July 27

July 27, 2022July 22, 2022 Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update Bailey and Youle, Cutlers, J. Bailey, James Youle, Lucas and Shephard, Multiple Woodcuts, Richard Sause, Sign of the Cross Swords, Woodcut

What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?

*New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury* (July 27, 1772).

“J. BAILEY. Cutler. from Sheffield.”

In the early 1770s, cutlers in New York competed with each other not only for customers but also in producing elaborate images to accompany their advertisements in the city’s newspapers. It began in the spring of 1771 with Bailey and Youle, “Cutlers for Sheffield,” running an advertisement with a woodcut depicting more than a dozen items made and sold at their shop, enhancing their list of “surgeons instruments, … knives, razors, shears, and scissors.” Not long after, Richard Sause followed their lead with an advertisement featuring a woodcut depicting more than a dozen items available at his shop. Two items, a knife and a sword, had his name on them, suggesting that he marked his wares so consumers would recall who produced them and, if satisfied with the quality and durability, buy from him again. In that regard, Sause improved on the image distributed by Bailey and Youle, although his competitors may have also marked their cutlery even if the woodcut in the newspaper did not indicate that was the case.

When Bailey and Youle dissolved their partnership a year later, Youle retained the woodcut and modified it to remove any reference to his former associate. Not long after Youle disseminated that image in the public prints, Lucas and Shephard, WHITESMITHS and CUTLERS, From BIRMINGHAM and SHEFFIELD,” published their own advertisement with a woodcut showcasing many of the items they made and sold. Bailey apparently considered that strategy effective for attracting customers (or at least not losing them to his competitors) because he devised his own woodcut that enclosed “J. BAILEY. Cutler. from Sheffield” and several cutlery items within a decorative border. The copy of his advertisement gave his location as “the Sign of the Cross Swords, the Corner House opposite the Merchant’s Coffee-House.” A pair of crossed swords appeared at the center of the woodcut. A second woodcut appeared at the end of the advertisement, under a nota bene that advised that Bailey “has now for sale fullers shears.” The cutler used the additional image to distinguish his notice from those of his competitors. All three advertisements ran in the July 27, 1772, edition of the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (Bailey’s on the third page, Youle’s on the first page of the supplement, and Lucas and Shephard’s on the second page of the supplement). Given the prevalence of images in advertisements placed by his competitors, Bailey may have considered it imperative to get his own woodcut depicting his wares into circulation among consumers in New York.

Left: *New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury* (March 4, 1771); Right: *Supplement to the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury* (July 27, 1772).

January 30

January 30, 2020January 20, 2020 Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update Alexander Rose, John Rose, Multiple Woodcuts, Real Estate, Slaves, South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal, Woodcuts

What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Jan 30 - 1:30:1770 South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal — *South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal* (January 30, 1770).

“Valuable PLANTATION … THIRTY VALUABLE NEGROES.”

John Rose and Alexander Rose, administrators of the estate “of the deceased Dr. WILLIAM ROSE,” turned to the newspapers published in Charleston, South Carolina, to announce the sale of the late doctor’s “valuable PLANTATION” as well as “About THIRTY VALUABLE NEGROES,” livestock, furniture, and tools. The Roses included visual images in their advertisements to help draw the attention of prospective buyers. Indeed, they included two woodcuts, one depicting a house and another an enslaved man, in their advertisement in the January 30, 1770, edition of the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal. If they included a visual image at all, most advertisements featured only one, even in similar advertisements that offered both real estate and enslaved men, women, and children for sale.

The inclusion of two woodcuts seems not to have been a choice made by the compositor working independently at the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal. The following day an advertisement with identical copy ran in the South-Carolina and American General Gazette. It also included two woodcuts, one of a house and fields and another of several enslaved people. It was not a coincidence that the two advertisements each had more than one visual image. A notice with the same copy also ran in the February 1, 1770, edition of the South-Carolina Gazette. It also had two woodcuts, one depicting a house and the other several enslaved people, both adults and children. The typography (fonts, fonts size, capitalization, italics) varied among the advertisements, but the copy was consistent, as was the inclusion of two visual images that set these advertisements apart from others. It seems clear that the Roses instructed each printing office that their notice must include both. Although the compositors made most of the decisions about the format of these advertisements, the Roses did exert some influence over the graphic design. They were certainly not the first or only advertisers to adopt this strategy for drawing attention to their notices, but they did experiment with an uncommon approach to visual images when they submitted the copy and specified that their advertisements must include two woodcuts rather than one or none.

