Circus Broadsides

The Circus is coming! The Circus is coming! Hurry, Look, its here today and gone tomorrow! Every man, woman and especially the children read in awe the regal Circus posters or lithographs as the billing crews covered the complete sides of barns, buildings, and fences telling the world that the greatest entertainment event of the year was quickly approaching.

Advertising has been around for as long as anyone can remember. Advertising has appeared in an incredible array of mediums, shapes, and sizes from the very simple ad in a newspaper to a Television Commercial.

Anything in print required at the very least a typesetter. Thus the basic printing form was called the letterpress or raised lettering. The ability to add graphics illustration became a novel idea and suddenly artists of all calipers had an outlet for their work. In the 1800’s, a trade skill meant working as a young boy, to learn the very basics no matter how mundane they were until you advanced to the next level of your chosen profession.

Woodcarvers for example, learned as an early apprentice to clean the shop then to sharpen the tools before they ever were allowed to carve something. So we find that in the early days of graphic artists, wood block carvings shaved away all the back and left the desired design were used to produce a print with an ink rolled over the carving produced some of the very first printed images.

These carvings were very rough at first. Wood block printing is established as far back as the 1300’s. Finding the right wood to use combined with finding the right artists evolved from a rough sketch piece to flowing art. These works produced a monotone design; where as only one color of ink could be utilized. These carvings weren’t necessarily small either as some of the handbills and early posters were all produced like this.

Colored images slowly evolved from this method with the use of multiple engravings. Each carving would have part of the design in one color. As each part of the color was applied, the design slowly took shape in giving a finished product usually of three or four colors in the most elaborate works of that time. Eventually metal engravings started to replace the wood block engravings still achieving the same thing. The required greater efforts to produce but lasted much longer and gave a crisper image.

Intaglio Printing from recessed metal engravings and stenciling also provided colored images as well as a black & white image that was then hand colored. While all of this was paving the way for the advertising markets her in the United States, the European continent was seeing a new process being developed, mastered, and producing huge quantities of excellent works.

Lithography was taking over. The invention of Lithography basically appears to be in the 1790’s by a German artist named Alois Senefelder. The principle behind lithography was the utilization of a limestone slab where in the design was drawn with a grease pencil. This grease then absorbed the colorant and when pressed against the paper created the image in that particular color. Multiple slabs were used for multiple colors and created multi-color images depending on how many colors were desired and the level of intricacy that was used.

By the mid 1800’s, the United States was seeing the development of the Lithography process became a staple in the advertising trade. A Cylinder press was design to continually feed paper over the limestone slabs thus making the process much faster and cheaper. Many of the Printers of the day took to the Lithography process and more and more artists were employed. The Circus became one of it not thee largest advertiser in the United States requiring several sizes of posters in different designs, date sheets, handbills, couriers, the Circus Program as well as Letterheads, envelopes, contracts and other printed matter. By the late 1800’s and the circus having adapted to travel by rails, allowed the circus industry to cover more ground, faster than ever before. The Advertising business boomed. From the late 1800’s to the mid 1930’s depression era, Advertising companies such as the Donaldson Litho Company, the Standard Printing Company, Erie Litho Co, Ackermann-Quigley Litho Co. and many others all started producing not only an advertising feature for the circus but artwork at its finest.

The grand daddy of all advertisers was unquestionably the Strobridge Litho Co in Cincinnati, Ohio. They produced the most sought after, highly collectible posters still in existence due to their incredible graphic designs, full color and splash that ignited the imaginations of every boy and girl across America. There are collections in the United States right now housed at the Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wisconsin, the John and Mabel Ringling Museums in Sarasota, Florida, the Smithsonian Institute, Princeton University and individuals as well. While some posters go for a few dollars, the highly prized are worth tens of thousands of dollars.