Life Magazine in 1951

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Continuing my look at Life Magazines on Internet Archive….

As I looked at the issues from 1951, advertisements reflected products like Coca-Cola, Mounds candy bars, Bell telephone, airline flights, Life Savers candy, Alice in Wonderland movie, cat food, Avon cosmetics, penicillin by Merck, and Chrismas ads for eggnog and 7Up. There were pictures of construction, the beginning of an avalanche, Yellowstone in winter, the Dalai Lama traveling before he left Tibet to live in India, Korean war, Peary in the Arctic, and A-Bomb tests. They were all part of what the publisher thought was newsworthy in 1951!

Life Magazine 1951-01-01 - Cotton stockpile

Life Magazine 1951-01-08 - Coca-Cola through 65 years (advertisement)

Life Magazine 1951-01-15 - 50 year ago – Spindletop in Beaumont, TX

Life Magazine 1951-01-22 - Cinderella never had it so bad (outside London)

Life Magazine 1951-01-29 - Mounds Coconut (advertisement)

Life Magazine 1951-02-05 - Castle Geyser new Old Faithful at Yellowstone National Park

Life Magazine 1951-02-12 - Career girl, 1965 (Bell Telephone advertisement)

Life Magazine 1951-02-19 - Jungle Gardens in Louisiana (swampland refuge)

Life Magazine 1951-02-26 - Glow of A-bomb explosion

Life Magazine 1951-03-05 - Air pipeline to Korea

Life Magazine 1951-03-12 - Young avalanche in the French Alps

Life Magazine 1951-03-19 - Pumpkin-like house

Life Magazine 1951-03-26 - Dark days in Iran after premier’s murder

Life Magazine 1951-04-02 - Blooms in central California

Life Magazine 1951-04-09 - Grandma flying (TWA advertisement)

Life Magazine 1951-04-16 - Delaware Memorial Bridge construction

Life Magazine 1951-04-23 - Dalai Lama traveling

Life Magazine 1951-04-30 - Modern church design

Life Magazine 1951-05-07 - Refugees in China

Life Magazine 1951-05-14 - Peary’s fellow discoverers at the North Pole

Life Magazine 1951-05-21 - Earliest humans

Life Magazine 1951-05-28 - Paratrooper

Life Magazine 1951-06-04 - Worse main street (in Bellevue, OH)

Life Magazine 1951-06-11 - Children in peril (from narcotics)

Life Magazine 1951-06-18 - Pep-o-mint Life Savers (advertisement)

Life Magazine 1951-06-25 - Martha’s Vineyard from above

Life Magazine 1951-07-02 - US House Statuary Hall

Life Magazine 1951-07-09 - Walt Disney’s Alice in Wonderland (advertisement)

Life Magazine 1951-07-16 - After flood, mud (in Kansas)

Life Magazine 1951-07-23 - North Korean soldier reaction to photographer

Life Magazine 1951-07-30 - Paris on her 2,000 birthday

Life Magazine 1951-08-06 - Insects survive by mimicry

Life Magazine 1951-08-13 - Drought cracks Arizona

Life Magazine 1951-08-20 - Festival of Britain

Life Magazine 1951-08-27 - W.R. Hearst – a quiet end

Life Magazine 1951-09-03 - Puss’n’Boots Cat food (advertisement)

Life Magazine 1951-09-10 - California lights

Life Magazine 1951-09-17 - Children without clutter

Life Magazine 1951-09-24 - Fantastic weapons

Life Magazine 1951-10-01 - Largest helicopter

Life Magazine 1951-10-08 - Pelicans at West Palm Beach

Life Magazine 1951-10-15 - Avon Cosmetics (advertisement)

Life Magazine 1951-10-22 - Plasma storage

Life Magazine 1951-10-22 - The wonder of penicillin (Merck advertisement)

Life Magazine 1951-11-05 - Port of New York

Life Magazine 1951-11-12 - Yale’s 250th autumn

Life Magazine 1951-11-19 - Baltimore’s Friendship airport

Life Magazine 1951-11-26 - The American road

Life Magazine 1951-12-03 - Stream pollution – an Ohio creek

Life Magazine 1951-12-10 - First underground A-bomb blast in Nevada

Life Magazine 1951-12-17 - Borden’s Egg Nog (advertisement)

Life Magazine 1951-12-24 - Christmas (7up Advertisement)

Life Magazine 1951-12-31 - Hillside farms in Japan

Life Magazine in 1950

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Continuing my look at Life Magazines on Internet Archive….

