Episode One Hundred One - Halloween Die Cuts

Host Gregory Hallows, founder of the Halloween Preservation Society, shares a new series in the Preserve Halloween Archive.

From the Archives 003 : The Miracle of Halloween Die Cuts

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Before Halloween glowed from front porches, before smiling pumpkins welcomed visitors from neatly trimmed lawns, before neighborhoods filled with illuminated ghosts and black cats, Halloween entered the home another way, on paper, not in books, not in newspapers, on the walls, hung from doorways, pinned from mantles, fastened to classroom bulletin boards, taped carefully to parlor windows. These decorations were not expensive and they were not intended to become family heirlooms. Most only cost a few pennies. They were purchased with one simple purpose to transform an ordinary room into October. Today we call them die cut decorations, which is a curious name. Mechanical, clinical. It tells us exactly how they were made. And but it tells us nothing about why they mattered. Because for generations of Americans, these weren't simply pieces of printed cardboard. They were the first smiling pumpkin of the season. The first black cat watching from the wall, the first witch silently welcoming guests to a Halloween party. Like so many of the objects we've explored inside the archive, their importance wasn't measured by what they were made from. It is measured by what they made us feel. And I I've talked about this a lot. Paper is very fragile, and that's why I kind of harp on the fact that this stuff shouldn't exist anymore. Unlike wood or metal or plastic, paper knows its time is limited. If you fold it too many times, it'll tear. If you leave it in the sunlight, the color begins to fade. If you store it carelessly, moisture and insects and time just reclaims it. Every surviving Halloween die cut die cut has overcome the odds of sh it should not exist. Someone resisted the urge to throw it away. Someone took care of it very carefully after the party ended. Someone put it in a box, someone put it in an attic, someone put it in a cedar chest, a dress dresser drawer. They put it somewhere to protect it. And then year after year, they made that same decision. They didn't throw it away, they kept it. And that simple, quiet decision was repeated thousands of times across America, and that is the reason why we can still admire admire the original decorations that we do today. Uh, history, we'll we'll repeat this a billion times. History often survives because ordinary people choose not to let it disappear, and that is one of our biggest jobs. So this is Preserve Halloween Podcast. I am Gregory Hollows. Can't even say my own name right. Thank you guys for joining me. Uh, this is a fun topic. This is one of the things I actually just did a video about this on Patreon, but um I forgot that in my in my uh timeline I had this this uh podcast you know planned out. So let's get to it. To understand Halloween die cuts, we have to first understand something much older, and that is printing and the printing process itself. For centuries, printers had been producing books, newspapers, greeting cards, calendars. Beautiful images certainly could be printed, but they shared one thing in common. They were rectangular, they did not have the shape of the object. Uh, they were bound by the edges of the paper itself. And then someone said, Hey, why does the paper have to remain square? What if we could cut it to where it's the shape of whatever the object is? And that simple question led to one of the most important innovations in commercial printing, and that is the die cut. A steel cutting die carefully shaped to match an illustration. You could press through the printed paper with remarkable precision, and suddenly pumpkins didn't have to sit inside a rectangle. They could become the rectangle. A witch's hat could extend into empty space, a black cat's tail could curve naturally, leaves could scatter around the edges. The decoration itself became the artwork. Uh, this was a small techno technological advancement and achievement, but creatively it changed everything. Um so imagine you walk into a print shop in the early years of the 20th century, ink is filling the air, large presses are rumbling steadily in every room, stacks of brightly printed Halloween sheets are waiting to be cut, and nearby a craftsman lifts something surprisingly heavy, that is a steel rule die. And at first glance it looks almost abstract. Thin strips of sharpened steel bent by hand, forming the outline of a pumpkin or a witch or a black cat. These things look like just heavy-duty cookie cutters, right? But they are infinitely more precise. You're not gonna get any weird, you know how you get cookies that never just turn out the way that the shape is supposed to be. You're not gonna get that with this. This freshly printed sheet, placed beneath it, press comes down, and for a brief moment, paper meets steel, and when you lift that sheet away, the artwork has been transformed, it's no longer confined by straight edges. Now