This vintage post card dates back to sometime during the first ten years of the 20th century. An advertising card from "The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company" in New York City. These days they use Charles Schulz's famous beagle Snoopy for their advertising image and it's called Met Life.
Personally I'd like to see Snoopy walking along this hallway smelling the various pillars. But that's just me.
I find the image a little on the odd side. It makes me think of a fun house where someone stands in one part of the room and is suddenly optically much larger than you. I'm going to give the artist the benefit of the doubt that they weren't loopy and instead were indeed drawing inside a house of mystery. Otherwise why would that man in the foreground on the left be so tiny? And why would so many of the folks look like they simply aren't of that building. I get the sense that the little boy in red and his companion are about to slide down the hallway towards the artist.
I'm thinking perhaps that one artist painted the hallway and then they brought in Harry Buckleston* whose claim to fame was drawing tiny people. Harry obviously had an unjustified reputation. They remind me of the little people I used to put out in my train yard.
Okay, even the hallway has some big problems, but by now you've already noticed that.
Still, a fun card even if I do have to wonder why these people have gathered in the hallway. Hmmm...1907 flash mob?
* If you look up Harry Buckleston online I have no idea who you'll find, but I just made the name up so good luck with your search. And someday, someone, is going to actually do a Harry Buckleston search and they're going to be mighty disappointed or surprised.
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That is really puzzling. Did the artist have a problem with perspective. I can't imagine that this card ever made it to print, even though it is still very charming.
ReplyDeleteI think this is the actual hallway inside the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. They liked to simulate how you could easily fall just by walking down a hallway. It was a big insurance policy generator. That hallway paid for itself many times with all those scared customers. As for the people, it was known that many members of the P.W.S.A. organization(People Who Stand Awkwardly) were attracted to this building thinking that they had found a home for their awkward disposition. They never understood that this particular hallway made their appearance even more "awkward". This is all true, of course.
ReplyDeleteOh sir, you speak so lovingly like an adjuster.
ReplyDelete