Advertising Periods and Printing
Date advertising through printing, materials, businesses, addresses, products, prices, and historical context.
Advertising Before 1850
Trade signs, letterpress notices, broadsides, handbills, billheads, newspapers, and early branded packages.
Open guide →Advertising of the 1850s
Industrial printing, rail expansion, patent medicines, illustrated bills, trade signs, and early mass markets.
Open guide →Advertising of the 1860s
Civil War-era commerce, patriotic imagery, medicines, railroads, photography, and local business paper.
Open guide →Advertising of the 1870s
Chromolithography growth, registered labels, packaged goods, trade cards, and national distribution.
Open guide →Advertising of the 1880s
The trade-card boom, colorful labels, proprietary medicines, department stores, and branded consumer goods.
Open guide →Advertising of the 1890s
Mature chromolithography, die cuts, posters, bicycle culture, expositions, and elaborate packaging.
Open guide →Advertising of the 1900s
National magazines, early automobiles, electric goods, mail order, branded signs, and store displays.
Open guide →Advertising of the 1910s
Automobiles, war-era campaigns, national brands, art posters, modern typography, and retail expansion.
Open guide →Advertising of the 1920s
Radio, automobiles, appliances, Art Deco, chain stores, national magazines, and consumer credit.
Open guide →Advertising of the 1930s
Depression-era pricing, streamlined design, roadside commerce, radio tie-ins, and mass-market packaging.
Open guide →Chromolithography
Layered color printing, registration, printer imprints, stock designs, labels, cards, and posters.
Open guide →Letterpress Printing
Relief impression, type, ornaments, woodcuts, broadsides, billheads, labels, and local-job printing.
Open guide →Stone Lithography
Drawn-on-stone printing, tonal effects, commercial art, posters, labels, and printer attribution.
Open guide →Early Photomechanical Printing
Halftones, photoengraving, offset development, newspaper and magazine reproduction, and dating clues.
Open guide →