THE ART OF ADVERTISING Patent Medicine Trade Cards Made Early Use of Color Printing

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Byline: Lauren Fox The Register-Guard

Today's world is awash in advertisements. They're on buses, in magazines and delivered to our mailboxes.

But as seniors at the Willamalane Adult Center learned last week, there was a time when people clamored to collect colored propaganda - as art.

Patent medicine trade cards, often bright and visually stunning, were the first freely available art thanks to the invention of the lomography printer, which produced duplications of colored pictures inexpensively.

Phaedra Livingstone, an assistant professor and museum studies coordinator in the University of Oregon Arts Administration Program, presented "Snake Oil …