the pumpkin smiles on its own. The owl spreads its wing beyond the border, the witch flies freely across the page. Something so simple, but that single process gave Halloween some it's some of its most recognizable imagery. And for the first time, the decoration itself became the illustration, not just a picture of it. Huge, huge advancement, right? Um so once the machinery existed, once printers could produce brilliant colors, once sheets of paper could be cut into almost any shape imaginable, someone still needed to decide what Halloween should look like. And this is where the story becomes especially interesting. Because the Halloween decorations that we know and love now and think of as traditional, they weren't all created by one company, they emerged from competition. Uh, and that's how everything is. Somebody found out somebody was doing something, they want to do it. Uh, each of these trying to create something irresistible so that a shopkeeper would stock it because these are val, this is valuable space in a shop. Uh, they want to make sure it's something that families would spend those precious few cents that they had to spare and take it home. Uh, among these companies, one name is almost inseparable from vintage Halloween decorating, and that is Beezel. And I don't know if I'm saying it right, and I don't care, but I'm gonna say it Bezel until somebody tells me I'm wrong. Uh, this story begins in Pennsylvania and does not begin with Halloween. Martin Luther Beezel founded the company that would bear his name in 1900. The earliest products were not jack-o'-lanterns and black cats, they were something for hotel lobbies and artificial plants and decorative greenery. But sometimes companies discover their identity in unexpected places. Bezel moved deeper into paper decorations and eventually into the expanding world of seasonal party goods. Because people like to party. Christmas, New Year's, Valentine's Day, patriotic celebrations, and eventually Halloween. By the early decades of the 20th century, Halloween was becoming commercially irresistible. Once people find out you're going to spend money on something, they kind of go insane. Think about summerween. Nobody really knew what that was a few years ago, and now every major box store and anybody that can think of is selling something summarine. So that's how it works. Americans were hosting parties, schools were celebrating, stores were decorating windows, community organizations held socials, families needed decorations, and Beezle was ready. Open an old Beezle catalog, and you're looking at something much larger than merchandise. You're looking at a visual vocabulary. Jack-o'-lanterns, owls, skeletons, witches, black cats, moons, bats, devils, autumn leaves, some of them slit slightly frightening, most of them whimsical, all of them wonderfully strange. And that's very important because these companies weren't simply responding to Halloween imagery. They were reinforcing it. Every year they use the same symbols again and again. A child growing up surrounded by these decorations learned something without ever being formally taught. Black cats belong to Halloween, owls belong to Halloween, witches belong to Halloween. Orange and black go together. It is just the way it is. Jack o'lanter should grin. Bats should fly across the moon. These were not ancient rules carved into stone. They were just traditions because generations repeatedly saw them. They saw them on postcards, on candy boxes, on party invitations, and hanging from the walls. Commercial art became a tradition. And that's an extraordinary amount of cultural influence for something sold as a party decoration, right? So let's open up a cardboard box that hasn't been touched in decades. Inside you will find Halloween, but not the Halloween of today. You'll find the earlier Halloween, a large orange jack-o'lander with exaggerated eyes, a black cat arching its back, an owl staring right at you, a witch whose face falls somewhere between frightening and friendly. You recognize them all, even if you have never seen these particular decorations before. And that's the remarkable part. Their visual descendants are everywhere. We see them everywhere. So what companies like Beezel did was something subtle. They standardized the commercial appearance of Halloween. They took folklore, harvest imagery, superstition, pop culture, and translated them into objects that ordinary Americans could buy for very little. Uh Halloween came home. So here's another big name. So it's not just Beezel, right? What about Denison? Denison Manufacturing Company. They have an interesting place in history because they didn't merely sell decorations. They taught people how to deck or how to celebrate. Sorry. Decorating suggestions, costumes, games, menus, table settings, invitations, entertainment. All very important, right? So today, if you want to if you want Halloween party ideas, you just click on old Google there, open up your phone, you get a thousand suggestions. Most of them are horrible, but you get a thousand suggestions right off the bat. A century