly how much is freedom worth to you?”  It labeled the dollars invested in war bonds “Freedom Dollars.”

 
Norman Rockwell & War Bonds 1944