Saturdays with the dust of old things

Spent a lazy Saturday browsing through an antique mall looking for a small metal thing that would work to stack books/my baskets of toiletries/miscellaneous crap on but not get damaged by water on the floor. (Our shower curtain is not what you would call very effective, and I lost a nice basket to mold, along with the books inside). We found a circular-shaped plant stand that is doing the job nicely. While I was there, I browsed the stall that carries the same magazines I tend to collect, and found a few there, some of them at a very nice price, that I wanted. It's cheaper than Ebay prices, especially with additional shipping, and ever since the one upsetting month where I bid on and won two magazines from two different sellers that never showed up, I've been a little gunshy. (I didn't put insurance on them, since technically they were pretty low in value, but that was $17 dollars on one and $9 dollars on another, and I really wanted them. No recourse, alas.)

I bought a little bit out of my time frame today - I tend to stick to the 1920s and 30s, with one big splurge on a lot from the 1940s. Today, however, alongside the Good Housekeeping from Feb. 1930 and the same magazine from November 1930, I picked up one from June, 1956 and a Woman's Home Companion from September, 1953. I think I'll be able to pull lots of interesting scans from them, but I enjoy reading them as well. Advertising just fascinates me - at least, advertising from the past, because I am no doubt contributing to the death of the media by ignoring present-day advertising. But how can you not be fascinated with ads like these?

Mother, Beware! Doctors agree that dread Social Diseases CAN be contracted from a toilet seat. As guardian of the home, it's up to you to see that your toilet seats are free from even the smallest cracks that hold the moisture in which germs breed. Replace cracked seats with Stasco Saniseal.

Fight Fatigue with Knox Gelatine *Proof on file with Good Housekeeping

Canary Detective Charlie Chirp tells his C-men "Her canary wouldn't sing. My C-men quickly discovered the reason; something was missing in his diet..."
That canary wasn't getting the LIFT in French's Bird Biscuit.

The 1956 magazine has a spread on cakes that I think I need to send to Cake Wrecks after I'm done scanning. They're...well, they're special in a very 1950s way, they are. Oh, and a gelatin tuna mayo salad that has to be seen to be believed. It looks like one baleful eye from a malevolent deep-sea creature.

After you read a few of these magazines, you pick up interesting trends. Mum's deodorant seemed intent on a campaign of shaming women into using it, with ad after ad having women shunned from parties, having their engagements broken of and then never being able to attract another man, and generally being whispered about until you cover up that stanky armpit smell with some Mum. Listerine takes similar tactics with bad breath, but doesn't seem to do the deep-shame thing quite as hard. There are lots of products aimed at feeding up sickly children until they're healthy and husky and have gained weight. Beauty products seem to be sold much the same way as they do now, barring the odd ad here or there that asks, as one hand lotion does, if you have the hands that make men want to give you jewelry to wear on them, and ends with a lot of "wearing HIS ring and wearing HIS bracelet" sort of stuff.

I find the feminine hygiene ads oddly fascinating, as you can see by how often I post them here. And as I may have mentioned before, there are a lot of people out there who reeeeealy fancy women in girdles, judging by my Flickr stats.

I think my love for this sort of ephemera may have been triggered by a project I did in ninth grade. My very canny history teacher, Mrs. Easton, got us into the mindset of the past by giving us an imaginary budget and a catalogue from a 1910 Sears (I think it was Sears...perhaps J.C. Penney, but anyway a big general department store). We had to use the budget to buy our necessities for a trip to Europe. Boys had to get shaving cream and razors, women had to get sanitary belts and figure out what sort of corset they might like. I think it may have been the first time I really felt like I was immersing myself in the past, and it was fascinating. (Mrs. Easton was a great teacher, and very wise in the ways of students. She would allow us "cheat cards" of various sizes, upon which we could write down anything we wanted to remember to use on the test. We would all sort through our notes, and cram as much important stuff onto the cards, which was a pretty good way of getting us to study. It wasn't for years that I realized that, barring a few dates, I never had to consult the card because the act of writing it all down again had made me remember it for later.)

So, scans to follow of my new prizes when I am able.