Are You Lyin’?
Posted
I believe that many people do not really take in what they are looking at. People tend to glance at images, immediately categorize them, and think they understand what they…
Trojan Horse – A Citrus Label
Posted
It is amazing the lengths advertisers can go to in creating an eye-catching image to sell their product. It was probably not necessary to go to these artistic lengths to…
The Negro Alphabet – An Unusual ABC Book
Posted
The paper string bound book entitled “The Negro Alphabet” was printed in Kingston, Jamaica by Ashton W. Gardner & Company and drawn by V. Heaven. Searches have turned up no…
Window Dressing Portland
Posted
Portland, Oregon. Who’d a’thunk it! The time was the fabulous fifties, and Portland’s downtown department store windows were decked out to resemble and promote everything Parisian. The photographer was Fred…
Fire Wagon Flying at Full Speed
Posted
What is more exciting in a photograph than action? Especially action caught at an instant in time where all things are clear and in their place, forming a cohesive composition. …
Sam’s Unsettling Cigar Box Label
Posted
At first glance, this lithographic label printed for use on the outside of a wooden cigar box is fairly typical of graphic appeals by cigar companies in this c.1890 Victorian…
Choir of Girls in Butte, Montana
Posted
Butte, Montana had more money than God in between the 1880s and 1920s. Home of the largest copper mines in North America and the richest and most powerful people in…
The Dust Bowl – Old and New?
Posted
A few years after the worst period of the United States dust bowl, a person named Schandel in Selden, Kansas sent this postcard over to Hays where T.M. Tilloson lived. …
Ancient Marquilla From Cuba
Posted
A marquilla is a cigarette wrapper, which we today would call a soft pack. it was small, quite small in fact, designed to hold small cigarettes, each being about two…
1920s Life in Paris
Posted
This is a magazine cover that made me melt. After that, it made me ask – Is this what life was like in Paris in the ’20s? Cupid would shoot…
Tower Of Babel Game – A Victorian Marvel
Posted
I’ve always liked Ziggurats. They turn up in various architecture books, and in illustrations hither and yon. A ziggurat, simply, is a spiral tower or a pyramid with a spiral…
Old West Stage Show Photo Postcard
Posted
The cowgirls are pretty, the cowboys good looking, but who is that hideous minstrel figure in the background? This rather mysterious real photo postcard seems to be a photo from…
The William T. Coleman Story – 1880s British Columbia Promotions
Posted
In 1884 William T. Coleman officially became a megalomaniac. That was the year that he hired Forbes Litho Company in Boston to produce for him a thirty-page, 10″ X 14,”…
Anatomical Eyeglasses Fit The Earth
Posted
Imagination is a wonderful thing. And when lithographic artists were let loose on an ad campaign back in Victorian days, the images they produced would often be imaginative. With an…
Ojibwa Indian Tobacco Progressive Label & Proofs
The Lithography Printing Process Illustrated Surprises are common in the world of antique printing. The companies were numerous, their products diverse, and their work broad ranging, with subject matter covering…
Pictorial Daily
