Charles and his ephemera

Today I get to go to my own book launch. Not something I ever thought I would be doing.

I had a lovely job this year – to look through boxes and boxes of ephemera on shelves at MoDA that was collected by a graphic designer called Charles Hasler. Charles worked in London across the war years and into the Festival of Britain. He knew many of the ‘names’ in design, worked for some and certainly received Christmas cards from most of the others.

His ephemera collection reflects a life lived in design in mid-century Britain. It also reflects his own paper obsessions – among them Notgeld paper money, Victorian lithography, sheet music and wine labels. When he wasn’t designing for clients, Charles wrote articles on his obsessions. And he wrote extensively on typography, presumably something he didn’t manage to get out of his system as chair of the Typographic Panel for the Festival of Britain.

It has been a joy to pull together the seemingly random story of the Hasler collection. Researching rare, ephemeral pieces from many of the tastiest designers of the period was something that was right up my alley and down my street. Not least because Charles collected a tasty run of Shelf Appeal magazines – the namesake of this blog.

I like writing this blog. I like writing for magazines and catalogues. I like the fact I now have hard copy.