Byline: Phyllis A.S. Boros
Aug. 23--Mouthwatering.
That's one way to describe a collection of advertising posters, touting the lusciousness of chocolate, that goes on display Saturday at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich.
'Eye Candy: Two Centuries of Chocolate Advertising' will feature 22 large-scale vintage and notable advertisements from the 19th and 20th centuries that were designed to entice viewers into purchasing and consuming chocolate drinks and candy.
The exhibit, which will run through Dec. 2, complements the museum's larger show, 'A Taste for Chocolate,' that opened in July. That exhibition, on view through Feb. 24, explores the commodity's place in the history of popular culture in Europe and the Americas.
Both exhibitions are curated by museum educator Carol Ward, who grew up in a home where chocolate was often the source of dinner-table conversation. Although now retired, Ward's father had been chief executive officer of a chocolate company that supplied cacao to manufacturers around the world.
Ward is a 2003 graduate of Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, Va., where she majored in art history. In 2005, the college gallery invited Ward to guest curate an exhibition that featured decorative items and paintings -- all with a chocolate motif -- from her parents' collection.
When Ward joined the Bruce Museum staff in August 2005, she suggested that the Bruce consider offering a broader version of her college show. The result is the poster show and 'Taste,' which includes about 50 decorative pieces and historical artifacts that follow chocolate history from about A.D. 600 -- when the Maya established the first cacao plantations -- through the 20th century. Ward explained that the concoction's name came from the early 15th century Aztec, whose royalty favored mixing cacao with water, chili peppers, cornmeal and other ingredients to create a spicy drink called chocolatl.
Ward said that the companion show was put together to illustrate how chocolate advertising and the art of advertising each evolved during the 19th century through the mid-20th century.
The advertising posters are drawn from Wilbur Chocolate's Americana Museum in Lititz, Pa., The International Poster Gallery of Boston, private lenders, and from the collection owned by the curator's parents, Marion and Jack Ward of Mamaronack, N.Y. Through the centuries, chocolate was primarily consumed as a drink. But in the 18th and 19th centuries, the English, Dutch and Swiss learned to grind cacao beans into a powder, which could be made into a liquid and then cooled to form a chocolate bar.
Companies such as Cadbury, Nestle and Lindt began producing chocolate in milk and dark varieties, at prices that were more affordable to the general public, she explained in a previous interview. It was also during this time that the tradition of adding milk and sugar to chocolate powder developed, with recipes akin to the 'hot chocolate' drink of today. Ward pointed out last week that in the late 1800s, most advertisements appeared in newspapers and magazines and 'focused on the perceived health benefits of drinking chocolate,' with the message that 'if you drink chocolate in the morning, you'll stay fresh and energized through the day.'
British companies, such as Cadbury and Fry's, promoted the idea that 'chocolate is good for you . . . and used images of members of the royal family and the prime minister to lend credence' to their claims, Ward noted.
The originals were done in black ink, and often hand-painted in muted colors; examples in the exhibit from this era, created for the Illustrated London News, date to the late 1880s.
It was the French, Ward said, that elevated advertising to an art form in the late 1890s. Paris was undergoing beautification and Parisians were eager to tout all the best in French commodities (wines and chocolates, for example) and their landmarks (such as the Moulin Rouge) in a series of 240 bright and bold prints that celebrated life in La Belle poque.
Printed by Les Maitres de l'Affiche (The Masters of the Poster), the works -- by 90 artists including Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Pierre Bonnard and Maxfield Parrish -- were sold as lithographic artwork in a 12-inch by 16- inch format. The images also were mass-produced in a larger poster format and distributed as advertisements.
In the exhibition are three hand-carved lithographs, including Henri Gerbault's piece promoting Chocolat Carpentier, depicting a cat and dog attempting to get at a bowl of hot chocolate as a mother, with infant, look on.
Examples of advertising from the 20th century include a 1952 piece in which movie star Liz Taylor promotes Whitman's Chocolate for Valentine's Day, while simultaneously promoting her new movie 'Ivanhoe.' In another, from 1956, Disney designer Mary Blair depicts a little girl drinking a tall glass of Baker's Instant Cocoa.
'The show is a nice companion to 'A Taste'; together they show the enormous impact that chocolate has had on popular culture once chocolate became available [and affordable] to the masses,' Ward added.
The Bruce Museum is at 1 Museum Drive in Greenwich, exit 3 off Interstate 95. Hours are Tuesday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sundays from 1 to 5 p.m. Admission is $7, $6 for senior citizens and students, free for children under age 5 and members. Free admission is offered for all on Tuesdays. Museum exhibition tours are given on Fridays at 12:30 p.m. Free, on-site parking is available. The museum is wheelchair accessible. Groups of eight or more require advance reservations. For additional information, visit www.brucemuseum.org or call 869-0376.
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