As I looked at the issues from 1950, the Korean War was becoming more dramatic as the year progressed. The 75% reduction in pneumonia deaths between 1930 and 1950 was a stunning statistic. Advertisements from Life Savers, Howard Johnsons, American Airlines, General Motors, Christmas cards, Coca Cola and American toys captured my attention. Natural events – frozen redwing blackbirds, lots of snow in the Sierras, dust bowl in Texas, albino deer, Mauna Loa erupting, an owl nest, and Dutch Elm Disease - also were in the news. They were all part of what the publishers thought was newsworthy in 1950!

 Life Magazine 1950-01-02 - Acceleration of Science

Life Magazine 1950-01-09 - Einstein

Life Magazine 1950-01-16 - Frozen Redwing blackbirds in Oklahoma

Life Magazine 1950-01-23 - Children on Will Rogers statue

Life Magazine 1950-01-30 - Natural childbirth

Life Magazine 1950-02-06 - A winter battle in snowy Sierra

Life Magazine 1950-02-13 - Pneumonia death toll dropped 75% in 20 years

Life Magazine 1950-02-20 - Disney’s Cinderella

Life Magazine 1950-02-27 - Atomic explosion (cover)

 Life Magazine 1950-03-06 - St. Louis Museum shows art of the Mississippi River’s great past

Life Magazine 1950-03-13 - Fireworks in Port-au-Prince for the inauguration of the bicentennial exposition

Life Magazine 1950-03-20 - Familiar house and garden bugs

Life Magazine 1950-03-27 - Peppermint stick life savers (advertisement)

Life Magazine 1950-04-03 - Owl nest

Life Magazine 1950-04-10 - Dust Bowl Look in Texas

Life Magazine 1950-04-17 - Hopper paints the city in stark lonely moments

Life Magazine 1950-04-24 - 3 albino deer in Wisconsin

 Life Magazine 1950-05-01 - Coca Cola advertisement

Life Magazine 1950-05-08 - American Airlines advertisement

Life Magazine 1950-05-15 - Edward Steichen (when he was 71) photography

Life Magazine 1950-05-22 - Sand sailing

Life Magazine 1950-05-29 - Olmec stone face

Life Magazine 1950-06-05 - Poison ivy

Life Magazine 1950-06-12 - Spring’s rain splashes away the soil

Life Magazine 1950-06-19 - Mauna Loa splits its seams

Life Magazine 1950-06-26 - Amish school children

 Life Magazine 1950-07-03 - Building of the Eiffel Tower

Life Magazine 1950-07-10 - Korea – bracing climate and depressing proverbs

Life Magazine 1950-07-17 - Howard Johnson’s advertisement

Life Magazine 1950-07-24 - Marine muscle heads to Korea

Life Magazine 1950-07-31 - Yanks hit a beach in Korea

Life Magazine 1950-08-07 - Wounded GIs flown from Korean front

Life Magazine 1950-08-14 - Greatest meteor crater? (north of Quebec)

Life Magazine 1950-08-21 - General motors advertisement

Life Magazine 1950-08-28 - Present plants will handle 4 to 1 expansion (military aircraft)

 Life Magazine 1950-09-04 - In Korea the supplies stack up and roll on to fighting front

