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This cotton tea towel features National Parks/Life at Its Best, 1934, by Dorothy Waugh.
The posters Dorothy Waugh created for the National Park Service between 1934 and 1936 mark a turning point in American graphic design and advertising history. Previous posters for National Parks were mainly created by railroad companies, but Waugh advocated for the government to produce its own campaign with a modernist bent. The resulting series of posters, at once avant-garde and accessible, put Waugh at the forefront of the government’s increasingly expansive presence in American visual culture.
Waugh’s image of wilderness, fellowship, and living off the land promotes the national parks as a tonic for the stifling constraints of the Depression and of urban life in general. Its successful design relies on a complex visual rhythm in which each set of forms, rising and falling, echoes another: the long slopes of the mountain peaks, tahe staccato arrangement of the treeline, and the three cowboys around a comforting fire. Even the lettering of the words “National Parks” evokes the outline of a mountain range.
Manufactured for Poster House by ART IS. 100% cotton. Measures 26 x 16 inches.