In 1971, the Joseph Schlitz Brewing Co. sent out fancy-looking replicas of one of its 1906 advertising pieces to… oh, probably bars, package stores and, who knows, maybe even courthouses and Girl Scout troops. It was a different time. Anyways, here’s one of them.
According to this ad, Packard had a Board of Color who would decide on the car color schemes. Just imagine the fights.
Some quasi-random knowledge:
Having your car the same colors as a harlequin macaw would certainly get noticed.
Macaws can live for 50-100 years.
In 1930 (three years after this ad), the average life of a new car was 6.75 years.
The average lifespan of a modern car is not quite 12 years.
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Odds and ends:
A portière (mentioned at the bottom of the ad) is a hanging curtain placed over a door or doorway. I am not sure if a beaded curtain officially qualifies as a portière, but why not, eh?
Online, I found a couple of variations of the Lewando’s mother cat delicately and lovingly hanging the chicks up to dry, and when in color, each of the clothespinned chicks is a different color. Probably because of their dyeing services, but maybe just because it’s cute. Dye hard.
“Cleansing” sounds much more elegant and thorough than “cleaning”. You can probably charge more for it.
Sometimes Lewando’s has an apostrophe, and sometimes Lewandos doesn’t have an apostrophe. Lewando does what Lewando wants.
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I thought I had a chance at this wonderfully odd Williams typewriter invented by John Newton Williams and the first typewriter where the typist could actually see what they just typed (Williams also invented one of the first helicopters and a 3-cylinder motorcycle). It was the first item up for auction. The typewriter went for $1,200. I did not have a chance.
Earlier this year, an antique shop owner in town was retiring and winding down her store. I picked up a pretty good batch of vintage magazines at a nice price on the last weekend, and went back after work on Monday, the final day, just to see if I had missed anything.
Well, turns out I was recognized and she had an impressive stock of vintage magazines in back that never made it out on the floor. She made me a great offer and I took it. And on top of that, she had a collection of various things she had cut out of other old magazines — random photos and illustrations from ads, stories and features — that she had started on for an unspecified “girly project” but decided after a while that it was too much work. She had this particular collection stored in the cover/lid from a case of office copier paper and it was filled to overflowing. She offered it to me for five more bucks and I said yep.
I still haven’t made it to the bottom of her cutouts, but so far have found a plethora of full, intact vintage ads, and also many partial ads where she was only interested in the primary photo or illustration and saw no need to cut out or keep the rest (headline, body copy, logo, etc.). The image below is one such example.
I am Spartacus.
The stunning cover to a 1952 issue of Elle magazine from France, part of a lot of five I received several weeks ago.