Sapolio Soap, a brand forgotten, but according to Wikipedia a best selling soap at the turn of the last century, one that advertised heavily and one that subsequently lost its market because it stopped advertising heavily.
Hmm.
A soap with a name that sounds like the most dreaded disease of the 20th century (also off wikipedia).
In the era of light, soap and water and above all PURITY.
Not a mention of the P word in the copy.. What was the copywriter thinking?
“Look into the homes and see the service Sapolio gives cleaning pans, kettles, paint, marble, woodwork and floors….Cleans, scours, polishes, works without waste.”
Virtues certainly, but not the appropriate one for the new century. Just ask Procter and Gamble and their advertiser J. Walter Thompson and anyone back then who read the Ladies’ Home Journal.
OK. So I turned my very very messy house upside down looking (once again) for my 1911 Magazines, the Delineator and the Pictorial Review.
That’s because I have figured out how to design my Threshold Girl e-book or ebook, with bits about fashion…High fashion and low fashion that are self-explanatory. That will interest girls and also underscore my point about child labour.
And it will look pretty.
The Delineator, in the public domain, has beautiful plates and also little drawing of fashion items, many the delicate ones.
I want to scan and put them in the book at areas where the reader can pause for a moment.. and at chapter heads.
Anyway, I will spend the next few days cleaning the crap out of my house, while still looking for those magazines. My sons are home for a few days and all they do is talk about violent video games and poker. One is an astrophysicist and one is about to finish a philosophy degree while training as a high end chef, but because they are so advanced in their fields the ONLY subjects they appear to have in common, today, are video games and poker.
Driving me berzerk, except my son made great lamb burgers and fennel salad the other day. (Neither is big anymore into pro sports.)
