When Scrapbooking Was All the Rage

Some of the scraps (chromolithograph color prints called “scraps” back then) I have collected over the years date back to 1851. It was around the mid-19th century that word “Victorian” began to be used to express a new consciousness of the industrial era. These scraps tell quite a bit what it was like living back in the Industrial age.

I’ve traced some back to the great exhibition of 1851. A massive exhibition put together by Prince Albert to showcase the progress of the industrial revolution. Thirteen thousand exhibitors with products on view for the six million visitors who left the London show with amazing color samples from firms like Julius Bien Co., Currier and Ives and Louis Prang and Company.

The event was referred to as the Crystal Palace exhibition and with this new technology owning a good number of these prints was like owning more than one TV set in the 50s. Printed images of children, maidens, puppies and flowers all laid out in highly decorative formatts. The subjects could be as simple as a wild flower or conveyed the values of patriotism or religion.

The landmark design was eight hundred thousand square-foot steel and glass

To dig a little deeper I believe that advertising may prove more valuable to future historians then books or other editorial contents.

That’s why I am floored by these images

To look at some of these color prints from the mid19th is to trace the daily lifestyle and changing interests in tastes, food, clothes, amusements and vices. Advertising gives us the reflection of that era and perception of what was in the victorian mind without any personalized author’s interpretation.


Take a look at this ad below. Being a woman in the 19th century was about being married. We can decipher this from the text in the ad. The pure genius behind this copy is that Listerine can help you towards that goal with their product.

Victorian graphic design captured and conveyed the values of the era of a time where capturing a husband meant smelling damn good!

The ad reads:
"Edna’s case was really a pathetic one. Like every woman, her primary ambition was to marry. 

Most of the girls of her set were married––or about to be.
And as her birthday crept gradually toward that tragic thirty-mark, marriage seemed father from her life than ever. She was often a bridesmaid but never a bride."

That’s the insidious thing about halitosis (unpleasant breath). You yourself rarely know when you have it."

A true reflection of life in the Victorian world.

Restored Retro Masterpieces - The Kennedy Photography

A rest on the campaign trail unnoticed before fame.

An incredible exhibit that any retro art lover would enjoy is currently on display in Philadelphia. Oddly enough, this show (which runs through early September) is not in a traditional spot but at the National Constitution Center’s Newseum. Creating Camelot: The Kennedy Photography of Jacques Lowe rolls out more than 70 intimate photographs and historic images of President John F. Kennedy and his family. The Newseum presents a retro extravaganza of photos that helped create the legend of the his presidency often referred to as “Camelot” (one of his favorite broadway musicals). 

Bobbie unhappy with the LBG as running mate decision.

The exhibit is full of wonderful black-and-white shots of JFK in action with a behind-the-scenes look at his daily challenges on the campaign trail and in the White House. Even further amazing is an entire room devoted to Jackie and her magazine covers. Stunning large color reproductions and the original magazines they appeared in are on display. What’s even more incredible is that these enlargements were not produced from traditional negatives but from the retouched contact sheets. 

They had to remove Lowe's grease pencil markings as well!

After the Kennedy work was done, Jacques Lowe moved on to further his career in photojournalism and he knew these negatives were a treasure for safe keeping. Thinking it was best to protect them, he did just that — put them in a safe — a safe in JP Morgan’s seemingly impregnable vault in Tower 5 of New York’s World Trade Center. Then 9/11 came and his life’s most important work went with it. Amazingly, the safe in which they were stored was found intact, but the contents of over 40,000 negatives were reduced to ash. There were however, 1,500 of Lowe’s contact sheets located elsewhere in New York, and that’s how the story of this marvelous exhibition begins. 

Retouched print at right.

If you know traditional photography and how scratchy and tiny these prints are (proofs made from the negatives placed directly on paper), you can understand how difficult it must have been to get them to museum quality. There’s a video at the show which explains the process and a huge light table where you can zoom in on all the contact sheets beyond the retouched enlargements displayed. Retro art lovers should not miss this highly under publicized show. A great day trip to spend a afternoon with the Kennedy’s.

