Carrying Home the Holidays
Shopping Bags, Bloomingdale's & Christmas
The paper shopping bag we all know and use is a relatively recent invention. Most nineteenth-century purchases were wrapped in paper and twine, either to be carried home in one’s arms or delivered there by the merchant. The first machine for producing paper bags was patented in 1852 by Francis Wolle, a Pennsylvania priest and inventor. Simple envelope-style bags, they did not have a large carrying capacity. In 1870, Margaret Knight (often called "the most famous 19th-century woman inventor") developed the first machine to produce paper bags with flat, square bottoms (similar to these)—previously this bag was produced by hand, an expensive and laborious process. The machine to produce the fully collapsible bags we use for groceries and lunches today was invented by Charles Stilwell in 1883—due to their ability to stay standing unaided he named the bag, “S.O.S.” or the “Self-Opening Sack.”
All these bags still needed to be held in the arms or hand, limiting how much a customer could carry. In the 1910s, Minnesota grocery store owner Walter Deubner began to experiment with ways to ease carrying—finally alighting in 1912 upon a method of reinforcing the bag with cord and adding handles, which could carry over twenty pounds of canned goods. An immediate success, by 1915 he was selling over a million shopping bags a year.
Made from plain brown Kraft paper, the first known instance of a store or company putting their name on a bag was in 1922 when Bloomingdale’s printed a special Fiftieth Anniversary message to its customers on the face of their small loop-handle bags. In the following three decades, printed bags were still a largely unusual occurrence—even Bloomingdale’s continued with just plain brown bags. After the development of a paper bag with strong twisted handles in the early 1950s, Bloomingdale’s introduced their first custom (non-event-related) shopping in 1954. These changed seasonally for the rest of the decade with slight adaptations to background colour and illustration. It wasn’t until 1961 that Bloomingdale’s realized the power of shopping bags as mini-billboards, as status symbols, and as art—starting a trend that would impact retail marketing worldwide.
While there is lots more to say on the history of Bloomingdale’s shopping bags, below are some of the many bags they have produced for the holiday season. Let me know if you would like to know more about their other shopping bags and their impact.
While it is difficult to date this bag exactly, Bloomingdale’s first introduced custom bags in 1954—the first shared a similar whimsical illustration, with the candy cane replaced by an umbrella, the holly a rose, and the red velvet and ermine glove with a classic white one.
According to the Cooper Hewitt, the illustrator for this bag was Helen Vukovic but I have been unable to find a record of anyone under that name.
New Yorker cartoonist Charles Saxon painted this quintessentially New York watercolor for Bloomingdale’s, showing Santa and a reindeer effortlessly skating on a frozen East River under the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge. The design was re-released for the 1995 holiday season.
Bloomingdale’s looked to 1930s poster art for this holiday bag. Creative director: John Jay.
Inspired by the art deco illustrations of Erté. Art director: Brian Burdine.
Bob Alcorn painted this medieval scene, inspired by the artwork of Maxfield Parrish. Art director: Brian Burdine.
Celebrating the launch of the Space Shuttle program a year earlier, Bloomingdale’s theme for Holiday 1982 was “Christmas at the Dawn of a New Era.” Artist Bob Alcorn drew the jetpack-flying Santa.
Reminiscent of the winter-themed prints produced by Currier and Ives during the nineteenth century, this bag brought a nostalgic mood to Lexington Avenue. Creative director: John Jay
Bloomingdale’s annual import fair took them to Japan in the fall of 1985, so the creative team decided to extend that theme for holiday—replicating the feel of origami to create silhouettes of snowflakes and reindeer. Creative director: John Jay
Folk artist Kathy Jakobsen painted a snowy holiday street scene along Lexington Avenue. Art director: David Au.
Illustration by Mark Weakley.