Life Magazine 1950-09-11 - Life savers advertisement

Life Magazine 1950-09-18 - The Korean air war in color

Life Magazine 1950-09-25 - New chemical may halt ravages of Dutch Elm Disease

Life Magazine 1950-10-02 - Small size separates

Life Magazine 1950-10-09 - Historic church burns

Life Magazine 1950-10-16 - US is building new schools but is facing a serious shortage

Life Magazine 1950-10-23 - Photograph to raise funds for a non-profit

Life Magazine 1950-10-30 - October in the Southwest

 Life Magazine 1950-11-06 - Churchill Christmas cards from Hallmark

Life Magazine 1950-11-13 - Thanksgiving (insurance advertisement)

Life Magazine 1950-11-20 - Arthur Siegel photographs

Life Magazine 1950-11-27 - Give American toys (advertisement)

Life Magazine 1950-12-04 - Christmas cards and wrapping paper (advertisement)

Life Magazine 1950-12-11 - Eva Peron

Life Magazine 1950-12-18 - Great retreat in Korea

Life Magazine 1950-12-25 - Christmas in Korea

Life Magazine in 1949

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Continuing my look at Life Magazines on Internet Archive….

As I looked at the issues from 1949, the advertisements often stood out (for fossil fuels, Pillsbury, Lionel trains, train travel, World Book Encyclopedia) …and also items that were the beginnings that of things that have developed since then: farmers using lady bugs to control insects on crops, the launch of Viking II, Prince Charles (now King) as a baby, shale oil, a pipeline in Saudi Arabia, big oil in west Texas). Some articles referenced back to World War II: art depicting the Germans trying to burn out London and war babies starting first grade. Evident the cold in the first months of 1949 were very damaging in the Midwest and there was heavy snow in the Cascades in May!

The Life pictures are windows into what the publishers (and a lot of other people) thought was newsworthy in 1949.

Life Magazine 1949-01-03 - Farmers use ladybugs to control mealy bugs

Life Magazine 1949-01-11 - Picture of 28-day old Prince Charles

Life Magazine 1949-01-17 - Death through the Midwest from winter storms

Life Magazine 1949-01-23 - Puerto Rico housing, hotel, dam

Life Magazine 1949-01-30 - Truman inaugural, toddler sleeps in stroller afterward

Life Magazine 1949-02-07 - Mr. Churchill on holiday in Provence

Life Magazine 1949-02-14 - West fights worst winter in history

Life Magazine 1949-02-21 - Mauna Loa erupts

Life Magazine 1949-02-28 - Firemen’s paintings recall how the Germans tried to burn London out

 Life Magazine 1949-03-07 - Longwood Gardens Conservatory (called DuPont greenhouse in the article)

Life Magazine 1949-03-14 - Natural Bridge…Navajo sheep

Life Magazine 1949-03-21 - How oil builds for tomorrow (interesting that the illustration for the ad looks rather dystopian)

Life Magazine 1949-03-28 - Trans-Arabian Pipeline in Saudi Arabia

Life Magazine 1949-04-04 - Barcelona slum…and a palace

Life Magazine 1949-04-11 - Spring in Mississippi

Life Magazine 1949-04-18 - Weighing less than pie meringue, plastic froth can float on gas

Life Magazine 1949-04-25 - Hazford Rubert LXXXI – the grand old man of Hereford bulls

 Life Magazine 1949-05-02 - Texas bluebonnets

Life Magazine 1949-05-09 - Blue Bell play clothes

Life Magazine 1949-05-16 - Volkswagen Factory

Life Magazine 1949-05-23 - African Animals (flamingo and crowned crane)

Life Magazine 1949-05-30 - Snow drifts in May (Cascade Mountains)

Life Magazine 1949-06-06 - Niagara Falls paintings

Life Magazine 1949-06-13 - Go by Train! (advertisement)

Life Magazine 1949-06-20 - Skyline Drive (Shenandoah National Park)

Life Magazine 1949-06-27 - New Harvest adds to big wheat harvest

 Life Magazine 1949-07-11 - Grasshopper plague from Illinois to California

Life Magazine 1949-07-18 - Oil is mined in Colorado (oil shale)

