'Neath the Rolling Deep

In 1958, the juniors and seniors of St. Jacob High School (I'm guessing in Troy, IL) had a fun mermaid themed banquet and prom, and here's the nicely designed invite, event / menu program to prove it. Highlighted by cute, undersea art (and one rather Lovecraftian RSVP fish babe!), a super swell night was clearly planned out for all, full of deep sea themed songs and oceanic oriented grub. I even found a beautiful example of one of the honeycombed mermaid table centerpieces. If you were there that night and took any pictures (paging Bonnie Lou!), please forward them to me at karswell @ hotmail.com and I'll add them to this post-- thank you!

Give Them "Hell-O" For Us!

Check out these amazing WW2 era "Keep 'em Smiling" Humorous Letterheads that I stumbled upon the other day. As the packaging card reads: 3 different designs (6 pages each) and demonstrating with perfectly rendered illustrative likenesses, just exactly what we thought about all things "Axis of Evil" back in the day. 

"GIVE 'EM HELL, JOE!" 

Anything You Want To-Make-It Cup

It's funny to think back to a time when something as simple as a Dixie Cup was such a big part of your day, or even life. My sister and I shared a cup dispenser in our bathroom when we were little kids in the 70's, and I sure loved that thing. When we ran out I had to report to my mom, because it was my duty to keep it stocked. The trip to the store was like an adventure too, because there were so many different kinds of disposable cups to choose from. Some even had jokes and cartoons on them, and as we will see later in October-- even magic tricks! But the ones I have here in today's post are the ones I remember the most. Nothing fancy, just a variety of simple waxy colors, each with a white band pattern (are they music notes, leaves, feathers?), and boy, did cold water sure taste great in it! And the packaging was so correct, because yes, as the wonderfully cute, cartoon box art demonstrated, you could do a lot of other fun stuff with the cups too! I remember drawing perfectly round, planetary circles with both ends of the cup for my endless battles in outer space illustrations. And also using a cup as a basket to blowdart spitballs into from a hollowed out plastic Bic pen. Who else has some fun, 5 ounce memories to share?

As mentioned, I'll have more Dixie Cup magic in October, so stick around...

What Every Girl Wants

Time for another silly old gag gift novelty box! And if we're looking at the Velasquez illustration on the box lid and answering the posed question: "What every girl wants", I'd assume this curvy young lass would like some normal lady feet! But nope, we open the lid and inside we instead find a couple of cute minks in heat getting down to some serious business --the making of more minks business, that is! And while we wait for the pitter-patter of lil baby mink feet, someone please give that lady some normal lady feet!

Behold, Sappho!

I've added another Nouveau era chalkware goddess to my collection this week, --behold, Sappho, the ancient Greek poetess from the island of Lesbos. This particular piece is attributed to French artist Jean Jacques Pradier, and depicts Sappho in a contemplative pose, as often seen with elements related to her poetic legacy, in this case, a lyre etched on the side of a vase. This subtly colored (original patina) sculpture also captures her with flowing hair and drapery, conveying both beauty and introspection. She stands nearly 3 feet tall too, making her the largest (and heaviest) piece of antique chalkware in my collection, --and likely the oldest as well-- and as with most chalk compositions of this age, she does have a number of typical, unavoidable bumps and bruises.