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Posted 6 months ago
Circuspost…
(16 items)
Leaping Horses: Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey (c.1929)
By Chris Berry
email: circusposters@gmail.com
In many ways horses are the basic foundation of the circus in America - with the very first "circus" in the US being presented by equestrian John Bill Ricketts.
By the time that this one-sheet (approx. 42"x28") poster was printed by the Illinois Litho Co of Chicago in the late 1920s, horses were still a part of daily life, especially in rural America, but the tricks they they did - such as leaping - were quickly becoming less relevant as America embraced the automobile.
Still - this lithograph does a great job to promote what was to be an exciting feature on The Greatest Show on Earth, which would be unloading not only its horses, but a variety of exotic wild animals, tents and wagons just about two weeks after this poster appeared in a store window, somewhere in America about 1929.
Circus PostersWith the debut of the modern traveling circus in the early 1800s, circus po…