Life Magazine 1949-07-25 - Yosemite National Park

Life Magazine 1949-08-01 - Jackie Robinson

Life Magazine 1949-08-08 - Arms for Europe

Life Magazine 1949-08-15 - Polio (uncontrollable disease)

Life Magazine 1949-08-22 - Earthquake in Ecuador – 5,000 dead

Life Magazine 1949-08-29 - Margaret Mitchell dies (after being hit by a car)

 Life Magazine 1949-09-05 - Swiss watchmaker

Life Magazine 1949-09-12 - Tito defies the Kremlin

Life Magazine 1949-09-12 - The war babies hit the first grade

Life Magazine 1949-09-26 - Soviet citizen prisoners marched off by the thousands

Life Magazine 1949-10-03 - The Viking’s flight

Life Magazine 1949-10-10 - Robert Oppenheimer

Life Magazine 1949-10-17 - Fall tree lined road in New Hampshire

Life Magazine 1949-10-24 - How to choose your Christmas cards (Grandma Moses)

Life Magazine 1949-10-31 – Petra

 Life Magazine 1949-11-07 - World Book Encyclopedia (advertisement)

Life Magazine 1949-11-14 - Holiday cooky (Pillsbury)

Life Magazine 1949-11-21 - Deformed fish reveal radiation effects

Life Magazine 1949-11-28 - Lionel train (advertisement)

Life Magazine 1949-12-05 - West Texas taps a big oil pool

Life Magazine 1949-12-12 - US constructs 60,000 miles of highway

Life Magazine 1949-12-19 - Christmas lights

Life Magazine 1949-12-26 - Armstrongs see the country…. (road trip)

Life Magazine in 1943

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Internet Archive has digitized versions of many Life Magazines. I have been browsing through them – slowly since there was an issue for each week. As I looked at the issues from 1943, the ads that almost always have a linkage to the war stand out. Every issue had one or more articles about the war too. The magazine depicted a country pulling hard to support the military and the war effort.

Life Magazine 1943-01-04

Life Magazine 1943-01-11

Life Magazine 1943-01-18

Life Magazine 1943-01-25

Life Magazine 1943-02-01

Life Magazine 1943-02-08

Life Magazine 1943-02-15

Life Magazine 1943-02-22

The Delineator from 1890 – 1932

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Internet Archive has 39 volumes of The Delineator magazine from 1890 to 1932. It was published by Butterick Publishing Company – the same company that I remember from the 1960s and 1970s for patterns; I was making most of my own clothes at that time. The magazine always included patterns for clothes but as I gleaned images for this post – I also included advertisements, covers, educational displays. Click on any part of the mosaics below to see a larger version. Links to each volume are included…the historical perspective from browsing these volumes is worth it!

The first mosaic contains images from the magazines published in the 1900s. Some of my favorites are the ad for FAB flakes (Babes in the wools), the October 1922 cover full of fall foliage, covers showing active women (golfing and skiing), aquarium fish and Christmas trees. The most thought provoking was the one with a woman and, presumably, her two sons in miliary uniforms from the January 1919 issue; I wondered if the one on the left looking less serious was the younger brother. A peace conference was being held in Paris that month…but waves of the 1918 flu were happening around the world…and the US.  

The second mosaic contains images from the 1800s. The last color images were in 1897. The magazine was also more skewed to fashion/patterns than in the 1900s. Huge sleeves, corsets, and elaborate hats were in vogue (note that this was also the time when some birds were almost wiped out to get feathers for hats!). How did anyone really swim in those bathing costumes from 1894?

The Garden Magazine 1905-1924

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Internet Archive has 34 volumes of The Garden Magazine – a New York based magazine “devoted to planting and managing the grounds about the home, and to the cultivation of Fruits, Vegetables and Flowers". The magazines are a window into the way life was during the early 1900s. I enjoyed browsing them all! Click on the sample images below to see an enlarged version….better yet – browse a whole volume (or two or three….maybe all of them)  by following the link.

