Ephemera Journal Vol 18 Issue 2
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THE EPHEMERA JOURNAL VOLUME 18, NUMBER 2 JANUARY 2016 Bicycle Trade Catalogs BY TALIA S. COUTIN Before the ‘Bicycle Boom’ the bicycle was a luxury item with limited reach but, by 1896, America was home to an estimated four million “wheelmen” and “wheelwomen.” How and why did bicycles take the country by storm? The ‘Golden Age of the Bicycle’ coincided with the ‘Golden Age of Advertising Art.’ Austin Charles Bates, a pioneering adman of the time, estimated that bicycle firms spent more than one billion dollars in 1897. “And yet it paid,” he wrote. “Everyone was bicycle crazy...” Images of wheelmen and wheelwomen appeared everywhere in print, including on products that had nothing to do with bicycling. They graced posters and postcards, magazine covers and cigarette labels, sheet music and card decks – advertising bicycling, if not a particular bicycle brand. Through trade catalogs, companies tried to distinguish their brands with clever copy and alluring graphic designs. Companies spoke directly to consumers, offering them commercial art they could keep. Examining the material, visual, and textual aspects of catalogs from two of America’s leading bicycle manufacturers, the Overman Wheel Company and the Pope Manufacturing Company, reveals how advertising strategies developed between 1881 and 1899 to whet the consumer appetite for bicycles. A beautiful nymph with spaghetti hair gazes behind a screen in a wildly verdant setting that has nothing to do with bicycles. The competing linear and the curvilinear elements define the unique Art Nouveau style of graphic artist Will H. Bradley, who also designed posters for the Overman Wheel Co. Bradley, lithograph, catalog for Victor Bicycles, Overman Wheel Co., Continued on Page 4 Cambridge: University Press, 1899. 1 In This Issue: Images of Japan on Cigarette Cards~Page 9 • Leap Year Traditions ~ Page 15 Ampersand Club Ephemera ~ Page 20 • Levi’s Logo Wars ~ Page 25 The Dear Members and Friends: Ephemera Journal Until today, I have never had the pleasure of wishing Happy New Year to the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, The New York Public Library, T. Lindsay Baker, and Allyson Brantley. What do they have in common? They are among your nearly 800 fellow members of The Ephemera Society. Mr. Baker resides in Texas and collects windmill trade Copyright 2016 catalogs. Ms. Brantley is a student at Yale who collects modern political and The Ephemera Society of America, Inc. social movement ephemera. They are important members of the Society and P.O. Box 95 you are too. One of the ephemera treasures of the Library of Congress is Cazenovia, NY 13035-0095 a James Montgomery Flagg poster which famously depicts Uncle Sam with Messages & Fax: 315-655-9139 his finger urgently pointing at the viewer and imploring: I Want You. We Web Site: www.ephemerasociety.org want you-- to consider becoming more active in the Society, to write a piece E-mail: [email protected] for our website or blog, to join a committee, to organize a regional meeting, to create and submit a “virtual” display of part of your collection for our Volume 18, Number 2, January 2016 website. The Ephemera Journal (ISSN 1543- You may collect and study ephemera for fun, as primary evidence of 4990) is published three times a year by history, for the beauty of its design, to learn about printing history, or The Ephemera Society of America, Inc. because the sum (a collection) teaches us more, often about culture, than the component parts. All of these reasons for gathering ephemera will be President: Bruce Shyer (’18) touched upon at Ephemera 36, Conference and Fair, March 17-20, Politics, Vice President: Richard Sheaff (‘18) Patriotism & Protest. While the founders of the U.S. political system Treasurer: Henry Voigt (’18) Directors: focused on ensuring the “pursuit of happiness,” many inveterate ephemera David Freund (’18) collectors are more motivated by “the happiness of pursuit.” Happily, both Thomas Horrocks (’16) of these pursuits will converge at Ephemera 36 where a group of renowned Sheryl Jaeger (’18) scholar-collectors will give vividly illustrated talks on such diverse subjects David Lilburne (’18) as symbols of patriotism, political protest posters, 19th century political Barbara Loe (’16) presidential campaigns, black protest movements, and war-related greeting Glenn Mason (‘16) cards. Conference attendees can also acquire ephemera from outstanding David Mihaly (‘18) dealers at the Fair. For more details about Ephemera 36, please take a look Jeremy Rowe (’18) at the enclosed conference brochure or visit our website. Donald Zaldin (’18) Speaking of our website, you should know that we are actively engaged in Tamar Zimmerman (’18) a long-term project and fund-raising drive to make available past conferences President Emerita: Nancy Rosin on our website. These conferences contain an incalculable amount of information and images about ephemera subjects (in recent years: Art, Food, Vermont Agent: