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Lee Brown Coye Illustrates August Derleth's Anthology
These are some of the illustrations of Lee Brown Coye (1907-1981) for August Derleth's anthology of macabre tales, Who Knocks? Twenty Masterpieces of the Spectral for the Connoisseur (Rinehart, 1945)....
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Albert & Otto: Albert Wainwright's Diary of Love in the 20s
We have been championing the work of the artist Albert Wainwright here on Front Free Endpaper for a while now which is we are delighted to announce the arrival of Callum James Books latest...
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Callum James Books Paperbacks
Having just released our latest, Albert & Otto. Albert Wainwright's Visual Diary of Love in the 20s, which has been well received by you all: thank you, I thought it might be a moment to remind...
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Sheila Bishop illustrates Moon Magic
These are some of the illustrations from Moon Magic. A Tale of Adventure by Hampden Gordon (John Murray, London: 1949), a kind of sub-Narnian fantasy about travelling to the moon by magic and the...
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Don't Try This At Home...
A short while ago I was enjoying a print from a medical book with a rather handsome young man being prodded all over by diagrammatic arrows diagnosing what ailments he may have. So I'm equally happy to...
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Vintage Men, Some in Swimwear
It's been a little while since we've had a gratuitous posting of vintage young men on this blog so, in the spirit of idling that the current UK heatwave seems to be engendering: may I offer these three...
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An Edwardian Ghost Photograph
It's not unusual to find vintage photographs with 'ghosts' in, but the inverted commas are important because in the vast majority of cases these ghosts are accidental double exposures which, with vary...
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Chinese Printed Texts
Given my love of typography and of all things ephemeral, these Chinese texts on tissue thin paper pressed quite a few buttons for me. I don't read Mandarin but as the pink one has the reference for a...
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How would you have fared in a Victorian School?
Every now and again, a little piece of ephemera comes along that catches the imagination. This is the midsummer exam paper for 1894 at Trinity College, Glenalmond in Scotland: The General Paper. I've...
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Strange and Supernatural: A Supplement
In May we issued a large catalogue titled "Strange & Supernatural" and the response has been so good that today we published a supplemental list of another 75 items. The pdf of the list is...
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A little vintage swimwear and sunbathing
The UK is still basking in a heatwave so, sitting here in my shorts in the middle of the night with all the windows open, it seemed appropriate to get the vintage swimwear out again. The photo above...
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Who said the 1930s was all about the drab?
These stunning plates are from Colour Schemes for the Modern Home by Derek Patmore. Modern, in this instance meaning 1934. I suppose there is an image of the interiors of the 30s as full of stodgy...
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Japanese (style) Menu Cards
I bought a large box of ephemera and photographs yesterday and I think I paid too much money for it. However, that won't stop me enjoying some of the contents. Among them, these blank Japanese style...
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The Lengths by Howard Hardiman
A strange piece of synchronicity came to pass yesterday. For a couple of years I have had on my shelf a set of comic books called The Lengths, complete in seven issues, that I bought and didn't so much...
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Vintage Swimwear: John and Ken
It's 1938, we're at Lake Placid in August and these two handsome chaps are called John and Ken. All this from the verso as well as their surnames. It's a real joy when people but proper notes on their...
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More Menu Cards
Following a recent posting of some blank menu cards with Japanese style illustration, I thought I would just post these which came from the same box of ephemera recently. Again they are blank menu...
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Gay City Volume 5: Ghosts in Gaslight, Monsters in Steam
Ghosts in Gaslight, Monsters in Steam (ISBN 9781489580146) is the Gay City Anthology No. 5: a kind of gay steampunk collection of prose, artwork and poetry. It was my first introduction to the...
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Keith Vaughan in Monochrome
There's never any need to have a reason to post pictures by Keith Vaughan. These are just a few of my favourites from John Lehmann's The Penguin New Writing in the 1940s, where Vaughan's work features...
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A Handful of Lehnert and Landrock
R and I have been out and about this weekend and among the many places we visited were a series of antique shops and stalls in the Farnham/Alton area of Hampshire. Didn't find all that much of interest...
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Frederick Rolfe Centenary: Letters
This year sees the centenary of the death of Frederick Rolfe Baron Corvo. To mark this, from now until the actual anniversary on the 25th October I shall be posting about the Baron and his life and...
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