interesting quality: at this scale even the most clichéd image was curiously
transformed into a striking miniature. Even trite ideas were made new in
this form.
English, French, German, Austrian, and American stamps from
between 1910 and 1930 are fragments of commercial history that chronicle
as effectively as any official commemorative stamp the burgeoning of free
trade and market capitalism. Stamps for light bulbs, lamps, and appliances,
for instance, reveal the unrelenting push by industry for electrification of
the private home. Stamps for automobiles prefigure the huge budgets later
expended on major advertising campaigns.
However, owing to strict postal regulations that legislated what
was allowed on mailing envelopes and the rise in high-visibility advertising
outlets, by the late 1930 s the production of commercial advertising stamps
was virtually abandoned. In the postwar years junk mail replaced the
advertising stamp as the favored means of invading the consumer’s privacy
and consciousness. Given the poor quality of these pesky missives, the
Lilliputian poster stamps re-emerge from the attic of advertising history
as infinitely more appealing.
tuis.
(Tuis.)
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