Ivory Soap Products Advertisements

These materials comprise the largest portion of the collection and include advertisements for primarily Ivory Soap in North American newspapers, national periodicals, magazines, and grocery trade publications. Among these materials are lists of publications that advertised Protcter & Gamble standard products including Ivory soap flakes, White Naphtha soap and Crisco for a particular year. These materials constitute virtually a complete run of advertisements for Ivory standard products during this time period. Foreign language materials consist of Japanese advertisements for Hawaiian newspapers; French advertisements for Montreal newspapers; and Hebrew language, Italian, and Polish advertisements for New York newspapers. Procter & Gamble introduced many advertising innovations, including the use of color images as early as 1896, and the work of nationally known and lesser known illustrators, such as I. R. Wiles, K. R. Wireman, Elizabeth Shippen, Green Elliott, Jessie Wilcox Smith, J. C. Leyendecker, Stanford Briggs, George O'Neill, T. D. Skidmore, Dorothy Hope Smith and Maud Humphrey (actor Humphrey Bogart's mother). Many of the advertisments were signed by the artist. A 1949 Grace Kelly magazine advertisement, created when she was working as a model before entering show business, is noteworthy. Materials in boxes 31-35 are very fragile with a number of advertisements that are stuck together. Researchers must handle these materials with great care. The advertisements are arranged first in chronological order, then by size with later years also by publication type. In addition to the advertisements there is a point of purchase display, scrapbook and photographs of advertising designs found at the end of the series.