ago, there was no internet, internet, there was no Pinterest, no YouTube, no social media. Can you imagine? Like uh so a booklet from a company like Denison would become your Halloween inspiration guide. You weren't you weren't merely purchasing paper, you were purchasing ideas. So say you're a young hostess preparing a Halloween gathering. Open up your Denison publication, open up your bogey book, right? You get to see pictures. This this whole entire Halloween world is described for you in detail. Uh shows you what to do. Like basically, let's copy these guys. Place cards, party favors, games, fortune telling, costumes. Everything was coordinated. Everything was achievable because they sold it. Everything in that bogey book was something you could buy from Denison, right? They wanted you to recreate what they put in the books at home. Their publication was quietly telling you your Halloween can look like this if you wanted to. But it's also cultural influence because thousands of people followed these suggestions. They decorated their homes, they hosted parties, they played games, they copied these table arrangements, and they passed these traditions along. The company was not simply selling Halloween products, they were selling Halloween itself. So, so we got Beezel, we got Denison. Who's next? What about lures? We've talked about lures before. Similar products. A lot of I went over during Patreon like how the comparisons between the old H. E. Lures and the Beezle die cuts, they're very similar, just different colors and you know, slight deviations. Uh, a lot of people thought lures was a whole different company. We learned that was wrong. That was just a guy that worked at Beezle and kind of just took over. So uh continue the tradition of bold pumpkins, expressive cats, owls, faces filled with personality. These these decorations are iconic. Simply, simply iconic. And the personality included in them helped turn these simple pieces of paper into characters families remembered. And because these decorations were inexpensive, you could find them all over the place in classrooms, in a kitchen, in a shop window, maybe a church basement. I don't know if you got a cool church, right? Community halls. Halloween imagery was escaping the printed page and surrounding people everywhere. Um, and for many of us, the one of the most important places we saw Halloween visually was in the classroom at school. For generations of American children, the classroom was one of the first places where Halloween visibly arrived. Before the family decorated the house, before costumes were purchased, before pumpkins were even carved. A teacher opened up this magical drawer where she hid all the junk she took from you, and out came construction paper, orange, black, maybe purple. Then the decorations, a smiling pumpkin stuck it on the classroom door, a black cat was on the bulletin board, a skeleton, those giant six-foot skeletons that are you just all the joints. That went on the chalkboard. We get to look at it for you know a month. Paper leaves covered the windows, and then our classroom changed. October was here. Think about that, and think about the power of that ritual. A child walks into the same classroom every morning, same desk, same chalkboard, same windows, and then one morning he shows up, he or she, everything looks different. Not dramatically, but just enough to know that Halloween has entered the chat. And that is very important for a kid's psyche. Uh, and this is something we keep discovering inside the archive. The objects that I'm talking about are not the whole story. Ask someone about an old Halloween decoration and they remember where it was hung. My teacher had one of those. My grandma put that above the fireplace. The grocery store near our house had these in the window. We had that pumpkin tape to our refrigerator every year. So these objects become landmarks in your memory. And that's why this inexpensive piece of cardboard, paper, whatever you want to call it, cardboard really, can trigger such a powerful reaction decades later. You're not remembering that piece of paper, that cardboard. You're remembering a place, a person, a particular October, and possibly a version of yourself that no longer exists. That's what artifacts do. They hold on to things that we can't. And one of my favorite parts of any Halloween decoration, especially die cuts, pick one up, right? Look for the tape marks. Look to see. I I'm like this with posters. I I love old movie posters. I love movie posters in general. I prefer, I prefer ones that have been used. Like I would know, I want to know that it was put up in the window at the movie theater. That's very important to me. So I look for those things that some collectors would consider damage, right? The small brown stain, the torn corner, that piece of yellow tape still just clinging, hanging on for dear life on on the on the die cut. From a collector's standpoint, from an archival standpoint, two different things. From a collector's standpoint, these blemishes may lower the condition and make the this uh this object