States on Stage (1884)

Chicago designers Trowbridge and Petford developed this advertising map for H.W. Hill & Company, the nation's largest manufacturer of hog rings. Hill had utilized the cartographic format for a previous promotional effort, his Map of the United States, Showing the Farm Animals in Each State (1878).

While the earlier ad incorporated Department of Agriculture data, the 1884 map employed cartoonish pigs to represent each state's common nickname. William Eugene Sutphin Trowbridge, a designer, and Charles E. Petford, the Haverly Theatre's scenic artist, combined forces for Hill's Advertising Department.  They created a colorful map revealed through stage curtains by a porcine clown and an impresario.

Dakota Territory and Louisiana are the only regions that feature architectural elements, with a Native American tepee representing "In the Land of the Dakotas" and an ornamental balustrade suggesting the Creole state. Iowa's Hawkeye has a bird's eye view of a railroad bridge, a steamboat and a distant town. Vermont's "Granite State Boys" features a monumental pig statue.

Potential customers could purchase the map for merely 5¢.

Image above:  Nicknames of the States. Decatur, IL: H.W. Hill & Co., 1884. Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division. URL:  http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2003671557/

Restoration Leads to Conservation

The Northeast Document Conservation Center (NDCC) recently reported on its conservation of a cache of vintage circus posters that had been wheat-pasted to a Colchester, Vermont residence. Over time, previous homeowners had covered the posters with new siding, thus sandwiching the 1883 circus advertisements. When the current homeowners began a restoration in 1991, they discovered the posters and gave them to the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont. NDCC specialists recommended removing the boards from the house with the posters attached and the Shelburne Museum stored the boards until funding was available for the extensive conservation treatment. To read more about the project/watch slideshow, click here.

Image above: Shelburne Museum, Shelburne, Vermont, 2010.

Reproduction beyond Digital

For those interested in the history of mechanical reproduction and the refinements of different historic processes, the Rochester Image Permanence Institute /The Archival Advisor have recently retooled their collection of digital samples.  The site is under construction but promises to be a primary resource for the identification, comparison, history and preservation of pre-photographic, photomechanical and photographic processes.  Hopefully they will expand their list of photographic processes and also include architectural and cartographic reproduction methods.

How to access:  simply go to http://www.digitalsamplebook.com/home.htm.

The site is similar in approach to Bamber Gascoigne's wonderful How to Identify Prints, published by Thames and Hudson and an invaluable resource for archivists, art historians, cultural historians, rare books librarians, and print collectors.

For scholars, Luis Nadeau's Encyclopedia of Printing, Photographic, and Photomechanical Processes (out of print) is peerless.