It wasn’t always called circa19. It started out as a purchase I made at a garage sale in Mattoon, Illinois in 1974. A Hamm’s Beer sign I got for $5. You know, the one with the canoe on the little beach in the northern backwoods with the shimmering water. Well, maybe if your a member of AARP, you’ll remember. Anyway, that led to a lifetime of running around antique shop, flea markets, and the more dignified, modernism shows, picking up more and more stuff. So all that stuff led to a collection, and that collection, led to me wanting to share it on the Web. Circa19.

Here are a few facts I usually like to share in discussion, usually over a swanky cocktail. In history, the design field, which hold so near and dear, didn’t really step out of the shadows of ornamentation (making things pretty based on the human organic experience). Artisians always knew flowers, birds, plants, leaves and flowing vines were pretty. But with the turn of the 20th century, specifically around 1925, which coincides with the explosion of the movie industry, a new breed of ornamentation took hold. The designer. This person utilized more than their visual sense of what was pretty in nature. They utilized creativity and the borrowed the geometry of the celestrial world. Soon, the world would survive a depression with the fun and whimsical promise of the streamlined modernism style which was exhibited and displayedon movie sets and to the public masses at Chicago’s “Century of Progress” (1933-34) and New York’s “World of Tomorrow” (1939-40) world fairs.

This collection showcases what a designer can do with a few shapes, some handcut fonts and a big dose of visual creativity.