Latest Addition To The Spill Library: “Trades”
From the Department of “You Never Know What You’ll Find.” While doing my daily browse through the internet the other day I came across a book titled “Trades” — a privately bound collection of New Yorker promotional brochures published in the 1940s and 1950s. Some of these brochures are titled From Our Regular Stock, and given a Roman numeral ID, as well as a date of issue. Each is a themed collection of New Yorker cartoons sometimes accompanied by short “Talk Of The Town” pieces.
Up til the Trades book arrived yesterday the Spill library only had one of these Regular Stock brochures — the one shown here (Volume VIII, June 1949). Every one of the brochures contains a brief intro, such as you see below.
With the addition of Trades, eleven more brochures are now in hand, collected in a sturdy red cloth covered book:
As far as I’ve been able to determine, the Regular Stock brochures were issued until the early 1960s. I’ve no idea how many, in all, were published. They appear (though it is uncertain) to have been issued once-a-year, beginning with Vol.1 in 1942. The Trades book contains seven From Our Regular Stock brochures in addition to four titled brochures: Bon Voyage! (1953); Come In And Browse Around! (1955); and “Wonderful!” (1956), and “How Long You Been In The Advertising Game, Jack?” (1953). These four are similar to the numerous promotional brochures mentioned on the Spill sometime back, and shown below (these were donated to the Spill library by the late very very great Jack Ziegler):
You can see a handy (incomplete) list of New Yorker books and brochures here. And don’t forget Chris Wheeler’s site, where you’ll see two fanned displays of From Our Regular Stock, and so much more.