Maurice Rickards

• Christmas greetings card
• Maurice Rickards High-Class Artistic and General Designer
• 190 x 254mm (7½ x 10in)
• London 1952
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August 11, 2019 marks the centenary of the birth of Maurice Rickards, designer, photographer, writer, ephemerist, founder and first Chairman of The Ephemera Society.

Born in London, he was educated at Marylebone Grammar School leaving at fifteen to study at Westminster School of Art; moving on shortly afterwards he took employment at a photographic studio to gain experience in the world of professional photography.

Signing on as a conscientious objector at the outbreak of the Second World War he was allocated agricultural work. By the end of the war he was involved in social work in a Methodist mission in Walworth, East London, where he declared his education was "pretty nearly completed".

After the war he set up his own design and photographic studio producing publicity material for a wide range of clients including the Road Safety Campaign.

Patrick Hickman-Robertson in his Ephemera Society Chairman's Report of 1998, the year Maurice passed away, noted …the immense debt owed to him by we ephemerists for elevating what was, until 25 years ago, an esoteric and scarcely acknowledged pursuit into a legitimate field of collecting, conservation and research.

Maurice Rickards was himself a leading collector; his collection demonstrates the diversity of ephemera and their potential for study. It is a representative collection of material consisting of around 20,000 items, which is housed in the Centre for Ephemera Studies at the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication of the University of Reading.