November 23

November 23, 2019November 23, 2019 Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update Advertisement in Multiple Newspapers, Bible-in-Heart, Logo, Multiple Woodcuts, Pennsylvania Chronicle, Pennsylvania Gazette, Pennsylvania Journal, Printer, William Evitt, Woodcuts

What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Pennsylvania Gazette (November 23, 1769).

“PRINTING-OFFICE, AT the Bible-in-Heart.”

In the fall of 1769, William Evitt opened his own printing office, having “just purchased ALL that large and valuable assortment of Printing-Types” and other equipment from the estate of Andrew Steuart. He placed advertisements in the Pennsylvania Chronicle, the Pennsylvania Gazette, and the Pennsylvania Journal to inform residents of Philadelphia, the surrounding countryside, and “the neighbouring provinces” that he ran a shop “AT the Bible-in-Heart in Second-street, between Market and Arch-streets.” In addition to “all the necessary utensils fit for carrying on the printing business,” Evitt also acquired both a well-recognized symbol and a location that had been associated with Steuart and his business. Throughout most of the 1760s Steuart operated a printing shop at the Bible-in-Heart on Second Street. The American Antiquarian Society’s catalog includes fifty-nine items with imprints that included some variation of “Printed by Andrew Steuart, at the Bible-in-Heart, in Second-Street” dated between 1760 and 1768.

Pennsylvania Journal (November 23, 1769).

Evitt, who served an apprenticeship with Steuart, sought to take advantage of his former master’s reputation by associating his new business with one that had been well established in Philadelphia for quite some time. He underscored that the Bible-in-Heart continued to be located “in the house where said office has been kept these some years past.” (Sometime in 1770, however, he moved to Strawberry Alley, according to his imprint.) He also made certain that the Bible-in-Heart remained a visible symbol. In addition to displaying the sign at his shop, he also incorporated the image into the advertisements he inserted in all three newspapers published in Philadelphia. In most instances an advertiser who included a unique visual image in an advertisement incurred additional expense, but Evitt may have had woodcuts of the Bible-in-Heart at his disposal among the “assortment of Printing-Types” and other “necessary utensils” that he acquired from Steuart’s estate. Determining whether Steuart previously used any of the three woodcuts that appeared in Evitt’s advertisements in the Pennsylvania Chronicle, the Pennsylvania Gazette, and the Pennsylvania Journal requires additional research. Even if Evitt did not have to commission any of the woodcuts, he still had to pay for the additional space required to include them in his advertisements, apparently an expense that he considered a good investment.

Pennsylvania Chronicle (November 6, 1769).

Some advertisers experimented with creating logos in eighteenth-century America, finding it valuable to consistently associate their businesses with particular images. That William Evitt adopted an image previously associated with another printer when he acquired Steuart’s type and equipment suggests that he considered the reputation associated with that logo so powerful that it would work to his advantage to transfer it to his own business. It also suggests that he expected the symbol to resonate with other colonists and attract customers who were previously familiar with Steuart’s work. Evitt experimented with an eighteenth-century version of transferring a trademark from one business to another. He continued to incorporate the Bible-in-Heart into his imprint for at least three years after he opened his own shop.

In his brief biography of Evitt in his monumental History of Printing in America (1810), Isaiah Thomas did not comment on Evitt’s adoption of the Bible-in-Heart as the device to identify his own printing shop. He dismissed Evitt as a journeyman printer, but did note that he “became a soldier in the American army, and died in the service of his country.”

October 20

October 20, 2018October 19, 2018 Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update Advertisement in Multiple Newspapers, Brand, John Elliott, Logo, Multiple Woodcuts, Pennsylvania Gazette, Pennsylvania Journal, Woodcuts

What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Postscript to the Pennsylvania Gazette (October 20, 1768).

“The Sign of the Bell and Looking-glass.”

Logos are ubiquitous in twenty-first century marketing campaigns, but the modern advertising industry did not invent the concept of branding. Some advertisers experimented with developing readily recognized logos even before the American Revolution. Consider, for instance, John Elliott and the newspaper advertisements he placed in the fall of 1768.

Elliott ran a “Looking-glass store” at “the sign of the Bell and Looking-glass” on Walnut Street in Philadelphia. He also operated a second location “at the Three Brushes, in Second-street.” Both shop signs helped customers located Elliott’s shops, but it was the “Bell and Looking-glass” that he chose as the primary visual representation of his business. In addition to a shop sign that depicted these icons, Elliott also commissioned woodcuts of a looking glass and a bell enclosed within a frame to adorn his newspapers advertisements. These images appeared in both the Pennsylvania Journal and the Postscript to the Pennsylvania Gazette on October 20, 1768. To have an image run in two newspapers simultaneously amounted to a significant investment for Elliott, but it also demonstrated his commitment to consistency in portraying his business to prospective customers.

