August 21, 1944

So my cousin Margaret is coming out to visit my mom later this month and to prepare I helped my mom clear out some boxes of stuff she’s been storing in the unused spare bedroom of her apartment. One such box happened to contain, a veritable treasure trove… at least to me.

Consisting of issues of Colliers, Saturday Evening Post, Esquire, Look, Life and other magazines from the 1920s through the 1970s, the box holds an amazing array of periodicals (remarkably well-preserved) that my late stepfather William R. Cox collected — topped off with issues from the Herald Examiner and the Los Angeles Times from none other than November 22, and 23, 1963, respectively.

In the days since I’ve leafed through issues at random, totally blown away by the documents that I was holding in my hands. And while many of the events and stories chronicled are familiar from an historical perspective, what’s really been drawing my eye are the advertisements, awesome works of art and many of which I’d never seen before.

As a sample I’ve taken rough snapshots of six gorgeous full-pagers appearing in the August 21, 1994 1944 issue of Life, galleried below (click the thumbnails to supersize the images):

I’m seriously thinking of opening up a new blog devoted strictly to posting and sharing these incredible ads.