I find it interesting today to learn how the Charles Hire Root Beer Company cleverly used a long standing marketing strategy of showing healthy children to sell their soda brand. The Hires Root beer brand was marketed as creating “strength, a rosy complexion, and beauty, while supplying the nerves and brain with a blood purifier”. …
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PA based breweriana collectors today who have an interest in the Stegmaier Brewing Company are blessed as the Stegmaier family truly believed in the power of advertising based on the amount of quality memorabilia which exist today from this brewery. Pictured here is a nicely done factory scene from the Wilkes-Barre based brewery. Tip trays…
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The Ghirardelli Chocolate Company produced a very unique self-framed tin sign pictured here around 1900, which incorporated an old fashioned tea or in this case, a cocoa and chocolate party! This sign has proven to be a collector favorite and whenever it is at auction, if the condition is good, the value is also good. …
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In 1883 A. J. Roach started a business producing butter known as the Fountain Creamery, which quickly became a cooperative for local farmers who brought their cattle into the small town of Waterloo, to sell their cattle’s output. Shortly after the business started three different Seeber family members joined the business as a principal owners…
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The use of the word “gypsy” typically brings to mind negativity, deceit, or danger in most people’s mind. However, one company used the word Gypsy to entice people to buy their product, and by doing so, were apparently very successful in establishing their ladies and men hosiery as one of leading selling brands in the…
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One of my favorite advertising items is this beautiful oak wood clock from the August Graf Distilling Company. This clock was found in a tavern in a small town of Albers, Illinois and had been there for over one hundred years. It was a giveaway intended for this distiller’s larger retailers at that time and was…
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One of the more unusual and eye-catching figural advertising items you will run across were the brainchild of George Meredith, a laborer working at the KT&K pottery in East Liverpool, OH. The KT&K Pottery, better known as the Knowles, Taylor and Knowles Pottery produced unique whiteware pottery at a time when most potters were making…
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A recent “big” find for me is this transom window sign from the Louis Obert Brewing Company which was based in St. Louis, MO before Prohibition. Transom signs were commonly displayed over the entrance of many 1900 era saloons. Taverns built in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s often had an entrance with a small…
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The Peter Doelger Brewery in New York City was started in 1859 by Peter Doelger, a coppersmith immigrant from Germany. Mr. Doelger came right at the perfect time to make his mark in brewing, when the Croton Reservoir System was completed in NYC, providing fresh water for brewers to craft their products. The breweries beer must…
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One of my favorite self-framed tin signs come from the Buffalo Brewing Company, which was based in Sacramento, CA. The Buffalo Brewing Company was once the largest selling brewery west of the Mississippi River, and dominated sales throughout California, the Pacific NW, Hawaii, Alaska, Central and South America, and even Russia and China. In fact,…
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