Paris in Spring

Vintage Eiffel Tower Paris France Collage

Great antique ephemera - bits of antique paper advertisements, chap books, and trash - comes from all over the world. This beautiful Paris collage includes the Eiffel Tower from an old postcard. The lace is a scan of real lace, and the other images are from books and antique cards. It's a glimpse of vintage 1900s Paris, a time of old lace, roses, and vintage sightseeing in the beautiful old-fashioned city of Paris.

Paris is an antique collector's delight - with all kinds of junk shops and artifact stores that could take a lifetime to go through. There are so many antiques and antique art in beautiful Paris that it's overwhelming!

Vintage Eiffel Tower Paris France Travel collage Print

Animals in Art: Fox Drawings and Designs

The Fox - Vintage Collage
See gifts based on Fox Collage

The Fox in Art History

It's only recently that the Fox was depicted as a nice animal. Most of the images from the Victorian era show the animal with an angry face, as if to say to the children of the time, "beware!" Occasionally, though, the Victorians broke through their bias toward evil foxes and showed them with bright, nice faces in beautiful scenery like the advertising showing the arctic fox below.

Victorian Advertising Showing Arctic Fox

Folklore Fox

In Medieval European folklore, the fox Reynard was a fable about an anthropomorphic, trickster red fox. Renyard persists in today's literature and art images of foxes, and can be seen worldwide in advertising, comics, and current-day fables showing the fox in a man's clothing.

As a symbol, Celtics believed the fox to be wise, and a guide in the spirit world; in Japan, the fox was a rain spirit, and symbolized longevity and protection. Northern Native Americans believed the fox was wise and noble, while Plains tribes thought it was a trickster.

Christmas Art for Victorians!

Christmas Tree Ornament

Victorian Christmas Chocolate Advertising Art

I love a beautiful Victorian Christmas.

The Victorian art era was full of magazine illustraitons showing old-fashioned red-cheeked children ready to decorate the Christmas tree and playing in the snow.

The most magic time of year, Christmas was awesome for people in the 1800s, and the art at that time celebrated the incredible joy they had over this season. While many of the poorer families could only give their children a small token, those in the upper classes showered their children with gifts, much like they do today. The Victorian advertising art back then really played up the wonderful time of year -- they illustrated beautiful chubby children who loved the season! And, of course, Santa Claus!

The vintage illustratiuon is based on a magazine advertisement by Bakers Cocoa and Chocolate, showing a beautiful illustration of a Christmas basket stuffed full of chocolate. The old father with the top hat is carrying his red-hooded child, who is holding her Christmas goodies in the basket.

The Origin of Christmas Art

Vintage Christmas Art

Christmas art inspires us to look back at earlier years when Christmas traditions were young. What was Christmas like when our grandparents and great-grandparents grew up? The vintage Christmas images printed on postcards and in Victorian Christmas books give us a clue -- Vintage Christmas celebrations were just as popular then as they are today. The antique art that we still see today in antique shops from the early 1900s and late 1800s show an abundance of sweet paintings of Santa Claus, holly, Christmas trees, and red-cheeked children with wide grins.
 

Vintage Santa and Angels Gallery Wrapped Canvas by antiqueart
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Commercial Christmas Art

 In the first half of the 1900s, Christmas celebrations ranged from home-made ornaments and gifts to department store toys. The oil lamps and candles on trees in the 1800s gave way to electric lights and bulbs around 1913. Vintage Christmas was transformed into a commercial bevy of products laden with Santa Claus images -- most of these early commercial images were crafted quite well with exquisite attention to detail.

Christmas has emerged today as quite a different celebration than its origins, and its art has emerged and modernized as well. Christmas started with old customs that dated back to the merger of traditions from Pagan Europe and early Christianity. By medieval days, The main figurehead became Father Christmas. Father Christmas was portrayed with a long beard and cloak, but would be shown wearing blue, green, brown or red suits. By 1910, Santa Claus standardized on the red suit he wears today.

