In most of the performing arts posters were used and plastered all over a town preceding the appearance of the performer. Many of these posters were called broadsides and mentioned the names of all the performers that would be in a show and give little bits of information about the acts.
Many of the more famous performers would use full posters with pictures of themselves and even pictures of the act. This was very common with magicians and many of these posters were very colorful and today have become exceedingly collectible and rare.
The posters were done in half sheet, full sheet, three sheet and even giant 16 sheet billboard size. There were quite a few companies that did these posters and these posters were in actuality lithographs. A lithograph is done by a process of each color being run at separate pressing of the image until the final full colored poster is achieved.
One of the companies that created these lithographs was the Donaldson Lithograph Co. of Kentucky. They produced many great posters and one of them happened to be a Ventriloquist’s poster. It was called a stock poster because the image was always the same but the performer could have his name added across the top. Any ventriloquist could order this poster and use them to paper a town before he arrived.
I am happy today to show you one of these posters that is a part of the Ventriloquist Central Collection. I hope you enjoy seeing this lithograph.
Dan
www.ventriloquistcentral.com
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Dan Willinger is a ventriloquism enthusiast and ventriloquist figure collector. He has been collecting for over 25 years. He created the Ventriloquist Central Collection. It now has over 100 ventriloquist figures and over 50 of them are Frank Marshall figures. Because of his love for the art of ventriloquism, Mr. Willinger created the website Ventriloquist Central. For more information about the website, go to: http://www.ventriloquistcentral.com
Copyright 2010 by Dan Willinger
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