Pam’s Pictorama Post: Followers of Pictorama know that one of my new supplier of interesting stuff resides in St. Louis (as always, a shout out to IG friend @MissMollysantiques), giving my recent acquisitions a decidedly mid-western flair – such as last week’s Krak-R-Jak tin box post. (In case you aren’t keeping up in real time, that one can be found here.) That item is also from St. Louis and honors a hometown company.

As an aside, one branch of my family, my mom’s father, hails from St. Louis. They were among the folks who took a covered wagon west and that was where they put down stakes. A generation or so later, my grandfather was traveling the country with the dog races when he met my grandmother at the Jersey shore. I have written several times about her part of the family, a large brood of then recent Italian immigrants who were making their way with restaurants, deli’s and bars. (One of those posts based on a family photo can be found here.) Poppy (as I called him) didn’t go into the family business, but instead worked for the Bendix company while my grandmother continued to help her family’s bar and restaurant. There was travel back and forth to the mid-west to see his family and I have seen a great snippet of film where he and my grandmother are riding a motorcycle out there on their honeymoon to see, and for her meet, his family.

I am developing a real soft spot for it these days, but I have never been to St. Louis – that branch of the family used to come to us rather than us going out there in my childhood and they have all relocated or died now. There is a family story I always liked however about how my father was there on an assignment for ABC News (probably in the 1970’s) and ran into my greatuncle making a call in a phone booth – yep, a phone booth – in a diner or the like and they had a meal together – a city that is a small town story. If the world hadn’t fallen off course with the pandemic and I had continued my travel schedule with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra I probably would have found myself out there by now, and perhaps still will. St. Louis has a great jazz history and remains a good town for jazz.

I cannot find tracks on whether the Mound City Paint & Color Company exists in any form today, however their name comes down to us via their advertising efforts which seem to reside in the now living memory of what is collectible today. Their Horse Shoe house brand of paint was promoted with a variety of useful items that would remind you that it was their paint you wanted to use when the time for painting arrived. My 1905 calendar card falls into this category, purchased because I was enticed by this Evelyn Nesbit look alike and this nice looking tuxedo kitty, boasting a huge white bow. (Kim and I discussed the various options of if this was actually ripped off of one of the myriad of Evelyn Nesbit photos that would have been available, or just a model who had gotten herself up in the style of her – which must have also been hugely popular in the day.)

It would appear that this was one in a quarterly drop of The Season’s Beauties calendar cards. (You are urged to keep up with the full set on the back of the card – Look out for NUMBER FOUR. No duplicates. Preserve the collection. One lost breaks the set.) This one is referred to as The Pippin and places girl and cat in an apple (presumably a pippin) for good measure. It therefore makes sense that this card covered the months of September, October and November, prime apple producing months. Presumably there a special holiday edition of these cards. Sadly, I could find no trace of the rest of the series however, although this nice watch fob below (sold at a Worthpoint auction) is a somewhat rarefied collectible. The folding yardstick is the most available, but least interesting to see. They must have been produced in huge abundance, and given their ongoing useful nature have remained available.

The advertising on the back of my card seems to be devoted to their brush on enamel product and you are urged to use it on refrigerator shelves (I was a tad surprised to even see the term refrigerator, rather than icebox, although Google assures me the term was already in use at the end of the 1800’s), closet shelves – further down it gets to sinks and bathtubs. It came in WHITE ONLY and had special directions on every can. It then goes into a litany extolling why you should buy this brand instead of a mystery one – the promise that you knew all and exactly what it contained, no mysterious extenders.

I close with a few of their stickers which are available on eBay and a final tip of the hat to the longevity of the advertising for the Mound City Paint and Color Company, St. Louis. Like many companies of the era, their advertising turned out to be their corporate immortality.

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