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Art Nouveau insurance ad

Cory Doctorow at 10:41 pm Thu, Dec 16, 2010

Kindle

This early 1900s Art Nouveau Equitable Insurance ad originally ran in Harper's Monthly -- more than a century later, I still find it compelling.

Decorated Insurance Ad

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Anonymous

Nice. I actually work for this company…or the French mega-conglomerate that it has become in the 100 years since this advertisement ran.
- Donald Petersen
  
  I actually work for this company
  
  May we thereby assume that they’re still represented by “men of character,” then?
  
  I can’t speak thus about State Farm, I tell you what.
John Coulthart

I rather like this one from Jugend magazine, 1901:

http://diglit.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/jugend1901_1/0017/image?sid=8a9af7021c819fd2922933a1bd21bc09#current_page
Anonymous

“Compelling?”

Read ‘After the Ball’ by Patricia Beard — the story of how Equitable was the Enron of the Gilded Age — and then tell me how “compelling” you find this ad.