Birds in Advertising - Part 1

It's not often that you see birds used in advertising anymore, but back in the 1880s birds were common in advertisements for all things unrelated to birds, everything from dry goods and shoes to liver pills and throat lozenges. The businesses hoped that people would collect the beautiful cards and remember their business that way.

The first one is from American Breakfast Cereals.

 

Then there are these beautiful cards from Solomon Rosenbloom & Sons, shoe dealers in Syracuse, New York. I highly recommend this blog post about the Rosenblooms and Daniel Rosenbloom's house on a blog called My Central New York. Samuel Gruber, the blog's host, has conducted thorough research, included a number of interesting photos, and writes a compelling story.

The last trade card from Liberman & Stevenson, also of Syracuse, take a different approach to advertising, emphasizing humor instead of beauty.

More birds in Part 2, coming soon.

Harry Starr's Magnificent Scrapbook

I wonder if it was typical for little boys to keep scrapbooks like this in the 1880s. Harry Starr seems to have lived in Baltimore, Maryland, based on the advertising cards in his scrapbook.
The front of the album is both ornate and exotic.

Harry's name and the date (January 31st, 1884) are written neatly on the first page, probably by his mother.

Harry has glued an assortment of images, religious messages,  and advertisements on the album's twenty pages, which are now very brittle with age.

I was able to scan these pages because they have come loose and are no longer attached to the binding. The rest of the pages are still attached, and scanning them would compromise the already delicate condition of the binding.

Tram Tuesday - Milan, Italy

This is a phantom streetcar. Board at your own risk, because you never know where it could take you. It reminds me of the title of Buñuel's movie, Illusion Travels by Streetcar.

I am not an expert on perspective, but logic tells me that the man on the left is farther away than the streetcar, therefore he should appear smaller than the people riding it--the ones that are so tiny you can't even see them. Maybe he's walking away dejected because the conductor told him he was too big to board. More likely it's a case of turn-of the century photo editing. The image probably seemed a little dull, but nothing the addition of a streetcar wouldn't fix!

It doesn't look similar to the other streetcars in the background either, but it could be that there were different kinds operating at the same time. Still, the numbering of trams wasn't introduced until 1910, and I have a feeling the base image is earlier than that.

Trams have been operating continuously since 1876 in Milan, with transitions from horse-drawn to steam-powered, and then electric. Although there were also post WWII cuts that persisted through the 1970s, the system survived. As in a number of other cities, trams have managed to regain favor in Milan resulting in a revival of tram service.

The second card shows a seemingly congested center terminus in front of the magnificent Piazza del Duomo in Milan. There was no photo editing here. They didn't even remove the wire or cable that crosses the image diagonally.

Here's the ultimate edited postcard image, showing Berlin's Nollendorfer Platz. My guess is that the street was empty on the original image. I like the final result though.

Here's the back of the card.