The long women’s suffrage campaign (1866-1928) offers anyone interested a wide choice of collectable material – items that bridge the 100 + years that have elapsed since they were first purchased at a suffrage meeting or in a suffrage shop or were awarded at a suffragette rally.
In the decades before the First World War the suffrage societies, both constitutional and militant, produced an amazing range of ephemera and artifacts – including postcards, badges, medals, games and china – as well as books and pamphlets. Each item can be made to tell a story and, when placed together, can form a collection celebrating the passion and ingenuity with which the suffrage societies enthused their supporters.
A great many suffrage artifacts have passed through my hands in the past 40 years and will, I hope, do so in the future. It is always a pleasure to research their history and pass on what I can discover. Hitherto this information has been confined to my printed catalogues, but I now intend to add posts on ‘Woman and her Sphere’ in which to tell the stories of some of these items.
You can watch a Zoom talk I gave on ‘Collecting Suffrage’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7wUdT0sILI. (The sound’s somewhat variable.)
My latest catalogue contains items of suffragette china, as well as other suffrage ephemera – see Catalogue 211
For those interested in the memorabilia of the US women’s suffrage movement, do consult womansuffragememorabilia.com
Woman and her Sphere 