Toy Worlds Museum shows historical advertising
Back when advertising was still designed to last forever, tin and enamel advertising signs adorned the walls. Today, they are valuable collector’s items. Starting Saturday, the Spielzeug Welten Museum in Basel will display over 150 advertising signs from 1890 to 1970.
Until their functional decline in the 1950s, the colorful enamel signs were colorful features in gloomy industrial cities from around 1890, according to a press release issued on Monday. In Germany alone, there were over 300 enameling factories that produced the tin signs coated with molten glass powder.
Compared to other advertising media, enamel signs scored particularly well with their high resistance to weathering and thus also helped to develop brand awareness among consumers. Companies such as Coca-Cola, Nestlé and Maggi strove to achieve this from the second half of the 19th century.
Advertising agencies usually entrusted the design of advertising signs to well-known painters and graphic designers. Niklaus Stoecklin from Basel, for example, designed a sign for Gaba/Wybert pastilles in 1926. Graphic artist Herbert Leupin created the Pepita sign with the parrot in the 1940s. According to the press release, the Persil White Lady is also an icon of advertising and can also be seen in the special exhibition at the Toy Worlds Museum. The sign was designed by German artist Kurt Heiligenstaedt. Another Swiss classic is the advertisement for Union briquettes.
Tinplate plague displaced by paper posters
In the early years of the 20th century, advertising signs proliferated to such an extent that there was often talk of a "metal plague", as the story goes. Attempts by authorities and interest groups to impose restrictions through bans met with resistance from the associations of advertising companies.
After the Second World War, enamel signs were gradually pushed out of the streetscape. The consumer market became more fast-moving and the long-lasting advertising media were replaced by cheaper paper posters. Today, enamel signs are coveted collector's items. Auction houses offer top-quality signs like works of art. They sometimes achieve five-figure results.
The more than 150 signs on display at the Basel Toy Worlds Museum come from the collection of Michael Müller, who lives in the Basel region. Müller began building up his collection at the age of 23, which now numbers hundreds of signs. The special exhibition runs until October 9, 2016.