Other advertisers who experimented with visual images replicating their shop signs usually commissioned a single woodcut that they then ran in one newspaper for a period and eventually inserted in another, thus cementing the association by communicating it to multiple, yet sometimes overlapping, audiences. Gerardus Duyckinck, for instance, had an elaborate woodcut depicting “the Sign of the Looking Glass & Druggist Pot” that ran first in the New-York Journal for several weeks and then in the New-York Gazette: Or, the Weekly Mercury. The cost of replicating the rococo frame that enclosed his list of merchandise likely prohibited commissioning a second woodcut, so Duyckinck did his best to circulate the image by staggering its appearance in newspapers published in New York.

Pennsylvania Journal (October 20, 1768).

When it came to publishing woodcuts in more than one newspaper simultaneously, Elliott was not alone. Earlier in 1768 Burrows Dowdney, a clock- and watchmaker, included woodcuts depicting clocks in his advertisements in the Pennsylvania Gazette and the Pennsylvania Chronicle. Those images did not, however, mirror each other as closely as Elliott’s exceptionally similar (but not identical) woodcuts in the Pennsylvania Gazette and the Pennsylvania Journal, nor did Dowdney explicitly associate his woodcuts with his shop sign. They certainly represented the work Dowdney did, but he did not indicate that a sign marked his shop at all. In that regard Elliott was particularly innovative in his careful consistency when it came to linking a name and a corresponding image in his efforts to promote his business.

In the second half of the eighteenth century many advertisers experimented with establishing logos to represent their businesses. Although not as fully developed as modern marketing campaigns, these early efforts demonstrated a rudimentary understanding of the power of images to depict commercial endeavors and to augment recognition of particular businesses among prospective customers.

February 15

February 15, 2017May 1, 2023 Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update Multiple Woodcuts, Robert Wells, South-Carolina and American General Gazette, Woodcuts

Who was the subject of an advertisement in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago this week?

feb-15-2131767-south-carolina-and-american-general-gazette — *South-Carolina and American General Gazette* (February 13, 1767).

“Forty or fifty valuable SLAVES … Also, Sundry Plantations and Tracts of Land.”

The vast majority of colonial newspaper advertisements did not include visual images. When illustrations did appear with advertisements, they usually came from one of four categories. Images of ships at sea accompanied notices for vessels seeking passengers and freight, though they occasionally appeared in advertisements for imported goods. Depictions of horses ran alongside announcements by breeders offering stallions “to cover” mares. Images of slaves served two purposes: they were included with both advertisements seeking to sell slaves and notices that warned about runaways. (Curiously, similar advertisements for indentured servants were much less likely to include depictions of runaways making their escape.) Finally, real estate advertisements sometimes included images of houses or pastoral scenes. In each case, the woodcut belonged to the printer and could be used interchangeably with advertisements placed for similar purposes. On occasion, some advertisers commissioned their own woodcuts to attract attention to their advertisements, usually opting for an image that replicated their shop signs.

From the standard categories of woodcuts, all four appeared in the February 13, 1767, issue of the South-Carolina and American General Gazette. No advertisers, however, spiced up their notices with original illustrations. That did not mean that the advertising in that issue lacked creativity when it came to the deployment of visual images. When advertisements included woodcuts they tended to have only one. Vendue master Robert Wells, however, oversaw the sale of both “forty or fifty valuable SLAVES” and “Sundry Plantations and Tracts of Land.” He opted to include both types of relevant woodcuts in his notice, a choice that likely resulted in readers noticing the rich visual texture of his advertisement. Given that Wells was charged with selling both slaves and real estate, he may have believed that if he was going to include any sort of woodcut at all then using both images was necessary. After all, readers might have passed over an advertisement showing just a slave or just a plantation, assuming that the woodcut summarized the contents of the entire notice. In a newspaper with few illustrations, Wells’ advertisement with two woodcuts stood out from the rest of the content.

	March 22 \| The Adver… on March 18
	March 21 \| The Adver… on February 22
	March 19 \| The Adver… on March 6
	March 18 \| The Adver… on April 12
	March 16 \| The Adver… on May 26

The Adverts 250 Project

An Exploration of Advertising During the Era of the American Revolution, 250 Years Ago This Week

Multiple Woodcuts