Volume 17–1 (Low Res).pdf

Semantics aside, what began as an ingenious means to get more
printing revenue, soon became a popular method of increasing advertising
coverage during the epoch when modern advertising was in its
infancy. Ultimately poster stamps became a thriving international industry
with thousands of them produced annually.
A wide range of products, services and events were advertised on
these perforated manifestos. Insurance agencies, hotels, electric companies,
banks, tobacco, food, clothing stores and manufacturers, were
among the most devoted users. The esthetic quality was surprisingly high
because most stamps began as full-size posters or point of purchase displays
which were photographically reduced. Only an exceptional few of
the anonymous artists employed by printers designed especially for this
miniature form. But there was another inherent quality: even the most
cliché-ridden image was curiously transformed into a striking miniature.
People have an irrepressible fondness and illogical tolerance for all
things miniature.
Because of strict postal regulations that legislated what was
proper and improper to affix on mailing envelopes, combined with the
rise in more visibly encompassing advertising outlets, underscored by
a trend favoring more narrative approaches, the production of commercial
advertising stamps was virtually cancelled by the 1940s. Moreover,
the questionable notion that consumers would gladly subsidize a
merchant by littering their mail with unpaid advertising was not a sound
way to run an efficient campaign. The non-commercial stamp (i.e., Christmas
and Easter seals) continue, however, to remain popular. Seals are
badges of distinction showing the letter writer has financially, or at least,
philosophically, supported a worthy cause or political viewpoint.
HEADLINE' ITC KABEL BOOK, DEMI. BOLD BYLINE, BOLD TEAT. MEDIUM
The stamps reproduced here from
Germany, Austria, and the United States,
ranging in time from 1910 to 1930, and
selected from a collection of over 2,000
stamps, are iconographic fragments of
industrial, commercial and art history. In a
sense they now commemorate, as effectively
as any "official stamp',' the burgeoning of free trade and market capitalism.
Take for example the stamps for light bulbs, lamps and appliances, they
reveal the formidable and unrelenting push by industry for electrification
of the private home.
Long ago junk mail replaced the advertising stamp as the favored
means of invading the consumer's privacy and consciousness. Given the
qualitative paucity of these pesty missives, these lilliputian posters
re-emerge from the attic of advertising history as infinitely —
more appealing.
Aii1.111KC /YAW,
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