Check out this collection of ephemera over at Ephemera Now. In addition to large scans of the ads, the site itself is very nicely designed, although the navigation is a little confusing.

From the site:

“EphemeraNow.com is a Web site dedicated to the advertising and illustration art of mid-century America. In addition to offering images for your viewing pleasure, we sell high-quality scans of color illustrations in the public domain, for print, broadcast and Web use, as well as a limited selection of advertising from vintage periodicals (Coke). ”

There seems to be hundreds of really nice quality scans here and the images are not all ads. There are several Fortune Magazine covers as well. I wonder if they are actually making any money selling the scans and how they get away with selling scanned copies of copyrighted work?

Comments

This site is very visually appealing. The images are all done with superb attention to detail. The navigation is a little cumbersome . . . but all in all, a great site!!

Most advertising from the 1950s was never copyrighted to begin with.

I would disagree - the magazine or the original advertiser or ad agency would hold the copyright. The work is a protected piece the minute it is created. In many cases the original designers or their estates hold the copyright.

Bob is right. Most midcentury advertsing wasn't copyrighted. For a published work to be copyrighted it has to CLAIM copyright -- it has to say "Copyright 1955 Acme Corp." or "(c) 1955 Acme Corp." Most ads back then didn't. Also back then if you wanted to copyright something, you had to register your work with the Library of Congress and pay a fee as well, and most advertisers didn't bother with that since their ad was here one day and gone the next -- there wasn't much point to it. And for works for hire that were copyrighted, the copyrights expired after 28 years for works created before 1962.