Vintage Santa Christmas Music Christmas Ornaments by antiqueart
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Image of Father Christmas and Odin

Today's image of Santa Claus, or Father Christmas, started with the Norse God Odin, the ruler of Asgard. Odin wore a blue cloak and had a long white beard and a wreath around his head. Modern-day Santa Claus merged Odin with the Christian legend of Saint Nicholas of Myra who visited Dutch children on Christmas eve to replace straw-filled shoes with sweets. Father Christmas came to represent the Christmas spirit of goodwill.

During the Victorian (late 1800s) and Edwardian periods (early 1900s), inexpensive printing methods brought the image of Santa and Christmas to everyone -- in the form of children's books and Christmas cards. The commercialization of Christmas began.. The images of Father Christmas (Santa Claus) became well established as the definitive figurehead of the Christmas season.

Victorians Primed for Comemrcial Advertising Art

Victorian Advertising Art

Children Riding Ponies Greeting Card

While advertising certainly existed way before the 1870s, Victorians energized it to an art form. Victorian trade cards were beauties. These little cards were printed in full color -- quite an expensive process prior to this time -- and featured lovely children, gorgeous young women, or scenes depicting life at the time. A company's advertising showed up in a nondescript part of the card -- often at the bottom of the image or on the back of the card.

What made these cards work perfectly for advertisers was that the great art made them highly collectible. Consumers would grab them, take them home, and keep them. They would buy the products they'd advertise. The better the art, the more sought after they were by collectors.

Victorian Trade Cards

Trade cards' emergence was ignited by the invention of lithography in 1870s. Lithography allowed full color images to be mass produced. Many trade cards were purchased from printers from among their stock images. Stock cards had illustrations that could be used for any product, such as the face of a beautiful girl, and would suffice for almost any kind of business to print their names and addresses. Custom-made cards were created too, although they would be more costly, but these were better, because artists could be consigned to include the product as part of the illustration.

Puppy Taking a Bath Button by antiqueart
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Victorian Lithography Process

The lithographic process was quite tedious. First, the artist would create the picture. The picture would then be given to the printer to place each of the the colors used in the picture on specially prepared limestones. Lower quality cards would use up to five colors, while higher quality would have included 20 or more. Cards would be printed by laying one stone after stone, the colors of each stone superimposing on the previous. Good registration was key to getting all the print runs in order, although increasing sophistication in lithographic printing presses made it easier and sped up the process.

By the early 1900s, lithography trade cards started to disappear because halftone printing allowed color advertising in newspapers and magazines. These halftone advertisements were cheaper to run and would get into more peoples' hands. An improvement for the advertisers, but a disappointment to those of us who still collect these beautiful old Victorian trade cards today.

French Chocolate Party Posters

Bock Beer Goats Bag

Sailboat Cigar Label Vintage Spiral Notebooks

Vintage drinking bear square stickers

Italian Lakes Vintage Travel Poster

Vintage Travel Posters

Through the years, I've found some vintage travel posters in antique shops and flea markets. I have quite a few U.S. as well as European posters. This Italian Lakes poster is an incredible vintage Italian travel poster that shows a lake and mountains in back of a church bell tower, a Cyprus tree, and an Italian village. The travel poster was a poster for ENIT, ca. 1930.

I guess I'm really in the mood to do some traveling and checking out a few new antique artifacts to add to the collection, and this poster reminds me of a place I might want to re-visit. I've been to the Italian Lakes district, around Lake Como, and I was awed by the area - it's a quiet little nook of pure and dazzling sunlight. The buildings are antique, the setting is vintage, and the countryside is classic, just like you'd picture it to be in a vintage movie from the roaring 20s. The little pension we stayed in had decor that fit the landscape; lace doilies on the dresser, 10-foot windows opening onto a balcony, and little floral nick-knacks and dusty old paintings. This wonderful Italian Lakes poster is quite a lovely reminder of one of the most fabulous trips of my life!

Italian Lakes Vintage Travel Poster Stretched Canvas Prints

Vintage Catalog Advertising Art

Antique Seed Catalog Fridge Magnet

The publishing business in the Victorian age, with magazines, catalogs, and newspapers, gave companies a new way to sell their wares. Which companies did well? The ones who created lusciously beautiful advertising art - very appealing images people would cut out of the newspaper and keep. This is one of the best.

