 ixties pop artist Andy Warhol once observed that “all department stores will become museums,” an insight borne out by these display windows of the last century. Designed to sell merchandise, they also reflected their customers' daily household needs. Today, they are snapshots showing how the lives of ordinary Canadians evolved over the course of the 20th Century.
|
Close study of the merchandise in Eaton's windows – both practical and fanciful – reveals the household needs and interests of Canadian consumers over the years.
Many early windows were practical in intent; designers included as much merchandise as space and good taste allowed. A 1911 presentation of hardware crammed hundreds of tools and workshop supplies together – everything from roofing paper to doorknobs and safes – to create a kind of three-dimensional catalogue .
A decade later, even a crowded window of bedding (a staple of January “white sales”) showed more focus and form. |
Click to see a larger image (328K)
Tools, Toronto, 1911
T. Eaton Co. fonds
Reference Code: F 229-308-0-2003
Archives of Ontario, I0029034
|
| Rather than making a simple statement as to the availability of goods, the windows began to romanticize everyday objects, such as sheets and garden gnomes, suggesting that they were even more desirable than their actual purpose might suggest. At home, a sheet simply covered a mattress and a garden gnome weathered the seasons beside a flower bed. But the window displays made them part of a grander world that anyone with a few dollars could inhabit. |
Click to see a larger image (275K)
Whiteware and bedding, Toronto, 1920s
T. Eaton Co. fonds
Reference Code: F 229-308-0-2156
Archives of Ontario, I0029069
|
![Photo: Garden gnomes, Toronto, [ca. 1920]](pics/28645-garden-gnomes-270.jpg)
Click to see a larger image (247K)
Garden gnomes, Toronto, [ca. 1920]
T. Eaton Co. fonds
Reference Code: F 229-308-0-1189
Archives of Ontario, I0028645
|
 |
Click to see a larger image (154K)
Hats, Montreal, 1927
T. Eaton Co. fonds
Reference Code: F 229-308-0-1193
Archives of Ontario, I0028665
|
Click to see a larger image (193K)
Scissors, Toronto, 1930
T. Eaton Co. fonds
Reference Code: F 229-308-0-1194
Archives of Ontario, I0028668
|
| In fashion, spare designs tended to create a series of still-life fashion shows, in which single items could be studied alone or in relation to one another. |
Click to see a larger image (248K)
Swim suits, women's fashion, Toronto, 1940
T. Eaton Co. fonds
Reference Code: F 229-308-0-1197
Archives of Ontario, I0028683
|
|
| But not all clothing received such special treatment. In the case of men's socks, it seems, price and variety were more important than artistic statement. |
Click to see a larger image (286K)
Socks, menswear, Toronto, (undated - 1956?)
T. Eaton Co. fonds
Reference Code: F 229-308-0-2091
Archives of Ontario, I0028412
|
“… Store windows have changed radically. There was a time when Eaton's put as many as 3,000 articles, piled in lofty precarious pyramids, in a single window display of drugs. Designers' hatred of an uncovered spot in a window made nature's abhorrence of a vacuum look like a mild peeve. Space was precious, and they labored to fill it. But the modern trend is toward dramatic simplicity. A drug display today is more likely to involve a luxuriously peignoired mannikin [ sic] in a lush setting, reaching languidly for her favorite headache remedy.”
The Big Store, by John Clare,
Maclean's magazine, December 1946 |
|
|
|
|
| |
