It's Halloween season again and my first task for the holiday is always to search the Halloween sites for old-time die-cut window decorations. I had a collection of them even when I was a kid. That's because they were cheap and sold for a price that even little kids like me could afford.
The pearls of greatest price were the ones that were holdovers from a much older period, maybe the 1910s and 20s. They seemed to come from a time when people actually believed in witches and ghosts.
It's as if the people back then used humor to ease the anxiety they felt about a holiday which threatened to unleash real supernatural weirdness on the world.
Some of the best cardboard masks were done by artists (above) who weren't the best draughtsmen, but who had a visceral feel for the holiday. I wonder how they made a living the rest of the year?
Halloween decorations also made me aware that there were different kinds of artists in the world. Some were what we would call "graphic artists" today. Content for them was less important than pleasing composition.
There was a real pagan influence in the Halloween cards (above) of this period. It was as if the Druids had never died out.
Yikes! Talk about supernatural weirdness.....
Great stuff, Mon Oncle...Halloween has always seemed to me to have had two golden ages- one represented by this stuff and one that came from sixties television and the horror hosts.
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