Happy New Year from the American Oil Company

To all the readers and followers of The Design Morgue, we wish everyone a happy and a healthy New Year.

Last year at this time we took a look at one of my favorite illustrators, J.C. Leyendecker, and his New Year's babies for The Saturday Evening Post.

This year we'll take a look at Leyendecker's babies again, but this time they are pictured on ink blotters for The American Oil Company (AMOCO). Also included in this group is another favorite illustrator, Norman Rockwell.

All of these, with exception of the 1942 and 1948, are from my personal collection. I have looked for other years with Leyendecker and Rockwell, but haven't been able to locate any.

It's interesting to note that Leyendecker's work for The Saturday Evening Post came before Rockwell and here Rockwell's work appeared first.

Happy 2012!

Merry Christmas!

The Design Morgue would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. Hopefully you weren't to naughty this year and you'll get everything you wished for.

This little piece of Christmas ephemera is from the Central Savings Bank in New York City. The die-cut could be used as a hanging ornament or the bottom could be folded as a stand up. It was used to promote the banks Christmas Club. I'm not sure if banks still do Christmas Clubs, but it would be nice if they still had cool Christmas stuff like this.

Happy Hanukkah - 1944 style

Happy Hanukkah to all my Jewish readers out there. The above Hanukkah greeting is post marked December 26, 1944. These postcards were apparently supplied to Jewish servicemen by the USO. It's interesting to note that this card had to pass through Army censorship as noted by the stamps on the back.