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The collection includes 70 pieces of advertising ephemera. The categories include Convenience Food, Cookware, Devices & Appliances, Ironing, Laundry Aids & Soaps, Scouring, Sewing Machines and Sewing Aids, Stoves and Accessories, Sweepers & Vacuums, Wringers & Washing Machines. The materials are predominantly trade cards and flyers with a few catalogues, booklets and a photograph.
• Convenience Food – Processed foods were being introduced as a convenience to reduce preparation time, bringing new tastes and products to those who previously hadn’t experienced the and to prevent spoilage. Includes promotion for David Nicholson’s Liquid Bread, Deep seal Mess Mackerel, Dunham’s Shred Cocoanut, Friends Rolled White Oats, Heckers’ Self Raising Flour, Heinz Pure Foods, Magnolia Hams, National Biscuit Company’s Shredded Wheat and Stickney & Poor’s Pure Spices,
• Cookware – Granite cookware and cast iron pans where the preferred items of the day. Granite Iron Ware was the best product for the “The Little Housewife” so easy and safe that a child could use it, while Agate Iron Ware was considered “The Crowning Triumph” making housekeepers from all walks of life rejoice. The Acme Iron fry pan was constructed of a single piece of iron and available in 6 diameters.
• Devices & Appliances – As simple as a milk bottle holder for the door, a utility kitchen took, a universal opener, a perfection window cleaner or a velvet grip broom holder or as dangerous as a safety window cleaning chair that hung side of the house as a chair to use while cleaning windows. And last but not least the automatic dumb waiter so easy a child could use it.
• Ironing – always a scary proposition as it always entailed heavy hot objects. Mrs. Potts lead the way to improving the process first with cold wood handles for sad irons (irons heated by placing them on stoves), as not to burn one’s hands while ironing followed by the addition of polishing and girls’ irons. Geneva made a product called the “Hand Fluter” used to create and press pleated trim for clothing. Last but not least this grouping includes a trade catalogue for the early 20th century “Modern Ironing” creation by Kero Sene – an array of irons with a lit container of kerosene under pressure attached to the back of the iron.
• Laundry Aids – predominantly starch and bluing in the 19th century. Soaps were predominantly promoted for general as well as laundry and are listed separately. Rideout’s Starch Polish was designed to make clothes “shine” while Muzzy’s Sun Gloss Starch shone so brightly one could see their reflection in the garment. Spanish bluing will not streak.
• Sewing Machines and Sewing Aids – Sewing machine advertising was often presented as before and after images with living a life drudgery or chaos before the new sewing machine. Another method was to show the new machine as a status symbol, shown in elegant or exotic parlors. The final common method was showing the new sewing machine as a means to making the family happy. A different approach is used in a broadside presenting the simplicity, excellence & economy of the Bartlett & Demorest’s Elastic Stitch Family Sewing-Machine. Sewing aids included such items as ready wound bobbins and pattern stamping material and patterns, a collection onto its own.
• Soaps & Scouring – Among the many soap manufacturers of the day were B.T. Babbitt’s Soap for all Nations, Buchan’s Carbolic Laundry Soap, Curtis, Davis & Co. Welcome Soap, Enoch Morgan’s Sons Sapolio, Fairbank’s Glycerine Tar Soap, Hargraves Mfg. Co. Soap Makers, L. I. Fisk & Do’s Soaps, Scourene, Smith Brothers Pure Borax, and Van Haagen’s Toilet Soap. More often than not soap advertising depicted ‘pretty people’ vs. people scouring and cleaning, almost implying a more gentile life if you used their product. The few Soaps that did show washing somewhat glamorized the process. A different approach was taken by Brewster’s Labor-Saving Laundry Soap presenting a large two-sided flyer promoting it ads something new. Wood cuts of two women; one relaxing because she the other “l’ve worked like a Slave—It is the Fault of the Soap! —she did not use the product. The flyer explains the science behind the product and promotes an array of the related products and uses. Finally, this grouping includes a mechanical brochure with a gleeful mother and daughter upon the arrival of their Crystal White Laundry Soap.
• Stoves and Accessories – Stoves were also promoted as luxury items designed to take all of the effort out of cooking. An innovation over wood burning stoves the Florence Soil Stoves, manufactured by Crown Sewing Machines. Stove Polish was promoted to maintain that all important item. Dixon’s Carburet of Iron was so gentle it could be used to clean a child. A less marketed product was the Safety Oil Can, more for household lamps.
• Sweepers & Vacuums – The Goshen Sweeper Co. carpet sweeper was known as ‘the Ladies Friend” but the Electric Household in the early 20th century put an end to that friendship. Pay Dirt, a periodical produced by The Frantz Premier Co. provided information on their electrified wringer washing machines but more importantly the introduction of the vacuum cleaner. This grouping also includes an actual photograph of a child pushing an early electric vacuum cleaner.
• Wringers & Washing Machines – Wringers were often promoted as easy enough for child’s play including those promotes by Empire, Keystone, The A. M. Co. Wringer and Eagle. Conqueror Wringer had a series of trade cards for the different days of the week (ironing, washing, baking) but each with wringer prominently displayed in the home work environment. The Universal Clothes Wringer company designed a metamorphic trade card that depicts an unhappy maid wringing by hand and an unhappy mistress as the clothes weren’t clean. When opened, they are both happy due to the efficient and effective Universal Wringer. C. Gorton’s promotes his grand success of the combined Feed Steamer and Clothes Washer (completely described and illustrated). Finally, a three-fold pamphlet providing an historical view “For Forty-Eight Years American Women Have Approve the Easy Vacuum Electric Washer. Imagery of washing implements from 1877 through 1910 with narrative promoting the Vacuum Electric Washer.
Eclectibles 