Vintage Santas and old doll........

 I surfed the internet for vintage Santa images and am always surprised that so many pop up with Santa smoking and promoting cigarettes.

There were cigarette ads for every popular brand encouraging people to buy everyone on their list cigarettes for Christmas... and Santa was puffing away in every ad.









Pall Mall promised a "smooth" smoke to sooth  "throat scratch" which was probably caused by smoking in the first place.








This Santa is smoking a Turkish brand and looks like he's getting a little high on it.

But Santa ads promoted alcohol as well


The ads from this era really had great Santa images.  They looked as if they were real people and not a Disney version.

But the very best vintage Santa ads were Coke... I love all their Santas. There are endless sites of vintage Coke ads.  In many of other vintage   ads Santa does not look very happy or even very friendly...
































When I start to do my Santas I like to use pictures of happy, friendly old men.... not necessarily easy to find.  I've always wanted to use this photo of Gene Wilder as a Santa and I think this is the year.
.  What I look for is a twinkle in the eye and he has it here. 

Another possibility is Jack Nicolson.  Years and years ago I used a photo of Jack    as a model when I sculpted the head of a gambler doll.. back in the days my son was young and into poker...now it is gathering dust on a shelf and has lost his hand of cards which held 5 aces to back up the aces up his sleeve and under his hat.  It was  a fun doll to make.  Where have the years gone...  Now same son just turned sixty and is into biking with the internet-connected fitness...  I guess I'll dust off the gambler's  hat and see if I can find his cards..