Fairy tales and chocolate ads

Margaret Ely Webb's charming foray into advertising

Last month I came across an illustration, purely by accident. I was scrolling through a 1904 volume of St Nicholas magazine (an illustrated magazine for children) when I spotted something distinctly in Margaret Ely Webb’s style — it was an ad for breakfast cocoa!

Before then I hadn’t known Webb to illustrate anything other than periodicals, children’s books or bookplates so I was ecstatic to find her work in advertising! The difficulty is that many of the St Nicholas volumes were bound without advertisements. (For context, St Nicholas was published monthly and volumes would be bound with 6 issues inside, naturally with the ads taken out. These volumes are what institutions would digitise and share online. Which is why I thought it was complete luck I had looked through a volume with ads.)

After researching a bit more I found that Webb exclusively designed these ads to incorporate fairy tales and Lowney’s chocolate products. The Walter M. Lowney Company was a chocolate and candy business founded in Boston in the early 1880s by Walter M. Lowney and included products like breakfast cocoa (chocolate powder), chocolate medallions and bonbons.

1901 Lowney ad (not by Webb) and tin

In the ads Webb twists the fairy tale stories to include how Lowney’s chocolate products have helped the characters. Other fairy tales she’s illustrated for the series include Jack and the Beanstalk, Snow White, Goldilocks and more! In all I found 15 ad illustrations from 1901 to 1905 but I feel she designed much more, I just can’t find them given the issue of ads being taken out from the scanned volumes online!

I would buy anything advertised like this! Let me know what you think of the illustrations in the comments.

-Jess

Read more of my Margaret Ely Webb research here.
Liked this article? You can now also buy me a coffee!