The Contribution of Ephemera Dealers
Robert Dalton Harris, Diane DeBlois, David Margolis, and Jean Moss The Contribution of Ephemera Dealers Robert Dalton Harris and Diane DeBlois of aGatherin’, and David Margolis and Jean Moss of Margolis and Moss, explore the relationship between dealers and the libraries and museums that purchase ephemera from them. The two couples who, for over three decades, have specialized in handling ephemera within the rare book world, are from different backgrounds and have divergent strengths, yet agree philosophically on both the importance of ephemera and the complementary role dealers can have with librarians and curators in building collections. In describing their passions, they hope to connect with the collector inside the library and archives profession, as well as to illuminate what it is they actually do as ephemerists, capi- talizing upon the quotidian. Why would an antiquarian choose to specialize in ephemera? Robert Dalton Harris, as a Garbage Hound: My life as a collector began in the hospital—not the one in Salt Lake City where I was born, but five years later in Oregon when I got polio. My neighbor in the children’s ward was totally absorbed in his stamp collection—so I asked my mother about stamps, and we immediately found half a dozen different ones on envelopes from her correspondence. These we purloined, soaked, and counted. Many years later, my grandparents returned to me a letter I wrote them that Christmas, in which I painstakingly accounted for the thirteen stamps I had by then amassed. I was off and running. My mother invited me to take any duplicates I could find from her own col- lection—I remember that there were two—and subsequently we collected together, but in separate albums: gathering from the incoming mail, from gifts, from the post office, from approval selections, and “big bag missionary” mixtures—until my collec- tion exceeded hers and, it was agreed, I became the proud possessor of both.
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