The Poster Before 1931
The American Golden Age
Before the WPA silkscreens, the American poster already ran the street — war, the world’s fair, the circus, the magazine cover.
The half-century when America learned to sell itself in ink: James Montgomery Flagg’s Uncle Sam pointing out of the sheet, the Liberty Bond drives, the Panama-Pacific Exposition, the Barnum & Bailey lithographs, the illustrated-magazine posters. Public domain by publication before 1931, and printed from Library-of-Congress scans large enough to hang wall-scale.
1893–1930 · United States
I Want You for U.S. Army - Nearest Recruiting Station
Uncle Sam's finger, aimed straight out of the sheet - the most reproduced recruiting image America ever printed.
I Want You for the Navy
Christy's standing 'Navy girl' recasts the recruiting summons as glamour rather than command.
Gee!! I Wish I Were a Man, I'd Join the Navy
A woman in Navy blues delivers the dare that made the poster famous: be a man and do it.
That liberty shall not perish from the earth — Buy liberty bonds, Fourth Liberty Loan
New York harbor in flames and the Statue of Liberty beheaded — the most alarming image American war finance ever printed.
Destroy this mad brute — Enlist, U.S. Army
A gorilla in a spiked helmet wades ashore with a bloody club marked 'kultur' — American propaganda at its most unhinged.
For Every Fighter a Woman Worker — Care for Her through the YWCA
A woman in blue overalls, dated 1918 — the war-work poster that put the female industrial worker on the wall as an equal.
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The Barnum & Bailey Greatest Show on Earth - Chaste, Charming, Weird & Wonderful Supernatural Illusions Created by Roltair, the Magician
A Strobridge chromolithograph selling Roltair's stage phantoms as the circus's most respectable thrill.
Harper's, May
Penfield's monthly Harper's placard - flat color, hard outline, and a reader who never looks up.
Panama-Pacific International Exhibition, San Francisco - Southern Pacific Railway
A railroad's panoramic sales pitch for the 1915 exposition: 'the greatest, the most beautiful and the most important in history.'