The interwar period saw the heyday of an extraordinarily charming, colorful, yet lewd advertising medium, the tally sheet.
This small printed material, which originated in the early 18th century and became widespread during the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, is among the first mass-produced advertising tools.
The tally sheets replaced the mechanical cash register receipt: merchants and restaurateurs used these small sheets, ordered in 7×15 cm, in sets of 50 or 100, to tally items and provide the total amount due. On the other hand, it also functioned as a hand-held advertising tool. By the turn of the century, every self-respecting manufacturer and trader had their own branded tally sheet.
Smaller businesses had simpler graphics produced at a lower printing cost, while larger companies (e.g., Törley, Zwack, Stollwerck, or Herz) had their lithographed tally sheets designed by the era's famous artists. On the refined versions from the Art Nouveau period, various advertising texts played an important role.
The monthly magazine Reklámélet wrote about the tally sheet in 1938: „It was born into the world to conquer everyone with its smiling colorful face, who comes into contact with it or whose gaze falls upon it, but it constantly only shows its back, the back on which the bill is printed that needs to be paid...”
Image sources: www.pinterest.com, www.eastjournal.net.
Interested in the topic? I recommend:
- Tally sheet, advertising in hand.
- Hungarian tally sheets at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century.
- The world of tally sheets.