less valuable monetarily. Don't care. From an archival standpoint, and from a collector and a person who just loves this stuff. I love seeing those those marks. These tell me that someone hung it up, someone used it, someone loved this object that they taped it up over and over again. That little tape mark is evidence that this decoration wasn't put in a warehouse and not touched. It participated in Halloween just as much as we did. Someone chose where to put it, someone stood back, looked at it, and decided, you know what? I feel like it's Halloween now. And years later, some collectors wish they never put tape on, you know, their decorations. I've been there. I I understand that completely because yes, things are valuable or more valuable monetarily. I will clear that up. They are much more uh valuable monetarily if they are unblemished. Don't care. I want it to look like somebody loved it. Uh, there's something just wonderful about seeing those little blemishes to me. It says I participated, I I love this thing, I wanted to hang it up, I wanted to see it, and that's a pretty big deal. So um, one of the most interesting um die cut type products there are. I don't know how many of you know about the honeycombs. Um not every great die cut or paper decoration was flat, right? Some unfolded, some transformed. A flat piece of tissue paper became a pumpkin all of a sudden, with that little piece of cardboard attached to make it, you know, look not just like an orange ball. Uh these were really cool but very fragile uh decorations. Honeycomb paper is basically tissue paper, carefully joined uh joined it at alternating alternating points. Uh you could fold it flat, but when you opened it, bam, it it took a three-dimensional shape, right? Uh they were they're inexpensive to ship, they're easy to store, but they're also very, very fragile. Uh these things would spend 11 months of the year stored in a box, right? And then October comes, take the box down, gotta unfold this, gotta, you know, put these two ends, meet them together, and then your put your pumpkin, your paper pumpkin is around again. Halloween is back. But honeycomb decorations may be among the most miraculous survivors of any Halloween decorations because it's tissue paper, like not archival paper, not cardboard, not just plain paper. It is tissue paper. Um the wind could tear that. So the fact that again, the fact that these things exist and still are around is is a miracle. Um, moisture can ruin it. You're one careless slip of your hand could ruin it, improper storage can crush them, but there are still examples of these surviving today that are still, you know, you can open it up, bam, there it is. So, how did these things survive? Because somebody cared about it. Generation after generation, someone unfolded them gently, folded them back, found a safe place in a box, told a kid, be careful, this thing is really old, and eventually old becomes vintage, and vintage becomes collectible, and collectible can become historical, and that's how archives are born. Not always through institutions, sometimes through a cardboard box that's labeled Halloween decorations. That's our part in this. Um this takes us to the the part of collecting that is difficult to discuss. Uh there's a moment in every collector's life where you ask yourself a question when you find something that's you know fragile or or you know easily terrible or you know just could be damaged easy, you have to ask yourself I don't care how beautiful it is, I don't care. what it would look like you know, out and displayed the way it used to be. Do you open these things? Do you display them in a way that they could be damaged? Is the is the historical significance of the item more important than the aesthetic importance to you? Uh I know everyone wants to see what all these things look like, but some of these things, the paper may be almost a hundred years old. At least around 80 or you know and maybe more. The adhesive is aged, the tissues weakened uh so what do you do? Some of us will just start messing with it a little bit at a time. Don't pull it, don't force it, and then see what happens. Sometimes for the maybe the first time in decades these these decorations are alive again and that's preservation at its most intimate you're not you're not looking at history you're interacting with it and history is very fragile. So back to die cuts because that's you know the the bulk of this this podcast is talking about die cuts. So um die cuttings didn't only remain inside homes and classrooms they started entering commerce like you know most things early 20th century retailers understood the power of seasonal decorating a decorated window did not merely sell merchandise it created anticipation so if you walk down a downtown shopping district in October this is a different time frame you you're not going to see giant LED screens you're not going to see digital signage or animated projections you're gonna see glass windows with paper decorations crepe streamers cardboard pumpkins black cats maybe the beginnings of like mechanical displays