Circus Posters
Circus posters are reflective of America’s love affair with the circus, which has lasted over 200 years. With the debut of the modern traveling circus in the early 1800s, circus posters became crucial for drawing crowds to what were only one or two performances per location. Many early ads were simple woodblock prints mentioning the name of the circus, the price of admission, and a few acts (often with pre-printed images). Later, in the early 20th century, colorful, fanciful custom designs of leaping animals, clowns, and ringmasters became standard for circus posters.
Weeks ahead of the show, advance men, pasted huge, bright circus posters over faded auction and political signs and placed cards in store windows within a 50-mile radius of the circus site. What better way to relive the nostalgia of those bygone shows than to collect bright, and often artistic, circus posters. Posters advertised exciting acts and promised showgoers snarling lions from darkest Africa and elephants from the exotic East, along with aerialists performing daring acts high in the air and lady equestrians in glittering tights. Today, these same posters are highly collectible.
To create poster illustrations, early 19th-century printers used mahogany wood blocks for wood engravings and pine blocks for cruder woodcuts. Because the mahogany blocks were expensive and the engravings hard to make, printers used them over and over again for different show posters. Many early posters, printed on bright white, medium- weight rag paper with oil-based inks, included the name of the show, with a date added later by the circus’ advance crew.
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The invention of the lithographic printing process drastically changed poster production. Using this process, printers applied a design using a greasy crayon or liquid onto a 28 x 42-inch block of limestone. Then onto the wet stone they would roll oil-based ink, which would adhere to the greasy drawing or painting, and run it through a press to transfer the image onto dampened paper. Though sparingly used for almost 50 years after it appeared, it had become an indispensable tool for printers by the 1880s.
Printers enlisted the services of the finest artists to design circus posters. However, few signed their work. While some specialized in particular subjects, most worked in teams to create the posters in a more or less assembly line process. Therefore, posters became known by the companies that printed them and not by the artists who created them. Circus posters by the Strobridge Lithograph Co. are considered to be the finest in their field. Gibson and Co. Litho, Erie Litho, and Enquirer Job Printing Co. printed fine circus posters as well. One of the greatest images ever produced as a circus poster design was that of a leaping tiger, designed by the noted illustrator Charles Livingston Bull in 1914. It may well be the one of the most recognizable circus images in history, and it is still utilized today.
The Diva recently went to Antiques Roadshow and had a circus poster appraised. Although the most valuable posters are generally from the 1800s through the early 1900s, and the Diva’s poster was from 1930, the poster appraised at $200 to $300 due to the desirability of the image. It is a Cole Bros. Circus poster of a gorilla bending apart the bars of his cage.
August 25th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
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