JF Ptak Science Books Post 302
Well now–this is a candy shop
It is positively dripping with evil, its luscious display in a soft pre-chewed-like environment, as in a chocolate dream in someone else’s head. (Chocolate dreams are good to have, just ask poor old dead Hans Sloane, the man whose chocolate-based fortune and bequest formed the basis of the British Museum.) The ribbon design in the floor continuing up the wall just past the display is an invitation to getting totally lost in sugarly beauty, a swirling trail to a confectionary Ravena.
All of these images come from the pamphlet published by the Associated Retail Confectioners of the United States: Meet the Foods Candy is Made Of, made to accompany their annual meeting of 1946 at the Drake Hotel in Chicago. (There must’ve been an awful lot of these folks to book the Drake.) The cover does seem somewhat on the desperate side, trying to convince anyone who would have a look that candy–since it is made of all that good looking stuff–was indeed FOOD (“no wonder candy is so good to eat!”)
The next image is the “Table Service” area of Wieda’s Incoporated, (a fine, large candy store in Patterson, New Jersey) , “located in the rear”, where I guess the serious stuff is done, when you needed a table to consume your goodies with a wholesome cup o’ Joe.
The third image is again from Wieda’s–perhaps a little bit of payoff to Mr. Wieda for his (presidential) service to the association. The black and white image does absolutely nothing to address it fabulously colored interior, with its lemon yellow ceiling, with the upper walls and curtains a burnt orange and the lower walls “a soft light green”, all surrounding a terrazzo floor of maroon and gray. The woodwork was all walnut, and the mirrors were “tinted flesh color, which is more flattering to the customer than the usual untinted mirror”. Oh my.
There was all sorts of information-sharing in the conference, evidently: the best way to package and display candies, convincing mothers that candy was “food” after all and good for the kids, packaging candy so that it appealed to children, wrapping candy around other small gifts and trinkets, luring the customer into the candy store with more elaborate displays to pull you deeper inside, and so on. There was allot of thinking going on here about sweets, which seems pretty inconsequential until you think about the fortunes made by Hans Sloane and the Wrigleys and Mars, especially with the later too, what with the gum company being purchased by the Mars family for billions of dollars–which is a lot of money for gum, which of course is hardly a candy.
In any event these stores are just gorgeous, and gorgeous in a way that their gorgeousness can never again be achieved–and I’m not sure why. Maybe its because I’m not wearing one of those fabulous double-worsted suits that Bogey used to wear, not that he’d be found in one of these places.