if these stores were like had somebody on staff that was super awesome when a kid walked by these count uh these windows I mean imagine think of the scene in a Christmas story when they're all smashed their face up against that that uh that store window and it's just filled with Christmas. Same thing. Kids do not need to see a calendar or at least they didn't back then to know what time of year it was that these store windows would tell you Halloween was approaching and commercial decorations also became part of the seasonal ritual of Halloween. These same imageries that you would see there also appeared at your house and at school so everywhere you went you would see these things and Halloween began to surround people they created a shared Halloween before mass produced decorations I mean they were somewhat mass produced but no nowhere near like now and before this mass production changed the way and commercial printing changed the way Halloween looked because the same black cat that you have at your house in Pennsylvania would be at somebody's house in Ohio and in California and in Mississippi thousands of places in between everybody could be using the exact same jack-o' lantern to decorate their classroom uh in all 50 states uh grocery store window might have the same die cuts and decorations that you had at home or go visit you know relatives they would have the same stuff so it was cool to see that even Americans separated by hundreds of miles were decorating Halloween with the same characters uh this is kind of how postcards you know we talked about that with postcards it was cool to see the Halloween imagery being carried through the mail and spread throughout the country and being shared all over the place uh die cuts took some of the same imagery enlarged it and the the Halloween imagery went from the mailbox to the wall and once Halloween reaches the wall it became part of our environment environment we didn't just simply receive Halloween anymore we walked right into it um so let's let's think of a room not a museum not an antique store somebody's living room the 30s paper witch hangs on the wall honeycomb pumpkin sits on the table an orange and black crepe paper stretches across the doorway does anyone even use crepe paper anymore I don't know I mean it's pretty funny in uh what we do in the shadows they call it creepy paper but I can't remember the last time I saw crepe paper being used by anyone I knew um but all right so back to our imagery sorry children are laughing somewhere someone has moved the furniture to make room for games like uh there's cider there's apples there's popcorn outside the October winds are moving through the trees unless you live where I do and it's still hot super hot. And these paper decorations have transformed this ordinary room into Halloween. And none of these things at the time are rare none of them are considered historical they're just Halloween and that's why they matter because the history of Halloween is not found only in extraordinary objects sometimes it's hanging on your wall with a thumbtack waiting for someone decades later to recognize it's worth saving hint uh so as a collector after you spend enough time around vintage Halloween stuff you start to look at things differently you start looking for clues um when you see a black cat decoration notice the shape of its eyes that could tell you the the time frame look at the printing how thick is the paper how are the edges cut uh is the image embossed is it printed on both sides and then you know you turn these things over and just as we you know discovered when I talked about blow molds sometimes the back tells you more than front one of the most asked questions I get about die cuts is how do you tell they're original? Well the easiest way is to flip them over and if there's not an image on the back side that's probably an original because at that time they only printed the the the designs on one side the double sided printing did not take place till much later and those are generally reproductions. Now I'm not saying that it's 100% but it's pretty accurate uh from everything I've told so take your take your die cut check the front you may see most likely you'll see the manufacturer's name somewhere on there um if you have if you're lucky enough to have any die cuts in the original packaging like I have a couple it's cool to look and see the model numbers because they're those aren't really put on the uh I'm holding a die cut in my hand right now one of my packaged ones it says uh number 1709 six and a half four embossed six and a half by nine and a half inch Halloween cutouts a Beezel creation and then there's a price there's a price sticker on this I don't know how old it is but for four of these die cuts 34 cents and it looks like a Kmart sticker but right on the front down in the corner Beezelco made in USA so there are clues and there's clues all over these uh decorations just got to know where to look um and sometimes there is no answer sometimes they're just blank and you have to go do some research and that's fun too um because one