JB's Warehouse & Curio Emporium

Leaf through any mid-20th century general interest magazine and you'll fine tons of booze ads. For example, many 1950s American publications provide an education in just how many varieties of bourbon were available, targeted to every class and taste preference.   This edition of the New Yorker is chock full of booze ads, many of them with a holiday theme.  Ready to wander through a 1970s ad executive's cabinet as you open the Christmas cards slipped through your mail slot? Let's go! (DISCLAIMER: I am not responsible if you decide to sample each of these fine liquids while browsing this collection of ads. This post only contains ads related to the holidays or nearly related to the holidays. Trust me, there were plenty of non-Christmas booze ads in this issue.) O Tanqueray Gin tree! O Tanqueray Gin tree! How lovely are thy bottles! Then as now, you might choose to give a nice bottle of scotch in a fancy gift box. Some brands, like J&B, went for historical illustrations...

Was the holiday season of 1931 a good moment to launch a pricey magazine for the men's fashion trade? The backers of Apparel Arts felt so.  "We prefer not to brag about the expensive character of Apparel Arts ," editor Arnold Gingrich noted in the magazine's debut editorial. "You all know, by now, what a photograph costs. You can guess, when it comes to drawings, paintings and sculpture. The Depression still being officially on, we're rather ashamed to admit payment to the piper. To dwell on this aspect of Apparel Arts , quite apart from considerations of modesty, would be, it seems to us, to elucidate the obvious." Apparel Arts was distributed to clothing salesmen, and included swatches attached to pages that could be shown to clients. "Our only hope," Gingrich declared," is that each issue may contain some one page, at least, that you may find it impossible to ignore, or to forget." The magazine's mission would be "to fi...

  New York Daily News, February 8, 1971. How many people wandered around North America with LoveBug corsages pinned to their heart on Valentine's Day half-a-century ago? If the answer was "not many," it wasn't for a lack of trying as FTD filled newspapers across the US and Canada with ads featuring the LoveBug and his LoveBundle. Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, February 7, 1971. I'm trying to figure out if the triangle sticking out of the LoveBug is part of the ribbon or is his tongue. It's possible that the LoveBug was a cousin of the Tim Horton's  Timbit character  and  Thing from TVO's  Readalong . Schematic diagram of the LoveBundle, Ottawa Citizen, February 4, 1971. In Ottawa, the Citizen offered two LoveBundles as prizes in a children's colouring contest. "Some 400 children got out their colouring materials, set their mouths just right and coloured the bouquet called a LoveBundle," Citizen women's editor Shirley Foley not...

If these two stories were any indication, some writers (or at least headline writers) had it in for New York City during the 1920 holiday season. Los Angeles Express, December 25, 1920 . Ms. Reed tried to portray the dichotomy between the rich and poor elements of Manhattan, but her views of the indigent and at least two ethnic communities come off like a visitor engaging in slum tourism ("The Ghetto" referred to here is the Lower East Side, then the centre of the city's Jewish population). Not that sunny California was immune to transient communities . Reed was a Los Angeles-based actress and playwright whose works bore titles like Bitter Bread and The Devil's Tattoo .  Toronto Star, December 22, 1920. The reason the reader could guess that Montreal hotels could charge more than New York's was that Quebec loosened restrictions on alcohol after an April 1919 referendum, while the Prohibition era had just gotten underway in the USA. Why not spend the holidays in M...

This is the first of a series collecting odds and ends from the Christmas and New Year's holiday season 100 years ago. Ads, editorials, recipes, and anything else that caught my eye will be featured between now and January 1. Though not quite the dumpster fire 2020 has been, 1920 was still a turbulent time - the effects of the First World War, the upheavals of 1919, and the Spanish flu were still affecting North Americans. What you'll find in many of the items I'll feature is a sense of hope for the new year, that maybe things might be settling into a new sense of normal or are (finally) pointing toward a brighter future.  First up, a selection of ads from a sector that was doing far better in 1920 than 2020: department stores. Their Christmas Eve/Christmas Day ads generally avoided last-minute sales in favour of uplifting messages, wishes for peace on Earth, or cozy domestic scenes.   Border Cities Star, December 24, 1920. We'll start in Windsor, where Smith's th...

This ad for a popular 1950s swimwear designer delighted quite a few websurfers when it was posted on Flickr. Chalk it up to the simple, classy style the ad designer used, or the hints of mischief emanating from the model's face. As for what a New York shopper could have done to amuse themselves after purchasing a "jewel of the sea," let's consult the "Goings on About Town" section (or, as it was subtitled in '58, "a conscientious calendar of events of interest"). If they were in a theatrical mood, productions in first run on Broadway included Look Back in Anger , The Music Man , Sunrise at Campobello and West Side Story . Under "Night Life", the "Big and Brassy" section might have caught their eye. At the Copacabana, " Ella Fitzgerald , as oracle of many voices, many moods, many tempos, can range from the romantic to the abstract as quick as a wink. She's the one good deed in a very long night." Use...

Day two began with a quick bite in the hotel lounge. It was your standard bare-bones continental: juice, cereal, fruit and Otis Spunkmeyer bagels (the latter displayed little spunk, but an application of apple jelly and Philly helped). I took the Thruway to Utica, then hopped onto New York Route 5 to drive along the north side of the Mohawk River . It was a peaceful drive, with few agitated or pokey drivers between Utica and Schenectady. A relaxing winding highway, towns with baby food factories, places my brother-in-law warned me not to linger in, etc. The weather was a damper, with intermittent showers preventing me from shooting photos. I stopped for lunch at the Farmer Boy diner in Colonie. First up was a soothing squash soup with bonus red peppers and bacon. My main was one of the better-marinated half-chickens I've had, bathed in lemon and oregano and flattened, served atop chicken-flavoured rice pilaf. It was roadtrip comfort food gold. After a few hours on the M...