Pin-up advertising ink blotters are an affordable and interesting way to collect so called “good girl art” from the 1930s through 1970s. Advertising ink blotters were 9″x4″ or 6″x3″ cards mailed to customers who were supposed to place them on their office desks and blot ink from their fountain pens after use. Fountain pens went the way of the dodo in favor of ball point technology and with them went this form of advertising. Ink blotters featured the advertisers name and sometimes a calendar and some artwork to make them interesting. While some of the artwork featured was of nature, sporting activities and cartoons, a favorite was the pin-up art of some of the renowned pin-up artists of the era including Gil Elvgren, Earl Moran, Joyce Ballantyne, Zoe Mozert, K.O. Munson, Ted Withers, Bill Layne and Vaughan Bass. While Blotto’s work cataloguing ink blotter art is not done, more than 1,400 different pin-up paintings have been featured on ink blotters.
Blotter pictured above is by Zoe Mozert for Brown & Bigelow in 1944
Blotto! 