of the things you got to learn when you start to want to do this and preserve things and and become uh an archivist I guess is you have to be okay with not pretending like you know everything I will tell anyone that asks me I don't know half the stuff that I wish I did. Not even maybe not even three quarters of the stuff. I I know very little I just have a passion for wanting to learn this stuff. So don't be discouraged when you think somebody else knows all this stuff. And if they do good for them but I don't ever want to come off as somebody excuse me that is a know it all because there's a lot of stuff I don't know. So anyway um dating die cuts can be hard because generally they don't have the the year on them uh I've never actually seen one that has the year on it I don't believe um so you have to look at other clues uh because these things got revised and a popular design would just keep getting uh produced for years they'd get recolored maybe resized but they definitely get reissued um but yeah looking at if you have one with a price sticker on it is it you know pennies then that's probably super old but if it's you know big thing is double sided and and not double sided so um something that looks old defin is not necessarily something that's old that's that's one of the things you gotta learn a lot of people uh have bought stuff that they thought was vintage and it wasn't and my whole thing is well do you still like it like who cares it's not vintage did you like it when you bought it before you thought it was not vintage because it's still the same thing just because it's not old and worth a lot of money doesn't mean it's not awesome. Sometimes people get caught up too much in the value of things like they only buy stuff because it might be valuable. It's like do you like it or not? You know ultimately you have to like what you collect. So anyway let me jump off that soapbox uh because I don't want to go down that negative uh negative road so anyway um I have a couple catalogs too um that are really fun to look through and uh those are that's that's been helpful for me to find a couple things um that I wasn't sure time frame but uh one of the the fun the one of the most fun things about researching commercial Halloween history is a small marking could open a huge door and tell you a lot about you know these things so keep that in mind don't get discouraged you know and but ultimately at the end of the day you don't have to know everything uh and you know also don't forget if you really want you know old beesle decorations or old whatever buy the reproductions I buy those generally a few every few years from Amazon because they're not expensive but they they're the exact same designs so if you want to see the beauty of the Beezle uh die cuts Amazon will have them probably already does I haven't looked this year but I bought a couple extra sets last time I ordered them so I'd have some some new ones or I would have a you know kind of a stock uh so I could go through all the things that you know what you can look for to try to tell the age of of um these products but you know like older decorations generally have different weight and texture the paper's different the printing's different modern re modern techniques are what much more sharper and more precise um look at the edges uh if it's a if it's made from an old die cut it's not gonna be perfectly cut because it's been used a lot you know look for makers marks look for you know all this stuff so this is more important to me so I'm gonna talk a little bit about the the art of saving paper and that's one of the ironies of the at the heart of collecting Halloween anything paper we want to display it because that's what they're made for but the the the sad part is displaying them can also destroy them you know we know sunlight's bad those rich oranges those beautiful colors the bright yellows the the greens that you know almost are glowing those can fade from the sun obviously moisture is another enemy insects poor storage acidic cardboard tape glue but the biggest one is careless handing handling I think um paper remembers everything you do to it a crease will be there a tear will be there a stain will be there and that's why preservation begins ultimately with restraint you don't have to fix everything uh a lot of people want to repair damage because that's just what they feel a torn corner feels like you should fix it a loose piece that's you know dangling or whatever begs to be reattached an old strip of tape looks ugly not to me but sometimes write this down the best restoration is no restoration um because you might do more damage uh modern adhesives can create damage that you won't see for years uh try to take off old tape sometimes it takes some of the original printing with it uh aggressive cleaning can alter inks uh if you flatten it if you're flattening embossed pieces you can permanently damage them and change their structure uh if you're dealing with something extremely rare your smartest choice might just to be to leave it alone until you know more about what you're dealing