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...

  Buffalo Times, December 18, 1921. To compensate for not being able to visit Buffalo anytime soon (thanks Omicron!), I'm settling for flipping through the pages of the city's newspapers during the holiday season a century ago.  OK, that's not the entire truth. Awhile back, I spent a few days down a rabbit hole leafing through the Sunday editions of the great selection of early 20th century Buffalo papers found on Newspapers.com. There was a plan to begin a regular series of posts on Sunday papers of the era, focusing on a century ago, but the time wasn't there. File this idea under "projects for 2022." Still, material like this awkward shot of Santa hovering over a sleeping girl didn't deserve to be left in the can this holiday season. Illustration by Dan Smith, Buffalo Times, December 18, 1921.  A children's kingdom of toys and fairy tales, with characters ranging from classic comic strip character Krazy Kat to dolls that are inappropriate to own a c...

Agnes Macphail, September 12, 1926. City of Toronto Archives, Globe and Mail fonds, Fonds 1266, Item 8807. Today marks the 100th anniversary of one of the most important federal elections in Canadian history. When voters cast their ballots on December 6, 1921, they elected the country's first female MP (Agnes Macphail), ended a decade of Conservative rule (under Robert Borden and Arthur Meighen), ushered in the William Lyon Mackenzie King era, and, via the Progressive Party, smashed the two-party system which had served the country since Confederation. I wrote about this campaign and its impact for TVO a few years ago , but never got around to writing a "bonus features" post like I usually do when I've gathered plenty of interesting material. The centennial of the election feels like the right time to haul research discoveries out of their slumber on my computer. Toronto Star, October 7, 1921. A cringey-from-modern-perspective profile of Macphail. Flesherton Advance...

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...