Don’t worry, this isn’t another plug for the Library Christmas cards, though I do love the scary pudding.
When cataloguing nineteenth and early twentieth century material we often find that the advertisements are far more interesting than the text. The books in the Tower are a particularly rich source on the history of advertising, we estimate that at least 20% of the 170,000 items catalogued by the Tower Project contain advertising material.
Members of the project team have put together a small exhibition of some of our favourite pieces. The exhibition is in the display cases in the North Front corridor of the University Library. It covers a number of themes, including electric corsets, hair and beauty, soap, patent medicines, and games and puzzles.
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Most of the items featured in the exhibition are loose items inserted into books acquired by the Library through legal deposit between 1850 and 1915 – fortunately our predecessors, who originally catalogued the books, didn’t throw them away.
The exhibition is on until 15 January 2011. Next time you are on your way to the Tea Room, do stop and take a look.
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‘Why wear clothes?’
That’s an odd tag line for an ad.
I can see why early 20th century advertising was so influential in the art world– most of the images are bold, clear, bright and very well done. (A bit like the exhibit…)
I saw the exhibition this week, very enjoyable. These items could so easily have been discarded, so a tip of the hat to your predecessors.
Glad you enjoyed the exhibition – that certainly makes the team effort of removing them from the books (they were inserted by the printers/publishers), collecting them up, writing descriptions of them and then selecting the best ones for the exhibition worthwhile!