The Master Craftsman of the Psychedelic Poster

Wes Wilson and the Psychedelic Poster

I was just a little guy when Bill Graham had those amazing concerts at the Fillmore West, but I was enthralled by the look of those posters. I stumbled across this cover on my iPad from my one of my unread issues of a recent Rolling Stone (RS, June 4). Wes Wilson is still turning out art at 77 years young, semi retired and living on a farm in southwestern Missouri. Commemorating the 50th anniversary of the surviving members of the Grateful Dead, Rolling stone thought it would be appropriate to have Wilson create this retro masterpiece. He said “ I was a one-man operation” and was always kept busy. There was always a concert at the Fillmore! 

The poster offers people the promise of beauty that is ultimately accessible to all, but the history of the modern poster hardly covers two centuries. The beginning is connected with the invention of the lithograph in 1796 by the Bavarian Alouise Senefelder, and further improvements in this technique created by the development of chromolithography. During the second half of the 19 century, the treatment of colors in the photography was greatly improved in Boston, (the home base to a major school of chromolithography), which began an unprecedented flood of these wonderful colored images spread over in billboards and packaging for the most of the globe. 

The psychedelic posters produced in San Francisco between 1966 and 1968 could be compared to the psychedelic trip itself, an instant reflection of contemporary Western culture, loaded with messages turned and twisted for the movement it represented. The music, the drugs, and alternative lifestyles all played a part, but the undeniable power of these posters demands to be observed.

There is unanimous agreement on the importance of the work by the legendary artists known as the Big Five-Wes Wilson, Victor Moscoso, Rick Griffin, Stanley Mouse and Alten Kelly whose posters were mainly produced for concert promoter Bill Graham at the Filmore Auditorium opened in December 1965 and followed by the Fillmore West in mid 1968, as well as a few hundred other notable San Francisco venues such as the Matrix and the Winterland. 

We also know that the psychedelic posters were almost always hand-lettered and even though the text have been based on existing typefaces of that era, the compositions were truly organic and made much greater use of color contrast that has ever been seen before. It must be assumed then that one would have to have had an LSD experience to produce these vibrating works of art.

Wes Wilson is probably the best known of the big five. His dreamy rock posters helped define the look of the San Francisco rock scene. But it didn’t start that way. His poster produced for the Beatles at candlestick Park in late August 1966 show nothing of the route he would partake in his future work. The text for this poster is highly readable and the passages in his psychedelic concoctions in the future that one would have difficulty reading had yet to be introduced. In his posters of the late 60s and early 70s Wilson uses a softening of the letter forms built up upon asymmetric curves and counter curves. Certainly the influences came from Art Nouveau, but the color sense is a lava lamp of LSD excitement.

Psychedelic rock included phenomenal light shows, with slide projections and strobe lights that were intended to kick in the sensory experience of LSD or mescaline. It is impossible to understand the Utopian vision of the psychedelic era without considering the role of drugs. Timothy Leary’s book The Politics of Ecstasy published in 1968, was well in sync with the findings of Dr. Humphrey Osmond, the author of the studies he made on the use of LSD and mescaline as a treatment for schizophrenia. In an article in Look Magazine in September 1959 none other than Kerry Grant spoke out about a successful treatment with the drug. The posters created in the 60s psychedelic movement with swirls and spirals and clashing complementary colors were a clear reference to LSD participation.

The psychedelic movement was quick to disappear and in the spring of 1967. Wes Wilson discontinued his work for Bill Graham (he noted for financial reasons). In October of that year, and anarchist performance group called the Diggers put together a well publicized San Francisco parade to parody a funeral that they entitled “Death of the Hippie Son of Mass Media”. 

The hippie, as well as psychedelic poster art, had died. The organic curvilinear letter forms like the ones seen on the “Are You Experienced” Jimi Hendrix album cover would be replaced by the memorable sparse design done by Richard Hamilton in 1968 for the Beatles White Album.

Were the 60s psychedelic artist-stoned out tripsters or poster design geniuses? Stoned out or not, the big five artists were master craftsman, geniuses of color and composition that provided an invaluable reference to a culture that is still looked upon with enthusiasm by the younger generation of artists today. They did not copy the Masters of the Art Nouveau movement, but brought their own modern sense of originality that reflected the world around them. 

Scrapbooking and John Wilkes Booth

The decades 1860 until 1890 were an exciting period for Victorian graphics. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution and the invention of chromolithography the popular market became flooded with meticulously drawn colorful images published by Louis Prang (L. Prang and company).