Antique Burpee Seed Catalog from 1893

The 1893 image is an advertisement for Burpee Seeds, featuring a vintage cantaloupe sliced open to show the delicious melon inside. Vintage seed catalogs and packets are little pieces of fruit art, designed in a time when advertisers were looking for "wow" images that people would hold on to and remember the next time they visited their retail store..

Vintage Chocolate Advertising Art

Some of the most interesting advertising art from the late 1800s and early 1900s was for chocolate. Not for coffee. Not for cookies or cake . . . Chocolate. Why? Because chocolate was new. It tasted like heaven. And it didn't hurt that the industrial revolution could mass produce it to crazed lovers of the new stuff.

While cocoa existed in the Mayan and Aztec times and even as far back as 1400 BC, it was only introduced to the European / American culture in relatively modern times. The Mayans thought it was magic. Well, the modern world, does, too.

Europeans Invent Modern Chocolate

The Europeans thought it was too bitter to be any good when the conquered the New World. Aren't you glad they did something about that? They added sugar and milk, and it caught on as a chocolate drink. In fact, they couldn't get enough of the stuff -- Casanova was said to be literally in love with it.

In 1830, solid chocolate was invented, and the world was introduced to a dizzying array of chocolate inventions over the next few years -- bonbons, chocolate creams, milk chocolate, fondant, filled chocolates, and the lovely chocolate bar.

Vintage Chocolate Advertising Art

Chocolate Angel Vintage Pinback Button

In the mid-1800s, chocolate advertising was born as manufacturers competed in a busy market that craved the world's new confection. The manufacturers had the money to hire the best commercial artists of the time to create some of the most wonderful illustrations. And that's what this article celebrates.

Many of the illustrations were in full color, an expensive process back in the 1800s. Full color advertising cards were given to customers, which the manufacturers hoped would be attractive enough to make the customers take them home and display them in a prominent place in the home. The better quality and the better the illustration, the more likely people would keep it . . .  And of course remind them to buy chocolate. Tricky.

It certainly worked! Chocolate has become an institution in the modern world. Vintage Chocolate advertising art is almost as wonderful as the sweet stuff it represents.

Victorian Commercialism and the Rise of Cute Children

The Art of Cute Victorian Children

Victorians liked their children cute. The artists back then drew sentimental images of wealthy chubby cherubs, cute as a button. Victorian children were painted with plump little bodies, rosy red cheeks, and sweet little smiles.

This lovely illustration of  a Victorian baby playing with his toes is a perfect example of Vintage cute! Of course, the artists of all times would paint what would pay, and in this era, they got paid for lovely babies. This beauty was an advertisement for Pear's Soap, which hired artists to create an amazing number of cute cherub advertising art that went into magazines and trade cards.

Victorians loved to see pictures of children in sentimental scenes - picnics in a lovely green field, cuddled in momma's lap reading stories at bedtime, and yearned-for dreamy settings a Victorian consumer might wish for their own family. The lovely paintings were set in a world that many Victorians longed for, in an era when many babies didn't make it to adulthood, and the working class sometimes sent off their children to work in factories. They loved seeing the possibilities rather than the reality of the day -- rather than dwell on the depressing, they'd be able to smile at the images of sweet fat little children flying kites in an sunny afternoon field dressed up in satin dresses and pink hair bows.

Antique Baby Advertisement Christmas Tree Ornament by antiqueart

Vintage Celestial Radiating Eye

Vintage Celestial Eye

Radiating Celestial Bodies

This great radiating star is a stunning design. It's based on a 1911 poster for a medical exhibition advertisement. It features wonderful Art Nouveau stars, a dark blue background, and a really big eye with sunbeams radiating outward toward the stars, as if the eye were taking the place of the sun.

Old-Fashioned Powerful Illustration

This radiating eye is an example of 1900s graphic at its best. Around the turn of the last century, people loved zodiac and astrology. It was mystic and romantic. That's when the basis for this design was created -- a mystical image, the eye radiating powers into the night sky.