Order Up
Today’s collection is a grab bag of midcentury North American restaurant placemats. Like so many past ephemera finds I’ve shared here, I bought these at Brimfield Flea this July from a vendor who had around 500 in a big plastic tub. I bought 25 for $75 (a steal!) but I did have to talk myself out of asking how much it would be for the whole box.
Most of these date from the late 1940s through the ’50s, when the postwar boom and expanding highway system put long-distance vacations within reach for a growing middle class in both the US and Canada. Roadside diners, motor lodges, and destination restaurants sprang up to serve this new wave of car-bound tourists, often positioning themselves just off major routes or in the heart of resort towns.
The placemats themselves do double duty, serving as placemats as well as menus, regional maps, or fun-for-the-whole-family activity sheets—like the one that tells you your personality based on how you order your eggs (I’m poached!) Cheap offset printing made it easy and inexpensive to produce these at scale, just as it did for matchbooks, postcards, and other roadside souvenirs. The process also shaped their visual style: solid blocks of color rather than gradients, bold line art that could hold up on coarse paper, and designs built to print cleanly even if printing plates weren’t perfectly aligned. Nonetheless, economics were still the driving force behind many design decisions, resulting in limited color palettes and, often, a mix of stock and custom illustration (note the two different restaurants using the same floral border). Scalloped edges abound.
This kind of tourist ephemera is clearly the progenitor for a certain breed of present day nostalgia-forward design (I call it Heartland Hodgepodge on are.na) that relies on the many of the same tricks seen here; flat but expressive illustrations, sketches of storefronts, dichromatic palettes, mismatched type, and layouts that feel busy but deliberate have been polished and reimagined to sell everything from coffee to pickleball. The big difference, of course, is that these placemats weren’t trying to be “retro.” They just were.
This issue’s featured archive is ZuantuSet, a collection of 179,692 historical Chinese diagrammatic graphics that ranges from maps to medical illustrations. The illustration date back to 750 BCE!
I’m speaking at the AIGA Conference in LA in October! Readers of Casual Archivist can get 15% off their ticket with the code GOODSPEED15. I also have one ~*free ticket*~ to give away—just comment below what kind of ephemera you think I should cover in a future newsletter (one entry per person please!) and I’ll pick someone at random to attend on Friday Monday the 18th. Winner announced in the comments <3
I've started scanning all the old magazines from Iran and will share them soon but this is truly inspiring. Imagine if we could still see beautiful mats in restaurants now!!! I'm always trying to convince my friends who run businesses like this to bring these little details back, but no luck so far, haha!
I think you should do napkins or menus next if you can find any.
There is also this one really kind lady in LA who has an amazing archive of magazines and she sometimes vendors at events. Here is her website https://mac.hwd.mybluehost.me/
You should check it out while you are here if that interests you. I would also be happy to come with :)
Endlessly fascinated by bubble gum packaging (the package and each of the wrappers) and matchbooks! I think both would be great deep-dives. Love these placemats.