Scrap booking was hobby started in 1860 as the narrative of the Victorian era was closely linked to the illustrations on these cards. Prangs images of children, wild flowers, animals and birds spoke of the era's love for traditional values. Collecting these printed bits and cards became a popular pastime. The term "scraps" used by the collectors of these colorful printed treasures engendered the term "scrapbook." 

When a fellow professor wandered into my bookmaking class at Moore College of Art and Design he was amazed at how my love of these old postcards had me practically wetting my pants during my lecture on the development of lithography. Prang was a master printer and producer of the holiday cards I had collected (and shown) over my many years as a graphic designer and I think I had my students on board with their beauty.

The following week he presented me a scrapbook that he found in his grandmother's garage.
It was indeed an authentic book dating back to Abraham Lincoln's time!

I was further amazed at the article pasted on one of the pages in the book.
It contained a newspaper article on John Wilkes Booth dating the day after president Lincoln was assassinated.

In honor of today's date in history-the passing of the great president Abraham Lincoln-I have the scan of that scrapbook page posted here.

A thrill to a history buff like myself and I hope to fellow retro art and history buffs out there!

Below is a letter from the Smithsonian Archives and a link to the full account of the event-

"[April] 15th. We were awakened this morning by an announcement which almost made our hearts stand still with consternation. The President was shot last night in the Theater. When the morning paper was issued he was still alive although little or no hopes were entertained of his recovery but now the tolling bells tell us he has ceased to breathe. He is dead. Mr. De Bust has just told Hannah he died at ½ 7 o'clock. Deeply must the country mourn this death for although uncouth & ungainly he was true hearted, magnanimous and kind and in the present crisis ready to follow the such a course with the defeated belligerants as would win them back to their allegiance to the Government and subdue the rebellion in their hearts as well as subjugate their aims. The South has lost in him a good & judicious friend."


http://siarchives.si.edu/history/exhibits/stories/death-abraham-lincoln-april-15-26-1865

Lucian Bernhard and the Plakatstil Poster

Those Amazing Plakatstil Posters!

Hans Rudi Erdt

When we look at retro posters there can be no more of an amazing story than what happened to a 15 year old in 1898 Berlin Germany. His name was Lucian Bernhard and after attending an exhibition of interior decoration he was amazed by the lavish colors he had experienced throughout the show.

Dumbstruck with enthusiasm for these avant-garde colors, Lucian decided to paint his father’s home interiors in the bright paints he was so moved by. His father, retuning from a three-day trip was shocked at what Lucien had done. Not amused, his father named his son a criminal causing young Lucian to flee his home.

Trying desperately to support himself on his own, this self-taught young artist eventually decided to enter a poster contest for Priester matches in 1905. The original poster design was an ashtray with lighted cigar and a box of matches on a tablecloth. Lucian eventually felt the image was too bare and he painted dancing girls in the background rising out of the smoke. Further examination later that day, he decided that the image was too complicated so he painted the girls out. Even later that evening a friend dropped by and asked if it was a poster for a cigar. That motivated Bernhard to paint out the cigar. The young artist also decided that the tablecloth and ashtray stood out to prominently and painted those out as well.

What was left? Just matches a on bare table. With time running out on the contest deadline Bernard quickly painted the word Priester above the matches in blue and got the poster off to the competition that needed to be postmarked by midnight.

The poster and advertising in general was about to have a ground breaking change. The story gets even more amazing! It was eventually leaked out that all of the entries were first thrown in the trash and completely rejected by all the jurors. If one of the group had not arrived late the history of poster design would have been quite different. Ernst Growald of the Hollerbaum and Schmidt lithography firm convinced the jurors that one of the designs in the trash was worthy of reconsideration. Holding up Bernhard’s poster Growald lectured the group,
“This is my first prize. Here is a genius!”

The design went on to become the famous Priester matches poster which was a formula that would be repeated many times over. A simple, direct reduction of shapes and a word. A design approach that is still used with the advantage of running as tiny as a postage stamp and as large as a billboard. This design school of flat shapes and simple color became known as the Plakatstil (poster style) of Germany in the early twentieth century.

Bernhard used this approach in next two decades of his career. He designed over 300 packages for the firm and influenced five other graphic designers to come on board with them. What followed was an amazing array of product logo posters that eventually made its way to America in 1923. Oddly enough, it was five years before he received any poster commissions. No doubt German poster art would eventually play a significant role in the language of American advertising.