Show and Tell: My Vintage Swiss Family Robinson

Today I’d like to share with you one of my most prized acquisitions of late. I was recently frolicking around the English countryside when I stumbled upon a rare books shop in the antiques town of Stow-on-the-Wold. I saw it straight away, staring at me in the shop window and I knew it had to be…

A Brief History of Ridiculous Celebrity Endorsements

Cher reading the bible? Hmmm … something doesn’t quite add up. As far back as the 1760s, celebrity endorsements have been used to promote products, whether it was microwavable meals or the newest smoke on the market, someone was always there to seemingly believe in the product. In honour of National Bible Week in 1971, Sonny…

The Obscure World of Kitschy Christian Vinyl

Bob Dylan nearly crossed over to the Christian music industry in the late seventies. He had just announced his conversion to Christianity in ’79 and proceeded to release a total of three albums based on his newfound faith. He spent several years touring and preaching from stage, but was never fully accepted by Christian music fans…

The Dark and Twisted History of Valentine’s Day Cards

The Vintage Valentines Museum has recently become one of my most fascinating rabbit holes on the web. This place has every type of card you could imagine, from the adorable to the downright disturbing. In the museum’s menu of categories, I noticed some particularly unusual ones labelled, “Cannibalism” and “Swastikas on Valentine’s Cards.” I was intrigued, so away…

A Brief Compendium of Vintage Caravan Brochures

There’s a certain “je ne sais quoi” about the kind of person who owns a caravan, isn’t there? So you would expect the sales brochures for a caravan to be a little more … let’s say colourful than your average marketing material. In fact, they’re kind of a blast. I’ve spent just about my whole afternoon trawling through an online…

Drive-in Church, 1947

I get really excited about anything you can drive through– movie theatres, restaurants, car washes, trees– it just feels very old school Americana, when the country’s love affair with the automobile was in full swing. Today I found these photographs of a drive-in church in St. Petersburg, Florida circa 1947 for a feature in LIFE magazine that never…

A Brief Compendium of the American TV Dinner

It could be said that Thanksgiving gave birth to the American TV dinner. The executive of Swanson TV dinners, Gerry Thomas, claimed he conceived the idea after the food company found itself with a huge surplus of frozen turkeys because of poor Thanksgiving sales. In 1952, Swanson introduced their first dinner consisting of a turkey, cornbread…

The Retro Radio Farm

I‘ve had my eye out for the perfect vintage radio for a while, scouring Paris flea markets and antique shops, but never finding a real beauty that actually makes decent sound and certainly nothing that can connect to an iPod. But today, as I was roaming the pages of Etsy I stumbled upon Retro Radio Farm, a music…

A Trip down Presidential Campaign Memory Lane

In no particular order, (because frankly I couldn’t muster the strength to chronologise them), please find enclosed a short retrospective of vintage U.S. presidential campaigns. Happy voting across the pond and remember folks, Nixon’s the one! The most patriotic campaign video you will ever see:

Preserved Moments of Historical Sass (Vol.4)

sassy: adjective \ˈsa-sē\ impudent, lively, spirited, vigorous, distinctively smart and stylish, showing no respect for people in authority, saucy, pert, confident, chic. Students from five states smile through the gate of Ashley Hall in Charleston, South Carolina, March 1939. Photograph by Anthony Stewart from National Geographic Two Couples in Bathing Outfits c.1934 from Letters of Vintage …