with because you might make it worse and that's another preservation lesson caring for an artifact doesn't always mean doing something sometimes it means knowing when not to so restraint restraint restraint so if you own any vintage paper Halloween decorations try to think like an archivist keep it dry keep them away from prolonged direct sunlight avoid attics where the temperatures can be extreme avoid damp basements uh use archival quality acid-free materials when practical uh give fragile pieces enough room they're not being crushed and especially you know those honeycomb tissue paper decorations if you if you can't open it don't try you're just gonna tear it uh resistance tells you a lot if it's resisting to open and it doesn't want to move listen to the paper don't do it um an 80-year-old decoration does not owe us anything um it surviving is way more important than us seeing it fully opened I would rather it exists than to destroy it because we want to see what it looks like uh we aren't preserving these objects so we can control them we're preserving them so that someone else can see them after we're long dead and gone uh right so what happened as the 20th century progressed plastic became cheaper it became more durable it became more versatile manufacturers could create decorations that resisted moisture and survived repeated handling better than delicate paper retail changed homes changed consumer expectations changed Halloween itself became increasingly commercial and continues to do so but paper remained part of the holiday it just no longer stood alone now we have plastic masks and vacuum form decorations and the blow molds are they're still getting made foam and vinyl inflatables LED lights projection effects animatronics all this has pushed Halloween decorating forward um and now it's our entire lawn our entire house but something interesting to note people have never completely stopped loving this old paper stuff the the vintage I mean there's a lot of artists that exclusively emulate vintage Halloween and I love it um so walk through a Halloween store today I just found out that our Spirit Halloween is opening either today or tomorrow now not to down talk down on on Spirit Halloween but I don't necessarily always like their store uh I'm making a concerted effort and I have at least uh as much as I can if I'm gonna buy anything for Halloween I'm gonna try to spend more money with uh not big box stores uh I would like to support the artisans and the the smaller businesses that love this stuff as much as we do and I believe that we should do more of that ourselves like I want to see code oranges and it all be like local artists not code orange it at home coat orange it at you know whatever because at the end of the day those big box stores don't care about you um the quality of the products they're putting out lately has been horrible they just see dollar signs and that's fine I mean we live in a a society that money's very important but you can't forget about um feelings behind a lot of this stuff so that's all I gotta say about that anyway um there's nostalgia built into to this holiday and I would I would love for it to stay that way. I love when artists I know and I met a lot at Midsummer Scream I love to see them get excited about what they're doing and it's always great that people support them and you know make try to make sure they stick around. So all right so let's see we're wrapping this up and part of part of the wrap up is the thing about this vintage stuff is it's never gonna go away I don't believe because people like it too much it keeps getting either reproduced or like I said emulated by other artists people keep going back to the well because the well is so plentiful and and wonderful. I don't think we're ever going to stop seeing artists you know using the the styles of of old vintage Halloween decorations um and I hope they they never do but one of the weird things about die cuts is we don't really know any of the artists that designed them you know we know the companies and we know the products and we have catalogs and advertisements and all that stuff but you know Halloween postcards we had Ellen Clapsaddle and Francis Brundage and Samuel Schmucker with blow molds even though it's a very small I mean possibly just one guy that we know but we had Don Featherstone. I can't name one die cut designer that I that I know the name of um they were just guys that are gals that got hired to design these pieces they came to work they designed what they told them to they went home but they don't you know these people who created the visual identity of American Halloween probably will remain anonymous forever and we need to tip our hats to these unknown Halloween artists because somebody drew that pumpkin. Somebody decided how wide its smile should be someone chose the angle of that cat that has the arched back someone gave owls those enormous eyes and you know they went to work they sat at a drawing table they completed an assignment they collected their paycheck and they went home and probably never imagined the decoration