Last modified: 2024-01-20 by rob raeside
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image by António Martins-Tuválkin, 30 November 2023
image located by Viktor Lomantsov, 10 January 2018
A Soviet advertising poster (1928) for American pencils "A. Hammer" shows a
mysterious red flag with logo.
Big image -
https://img-fotki.yandex.ru/get/164839/29146087.880/0_d41aa_62caa691_orig.jpg
Viktor Lomantsov, 10 January 2018
These pencils were the products of Armand Hammer (1898-1990), a prominent
American businessman, philanthropist and communist sympathizer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armand_Hammer
Miles Li, 10 January
2018
The poster is a publicity image for the pencil brand "A. Hammer". It has been claimed that it was done by Владимир Августович Стенберги (English: Vladimir Avgustovich Stenberg) and Георгий Августович Стенберги (English: Georgiy Avgustovich), known as the Братья Стенберг (English: Stenberg brothers) in a Constructivism technique.
"Soviet advertising pencils 1920's. A. Hammer" Pencil factory "A. Hammer"
began work in Moscow in April 1926, as a private American industrial concession.
On February 19, 1930, the factory was taken over by the state and was renamed
(the) "Карандаш фабрики им. Сакко и Ванцетти" (English: "Sacco and Vanzetti
Pencil Factory" (after. Sacco and Vanzetti, after the Italian immigrant workers
whose execution in the U.S. in 1927 for crimes they allegedly did not commit
made them martyrs to the socialist cause). Thus, the pencil (company and) brand
A. Hammer lasted a little less than four years.
A. Hammer's (named after
its founder, Armand Hammer) factory was the only private pencil factory for the
whole of the USSR's existence and was a strong competitor to the state pencil
factories. Consumers willingly bought pencils and other stationery products of
the A. Hammer factory, although it was much more expensive than similar ones at
state factories.
A. Hammer's products were of high quality, colorfully
framed and competently promoted to the market. It can be assumed that it was the
competition between the private pencil factory A. Hammer and the state pencil
factories that caused a large number of pencil advertisements in the USSR in the
late 1920s. In the Soviet Union, neither before nor after, this has taken place.
And, of course, the most vivid and numerous was the advertisement of A. Hammer.
Esteban Rivera, 10 January 2018
Esteban Rivera, 10 January 2018
This flagoid was used originally (and uniquely) in a promotional poster for the A. Hammer Pencil Factory - a joint Soviet-U.S. office material manufactor, based in Leningrad in the 1930s. The shown flagoid is mainly red with an emblem at the upper hoist (in typical Soviet fasion) and is forked, and seemingly not tapering.
Although the flag seems to be wholly ersatz (a flagoid), and never
used outside the image of this poster, the emblem itself seems to have been the
logo of the company, as shown, i.a., in this other image:
https://mf.b37mrtl.ru/rbthmedia/images/2017.12/original/5a40b7eb85600a4e382760ee.jpg
(Not sure whether this is another poster, a packaging label, or both.)
This logo combines the symbols of Leningrad (Sankt Peterburg) and of New York
City, showing a white on black contour representation of the Statue of Liberty
(from the bust up) on a central square area and on the wide edge around it the
lettering "A. Hammer" in black blocky capitals at the bottom and on the other
three sides a red and white radiant pattern (with nine visible red rays) beaming
from the upper left corner (dexter / hoist side) where there is a (light) blue
quadrant sundisc bearing in white historical arms of Sankt Peterburg
[ru-spe.html], with the grapple however replaced by a hammer.
António
Martins-Tuválkin, 30 November 2023