Pat Laffin Sports) and about the process of creating ephemera (printing, lithography). APS Affiliate #256 I was delighted to learn that the winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Administrative Director: Literature is an ephemera collector. The French writer Patrick Madiano, Mary Beth Malmsheimer is a “pursuer of old documents” who uses yellowing newspapers, school [email protected] enrollment registers and old address books as “the factual seedbed of his fiction,” according to The New Yorker. To our list of never-ending reasons Ephemera Journal Editor: for collecting ephemera we must add: to create fiction. Diane DeBlois On behalf of our entire membership, I extend our deepest gratitude to P.O. Box 477 West Sand Lake, NY 12196 Nancy Rosin, who has served as our President for the past three years with [email protected] the greatest distinction. DISPLAY ADVERTISING RATES: Cheers, The Journal will accept pdf, jpeg or tiff files as well as camera-ready ads at the following pre-paid rates: Quarter page (3.25” x 4.5”) $ 85 Bruce Shyer, President Half-page vertical (3.25” x 9.5”) $120 Half-page horizontal (7” x 4.5”) $120 Full page (7” x 9.5”) $215 Deadlines: April 1, August 1, 2 December 1. Mid-Year Tours In this Issue... Honoring a tradition of everyday life might have been a theme Happy Leap Year to all members! for the Pennsylvania October tours organized for the Society by Sue Lynn McDaniel presents an Barbara Charles. The Moravians, Protestant missionaries who entertaining overview of the tradition settled Bethlehem in 1741, kept detailed daily narratives to record their spiritual history that have become a rich field for researchers of Leap Year proposals, focusing into the life of 18th and 19th century Americans. Paul Peucker at the on Kentucky where she manages the Moravian Church Archives in Bethlehem, and Derek Clark at the Julius Rather Americana Political Moravian Historical Society in nearby Nazareth, introduced their Collection’s ephemera at WKU. wealth of printed and manuscript ephemera. Honoring perseverance could be one When Christian Frederieck Martin looked for a better location theme for this issue: than New York City for his 1833 guitar factory, he chose Nazareth because of the Moravian tradition of fine workmanship with wood. Talia Coutin, who received our The religious community was just beginning to open to outsiders, Philip Jones award in 2014, completed and Martin guitars benefited. Archivist Dick Boak oversees an her master’s thesis on bicycle archive of ephemera and musical instruments that offers a daily advertising and here presents one th record of instrument making and promotion since the mid 19 aspect of her research – into trade century. catalog design. Bethlehem Steel also owed its founding to the Moravian community opening up and allowing Bethlehem land to be The Ampersand Club of Minnesota is purchased by outsiders. Although the company stopped production honoring its 85 years (since 2015) with of steel in the 1990s, the site has become a vital multi-faceted a formal history but, as author John recreational and educational center. And, to make sure that the Harris pointed out, no bibliophilic daily lives of several generations of steelworkers was not lost, an society has hitherto been described organization called Steelworkers’ Archives was founded in 2001. through its ephemera. Program Director Susan Vitez, volunteer guide Don Trexler, and Dale Kochard of the South Bethlehem Historical Society – all 120 years ago, in 1886, Levi Strauss third generation “Steelies” – introduced company records and approved the logo that still appears promotional ephemera, as well as a fine oral history project. on the most popular blue jeans in the Society tours are open to everyone – watch for details of those world. Bob Chandler here follows the planned for Seattle in the autumn. trail of competing logos. Todd Munson writes of the persistence of romanticized images of the Japanese on cigarette cards. Trade catalogs and letterheads, as ephemera, have been broadly examined – but cigarette cards and post cards are still at the threshold of serious research, and so Professors Munson and McDaniel are in pioneering territory. Bibliophilic keepsakes have more evoked the world of books than of ephemera. But it is significant that in 2015 The Ephemera Society of America was vetted to join the Fellowship of American Bibliophilic Societies – our acceptance as a serious collecting group in that umbrella organization is recognition of the Late 18th century sketch of the Whitefield House (begun 1740 as a Methodist maturity of ephemera studies. school for Negroes; completed by the Moravians in 1743; served as a communal church-home for 33 newly-married German couples brought over in 1744, as a —Diane DeBlois, editor Moravian girls school and, in the 1750s, as refuge from Indian attack) – home to 3 the Moravian Historical Society in Nazareth. continued from page 1 Graphic Design The earliest bicycle trade catalogs, as text-only publications, paid little attention to aesthetics.