that they worked on would remain in someone's family for 80 years. But their artwork survives we might not know their names but we still need to thank them. They know who it was we can acknowledge simply that someone stood behind this artwork and we don't need to let commercial and anonymity erase human create creativity because every Halloween artifact had a person behind it and we need to remember that always uh in this in this archive. So before we close the drawer I want to return to the simplest version of the story. One decoration nothing particularly rare nothing necessarily valuable Just an old cardboard jack-o'-lantern. Orange and black, maybe a little yellow. Small hole near the top where somebody pushed the thumbtack through. Corners are kind of soft. There's a piece of old tape on the back. Maybe somebody's name. Maybe a classroom. Hey, it's Mrs. Carter, room four. Now this artifact is speaking to us. This decoration was used in a classroom. How many kids saw it? How many October mornings did it spend hanging above Miss Carter's chalkboard? Did the children make construction paper pumpkins to hang beneath it? Did they wear their costumes to school? Did their teacher read them Halloween stories? We have no idea. And we may never know. But that thumbtack hole matters, that tape matters, that handwriting matters, the decoration is more than printed cardboard. It is evidence Halloween was lived. So why does the die cut belong in the archive? We have to ask this question on every episode. Why do we want to preserve these? Why do we want to save something that was so inexpensive, that was mass-produced, that was originally disposable? This was not made to keep. They were meant to throw away. And that's the we answered our own question. Because it was disposable, paper Halloween decorations were never expected to become historical artifacts. Created for parties, classrooms, store windows, living rooms. For one Halloween, maybe a few. Then you'd buy something new or you'd replace them. Yet people continued to keep them. They put them away, they passed them down, they rediscovered them, they collected them, they protected them. And because they did this, we can trace the visual evolution of Halloween through objects that were never supposed to survive. And that is absolutely remarkable. These decorations show us what Halloween looked like before many of us were even born. And it's not, you know, not the Halloween preserved in movies or in books or, you know, many of the other ways we discover this stuff. This was Halloween that was hung on people's walls, and that's why they belong here. So if you want to explore vintage Halloween die cuts on your own, don't chase the expensive ones. Just try to find online catalogs. Try to study pictures of the different designs and look for the things that are important, like the manufacturer's mark, compare the designs, go to antique stores and estate sales, go to where collectors gather. Look up museum collections and reputable reference materials. And then pick out a decoration that speaks to you. Look at the back, look for the scars, tapes, the pinholes, the handwriting, the fading. All of these imperfections will tell you more about this decoration's life than the art itself. And if you decide to bring this wonderful piece of art home, store it carefully, document what you learn about it, write down where you found it, because eventually your information becomes part of the artifact's history too. Because preservation isn't simply keeping something, it's keeping its story attached. And there is a very strange beauty in preserving paper. Metal feels permanent, glass feels substantial, plastic seems built to survive. Paper does not. Paper feels temporary, and that's why surviving Halloween paper feels so special. Because every piece that remains represents a chain of people who chose consciously or otherwise to protect it, to carefully remove it from the wall, to not throw it away, to pack it into a box, to move that box with you wherever you moved, and then somebody may have found it, opened it later, and they decided to keep it again. So those one decisions keep becoming another decision and then another decision. And then eventually these decorations reach our generation. And now the decision belongs to us. We want to keep it and document it and protect it and share what we learn and then pass it forward to the next generation. Because Halloween history does not survive automatically. It survives because someone decided that this matters. So as we close another drawer, imagine those paper faces resting inside, those smiling pumpkins, the watchful black cats, the haunted houses, the owls, the witches, the skeletons. All quiet now, protected from the sunlight, waiting, waiting. Because they've already survived more Halloweens than the people who originally purchased them could ever have imagined. And if we do our job, they'll survive many more. So thank you guys for stopping by. I look forward to your next visit. Until next time, stay strange, stay curious, stay spooky, and always preserve Halloween.