American advertising posters of the nineteenth century. From the Bella C. Landauer Collection of the New York Historical Society

In-4° grande, pp. VII, (1), 119, brossura editoriale illustrata a colori. 101 riproduzioni di manifesti americani della seconda metà del XIX secolo, di cui 34 a colori. Ottimo stato. Prima edizione. Affascinante rassegna dei manifesti pubblicitari americani dell'800. 'The 101 remarkable posters in this collection, including 34 in full color, are memorabilia and vivid artifacts of 19th-century American salesmanship, business and industry. Very fine examples of the 'unsophisticated' era of the American poster, they make use at times of melodrama, medicine-show barking, gaudy colors, and a great variety of graphics techniques and styles to catch the attention of 19th-century passersby, who would have found them posted all around the American cities, towns and villages of their day. The posters advertise railroads, insurance firms, tobacco, fire engines, bicycles, thread, theatrical entertainments, clothing and fashions, stoves and stove polish, seeds, hair restorers, hats, printing presses, circuses, billiard tables, silver tip shoes ('never wear through at the toes'), meat-packing concerns, hotel bars, and other goods and services. They depict as part of their sales message scenes of American life, views of stores (including early department stores), factories, concert halls, city streets and Niagara Falls, farm life, inventions, coaches and trains, stage sets, goods and produce, with many comic touches and flamboyant displays of Victorian type and printer's ornaments. These posters are choice examples from the Bella C. Landauer Collection of The New-York Historical Society, one of the great collections of early American advertising art.' (dalla quarta di copertina).