Beth's Ruler Collection

Trade card beauty

D. Goff & Sons of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, made frequent use of trade cards to promote their textile manufacturing business, especially their varieties of braids. This is an especially beautiful card advertising their Angora Braid, in the familiar eighth-yard measure.

It was a purchase from my friend and Ephemera Society of America colleague, Barbara J. Loe, who sells high-quality ephemera at very reasonable prices. Besides showing at paper fairs, she sells on Facebook in the Ephemera Loft group.

Thank you, Barbara!

Purchase -- Barbara J. Loe, Osprey, FL -- received 15 November 2022

 

ANOTHER Good Rule to Follow

Since so many of the blotters I buy with rulers on them are advertising giveaways, it's not surprising that so many of them build the phrase "A Good Ruler to Follow" into the promotion. (When I get my database built, someday, I'll be able to count exactly how many.) This one was a recent purchase from an ebay seller called "blotterguy", and now that he knows about my collection, he's finding lots of ruler blotters to offer. I already have many of them!

Purchase (ebay) -- "blotterguy" = S. Morton Zweig, Rancho Mirage, CA -- received 15 November 2022

World Diabetes Day 2022

November 14, a day to remember how prevalent this disease is, in all its forms.

Stay healthy, everyone.

http://worlddiabetesday.org/about/

Really important

We all know what tomorrow is, right?

Punkins

It's over 70 degrees here today, on the seventh of November, so while it doesn't feel like autumn, I still love pumpkins.

Purchase -- "blotterguy" = S. Morton Zweig, Rancho Mirage, CA -- received 27 October 2022

Perfect ruler for fall

This trade card/ruler advertises Mess. Rigaud & Cie., Parfumeurs, Paris, which had goods for sale at A. L. Helmbold's Pharmacy, 830 Chestnut St., Philadelphia.  I have another very similar trade card, with a different local address: 5th & Chestnut Sts., Philadelphia, which was very close to the place I worked from 1981 to 1998: the Library of the American Philosophical Society. We always said that we worked at "5th & Chestnut," which is how you describe addresses in Philadelphia.

It's all connected.

Purchase -- Barbara Loe, at the annual fair of the Ephemera Society of America -- 19 March 2022

(The Ephemera Society will be having another conference and fair in March 2023. Check us out! March 17-19, Old Greenwich CT: Ephemera Society of America “Ephemera 43” Conference, Show, and Sale. www.ephemerasociety.org )

Taking over the house

Last week I bought on etsy what I thought was a digital file of a card featuring a pumpkin carved with a face of Abraham Lincoln, who is a Big Deal in our house. Turns out I hadn't read the etsy listing carefully enough, and what I really bought was a digital stencil that can be used to carve Lincoln's face on my own pumpkin. Not what I wanted but it was my own fault. So I removed the background from the photo in the etsy listing, filled in the background with solid black, and then made the image into a ruler. Of course!

Lincoln image: purchase (etsy) -- Mike, RaleighCarver -- received 28 October 2022

Big fish: Strong, Stubborn Fighters

Proof! (See previous post, about Washington state apples...)

Purchase (Hippostcard) -- "Coldwarcollectibles" = Shelly Sarver, Phoenix, AZ -- received 8 October 2022

Just the right size

Posing your product with a ruler or measuring tape and printing the image on a postcard was an excellent way to promote a business or location. Most of the items of this type in my ruler collection feature fish, or produce, as pictured below. This one has a hand-written date of 1923, so, if correct, almost 100 years old.

Purchase (ebay) -- "pstcardman2014" = Paleogreetings, LLC, Greensboro, NC -- received 21 October 2022

Mountain Day 2022

Mountain Day was a big deal to me during my undergraduate days. We had great fun trying to anticipate when the big announcement would come (it was supposed to be a surprise), and my memory says that most of us used that day to catch up on reading and classwork, instead of enjoying the fall scenery. Maybe that was just me!

Today's announcement inspired a new ruler/bookmark, of course.

Mountain Day image: Smith College website

Ruler template: Purchase (etsy) - Jessica Laurie, JLaurieStudio, Henderson, Nevada