St. Paul, MN
Brown & Bigelow was established in 1896 by Herbert Huse Bigelow and Hiram Brown located in St. Paul, MN, with a satellite office in Sault Ste. Marie, ONT, Canada. Brown & Bigelow produced lithography calendars and advertising signs for various companies across the country. They hired some of the best illustrators, commercial artists, and marketers of the time to create advertising signs; among them were artists like Maxfield Parrish, Rolf Armstrong, Gil Elvgren, Earl Moran, Vaughn Alden Bass, Mabel Rollins Harris, Douglass Crockwell, Emmett Watson, Norman Rockwell, and Zoë Mozert just to name a few.
By the late 1940s, the company was one of the largest printers of calendars in the world. It employed some of the best pin-up artists in the country and sold calendars to an estimated fifty million homes. They produced a variety of advertising for companies like the Boy Scouts of America and The Red Cross Magazine. They also produced a fair amount of advertising TOC (tin-over-cardboard) signs and calendars for breweries like Horlacher, Neuweiler, Northampton, Hamms, and Jacob Schmidt just to name a few.
Brown & Bigelow is still in business to this day with offices all over the country; they are still in the advertising industry producing promotional products and corporate gifts.
Below are a few examples of their advertising:
Images coming soon…
I’m always interested in buying Brown & Bigelow signs and calendars.
Feel free to contact me anytime.