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Beautiful Vitachrome Color Printing Display Sample

Surfing-Themed Hawaii Steamship Travel Poster

A very rare original color printed sample display, issued to promote the Vitachrome screen printing process. The original label on verso indicates this example was issued as a sample to promote the patented Vitachrome color advertising display product:

This is a Genuine Vitachrome Advertising Display. The Display that Sells Merchandise. The Vitachrome display has been produced by experts to further the sale of the particular product. You can profit by using it - give it a showing. Only pure oil paints are used in the production of Vitachrome displays. Hence they are durable, waterproofed and can easily be cleaned by wiping with a damp cloth or washing with soap and water.... Dealer Display Department, Young & McCallister Inc. Pico and Santee Sts. Los Angeles, Calif. / E. F. Twomey Co.

The choice of a Hawaiian travel-theme for the sample display is most fortuitous, as the vivid imagery for the Los Angeles Steamship Company's cruise line really shows off the color printing. The poster illustrates the City of Los Angeles passenger ship, then one of the largest ships of its kind operating in the Pacific. Also shown: a volcano, Hawaiian Hula Dancers and musicians and an early image of a recreational surfer.

The poster was printed using the Selectasine screen-printing process by the important Los Angeles printing firm Young & McCallister.  Bearing the name Young & McCallister, we surmise that the print was most likely done between 1922 (when the  City of Los Angeles passenger ship was first put into operation) and 1925, when  Vitachrome became a separate company from Young & McCallister, the firm listed as printers at the bottom of the image.

Young & McCallister

The Los Angeles firm of Young & McCallister began in 1912 as a partnership between Frederick Arthur Young (1875-1949) and Albert Bruce McCallister (1881-1945).  McCallister is generally regarded as Los Angeles' first "fine printer" and one of the founding members of the Zamorano Club in 1928.

Young was born in Wakefield, England. He became a letterpress printer and emigrated to America in 1907, starting a small printing house in Los Angeles. McCallister, born in South Dakota, began doing odd jobs at a newspaper printing company beginning at 10 years old, acquiring considerable expertise as a printer.

In 1916, the firm became one of the earliest printers to use the newly invented Selectasine process, setting up a separate department for graphic screen printing work, which was given the name Vitachrome, becoming one of the first licensees of the Selectasine patent. Vitachrome became an independent company in 1926, and today it is probably the oldest active screen printer in the world. Along with Velvetone and Selectasine, Vitachrome was one of the pioneering firms in graphic screen printing.

Selectasine was a screen printed process invented by John C. Patrick Pilsworth and first utilized by San Francisco based Selectasine Company in 1915. The company applied for a patent for multicolor printing from a single screen in 1915, which was granted in 1918.  Selectasine, its San Francisco competitor Velvetone Poster Company and Los Angeles based Vitachrome, founded by Young & McCallister, would become the industry pioneers for this printed process.

Los Angeles Steamship Company

The Los Angeles Steamship Company or LASSCO was a passenger and freight shipping company based in Los Angeles, California.

Formed in 1920, LASSCO initially provided fast passenger service between Los Angeles and San Francisco. In 1921, LASSCO added service to Hawaii in competition with the San Francisco-based Matson Navigation Company using two former North German Lloyd ocean liners that had been in U.S. Navy service during World War I.

Despite the sinking of one of the former German liners on her maiden voyage for the company, business in the booming 1920s thrived, and the company continued to add ships and services. In 1922, the City of Los Angeles, a renamed and refitted liner was one of the largest American ships sailing in Pacific waters.

The worsening economic conditions in the United States, and the burning of another ship in Hawaii, caused financial problems for the company. After beginning talks in 1930, the Los Angeles Steamship Company was taken over by Matson Navigation on January 1, 1931, but continued to operate as a subsidiary until it ceased operations in 1937.