I got my boyfriend’s dad in on this project to post original scans on my blog! He is a HUGE history buff and I should record him telling stories about old Carondelet and historic St. Louis. Yesterday, he brought over a CD with these Civil War era photos that he’d scanned.
Here are two Civil War era photos that came in small embossed leather covered wooden cases. They look like the size that could easily fit in your pocket, and one has glass on the cover, to show the woman’s portrait thru it. The interior is velvet and elaborately floral embossed metal. I wonder who these people were?
This Civil War era photo album had names with the pictures! Fewer soldier pictures than the previous album, and quite a few missing photos. The bell hoop skirts and formal poses…!
How nice to slowly sink into this! The first pages were a printed gold floral pattern, followed by an elaborate title page: “The Photographic Album.”
Here are exterior scans of an embossed leather Civil War era photo album that had metal clasps and gold accents. It was such a decadent, old, feeling to hold this and go thru the pictures long forgotten strangers that were inside.
I had just 3 days to scan two Civil War era photo albums! Here are the front, back, and sides. I’m officially kicking off the digital downloads section of my shop with these high res scans. Inside were dozens of pictures of women, children, and Confederate soldiers… but that’ll be my next post!
These next few pages of old pictures are a history of chorus girls and showing skin on stage, from Can Can girls, to to Mae West, to the Zigfield Follies, and the Rockettes.
Here is an interesting history of tobacco advertisements using pretty women and pinups as bait, and to gain broader social acceptance of smoking cigarettes! To explain changes in tobacco advertising, you have to take a historical perspective, which this article explains best. Briefly the history of tobacco ads (according to this 1953 article):
Here are shown some lingerie and shapewear ads from the 1800s-1950s. The chemise replaced the corset cover by 1918, although shape wear was still worn in the 1920s to achieve that stylish “boyish” form. The inflatable bra of the 1950s replaced the “Victoria” bosom pad of 1879… such changes in lingerie styles and advertisements!
hoopskirts to bathing suits, this Cheesecake Pinup magazine takes a look at the history of sexual innuendo in humor and media.
One of the first cartoons is from the 1860s, showing the wind blowing up a dress to reveal the hoopskirt underneath and (gasp) the sexyness of the woman’s ankels! Then came the peepshows in the Kinetoscopes of the 1890s (as examples are The Bedroom Farce, and a womens’ wrestling). Then, the late 1890s cinema came along, and in the early 1900s, Hollywood and the Keystone comedies and the scantily clad “big names wearing too little” and sensual Femme Fatale Movie Stars of the 1920s…