The Garden Magazine V1 (1905)

The Garden Magazine V2 (1906)

The Garden Magazine V3 (1906)

The Garden Magazine V4 (1907)

The Garden Magazine V5 (1907)

The early issues had little color except for some of the covers and a few ads. Note that the ad for Japanese Iris included some birds among the flowers.

The Garden Magazine V6 (1908)

The Garden Magazine V7 (1908)

The Garden Magazine V8 (1909)

The Garden Magazine V9 (1909)

The Garden Magazine V10 (1910)

Farming was important to a lot of people and so - was an important aspect of the magazine…in all seasons. Note that Kodak was already advertising in 1909….and that the photographer was not always male!

The Garden Magazine V11 (1910)

The Garden Magazine V12 (1911)

The Garden Magazine V13 (1911)

The Garden Magazine V15 (1912)

The Garden Magazine V14 (1912)

Unusual garden features like Japanese lanterns and plants like lotuses/wisteria featured in some issues – popularizing new things for the garden. C. Coles Phillips’ work was part of a Waterman’s Ideal Fountain Pen ad in 1912.

The Garden Magazine V16 (1913)

The Garden Magazine V17 (1913)

The Garden Magazine V18 (1914)

The Garden Magazine V19 (1914)

The Garden Magazine V20 (1915)

An overhead view of an idealized farm and a vine covered façade of a stately house featured on some covers. Cannas and poinsettias were plants of interest. Victor-Victrola ads depicted the sounds of the world come to your home.

The Garden Magazine V21 (1915)

The Garden Magazine V22 (1916)

The Garden Magazine V23 (1916)

The Garden Magazine V26 (1918)

The Garden Magazine V27 (1918)

As America entered World War I food was featured in covers – the slogan ‘America’s Part: to keep the Horn of Plenty Full.”

The Garden Magazine V28 & 29 (1919)

The Garden Magazine V30 (1920)

The Garden Magazine V31 & 32 (1921)

The Garden Magazine V33 (1921)

The Garden Magazine V34 (1921)

By 1919, the wounded were home. Davey Tree Surgeons was advertising…trees were a big topic. Gladiolas and other flowers in the garden were becoming a bigger business too.

The Garden Magazine V35 (1922)

The Garden Magazine V37 (1923)

The Garden Magazine V38 (1924)

The Garden Magazine V39 (1924)

The cover art for the last issues reflects the aesthetics of the 1920s….more children, relaxed fashion, abundant flowers.

International Studio eBooks

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I first browsed a series of International Studio digitized magazines in 2013…enjoying all of them available at the time. They were from the early 1900s. Recently, I found more of them that had been digitized in 2022 from the 1920s and those are the ones I am featuring today.

International Studio - vol 67 (1919)

International Studio - vol 76 (1923)

International Studio - vol 77 (1923)

International Studio - vol 78, no. 317 (1923)

 I like looking at magazines to understand what was ‘new’ or ‘important’ at the time; it’s a perspective of the period from people living then rather than historical analysis from authors that did not experience it directly. Even the ads are interesting; the way products are described…the brands that still exist (maybe were ‘new’ at the time) and brands long gone. Ads were often the main color images inside the magazines!

According to a Wikipedia entry, the magazine was the American edition of The Studio published in London. The American publication continued until 1931.  As I was writing this post, I realized there were some additional ones that I haven’t browsed yet…some additional browsing to enjoy!

Advertising and British Art in the 1920s

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Walter Shaw Sparrow published Advertising and British Art in 1924. The illustrations in the book are historical as art…also for what they were ‘selling.’ Quite a few of them were about travel…places to go and how to get there!

The book got me thinking about art and advertising 100 years later. We do so much with photographs and digital media now….very different than the 1920s. Some of us have shifted somewhat to experience over additional possessions when it comes to discretionary spending – which would fit in with the ideas for travel in the book. But it seems like most of my ideas come from destination or topical searches rather than advertisements!