Category Archives: Art

Art Profile: Even More Ads Of Christmas Past

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

I had so much fun sharing those vintage Christmas cigarette ads on Monday that I decided to share some more holiday advertisements from long ago.  None of the ads below are for cigarettes.  Instead, they’re for everything from lingerie to guns to cameras.  Some of them have more Christmas spirit than others and a few of them would probably lead to a boycott if they were used today.

The earliest ad below is the one for the “Big Dick” machine gun.  It was published in 1917.  The oldest, for Polaroid cameras, came out in 1978.  Check them all out below:

Art Profile: Cigarette Ads Of Christmas Past

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

Today, commercials for cigarettes are among the most heavily regulated in the United States.  Not only are cigarettes banned from being advertised on TV and on the radio but even ads in magazines and newspapers are required to carry a warning about the health effects of smoking.

That was not always the case.

In fact, at one time, cigarettes were regularly advertised as being the perfect Christmas gift!  The ads below date from the 1930s to the 1960s but all of them share on thing in common, the message that a Merry Christmas will be a smoky Christmas:

Artist Profile: Robert Graef (1879 — 1951)

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

All of the covers below were done, for Argosy, by the artist Robert Graef.  Born in New York City, Robert Graef started his career in 1900 and was still active and working at the time of his death in 1951.  For those five decades, Graef worked out of the same art studio at 70 Fifth Avenue in New York.  As shown below, the work that he created in that studio has lived on: