HOOVER SERVANT TO THE HOME MEDALS

Tucked away among family mementoes is a metal paddle with a wooden handle looking sort of like a swatter for giant flies. It's a carpet beater, an essential appliance in the modern 19th century home. It belonged to one of my grandmothers. Back in the day the regular household cleaning chores included hauling carpets outside, draping them over a line, and whacking them with the carpet beater - producing a big cloud of dust and a somewhat cleaner carpet to be hauled back into the room where it came from.

And where were the menfolk while this chore took place? Working at the mills, spewing filth into the skies, which eventually found its way into everyone's lungs, houses ... and carpets - the Circle of Life for dirt.

And in the early 20th century a savior appeared - the vacuum cleaner. The handy appliance we take for granted today was the hot new technology when it first appeared. And women whacked their men with the carpet beaters until they bought one for the house. They had Popeye biceps and a mean swing after all that practice, and the newfangled electric carpet cleaners flew out of the factories like the latest iPhone.

The Apple of the day was The Hoover Company. Their advertising slogan? "SERVANT TO THE HOME". Think "magic genie who does all the work for you", just like "AUTOPILOT" does all the driving for you in your new Tesla, while you sit back, relax and ignore the freight train approaching the crossing ahead.

Every good product needs a mascot, and the company went to work bringing their genie to life. Harry Waterson published a nice article on the Hoover company's SERVANT TO THE HOME medals in the January 2022 issue of The Clarion from the Pennsylvania Association of Numismatists. With permission, we're publishing an excerpt here. Thanks to Harry and Clarion editor Rich Jewell for their assistance. -Editor

The Electric Suction Sweeper Company was a successful manufacturer and marketer of vacuum cleaners founded in 1908 in N. Canton OH. In 1915, it became the Hoover Suction Sweeper Company and finally The Hoover Company in 1922.

The company had a famous slogan coined by Gerard Page-Wood in 1919. It BEATS . . . as it Sweeps . . . as it Cleans. The motto was used on nameplates for its various sweeper products. However, it did not lend itself to a graphic design for the company. This Hoover advertorial appeared in January 1923,

On August 21, 1923, The Hoover Company received registration for SERVANT TO THE HOME as a word mark. Later that fall, Gerald Page-Wood, the art director for Erwin, Wasey & Co., Hoover's ad agency, together with Albin Polacek, Director of Sculpture at the Chicago Art Institute, conducted a contest for a medallion that could be used by Hoover as a symbol for laborsaving devices for freedom from drudgery.

The design selected embodied a powerful, though benign, stooping figure bestowing the benefits of electricity onto the homes beneath his hand. Electricity was the mythical significance of the aura of stars about the figure's left hand. The lower part of the circle was occupied by the words SERVANT TO THE HOME. This medallion had been designed so it could represent a number of products Hoover might someday produce.

Miss Josephine Marie Kern, a student at the Chicago Art Institute, won the contest. She received a first prize of $1,000 and her design was cast as a 4 1/2-inch bronze medallion.

Harvey Hopkins Dunn (1883-1952), a well-known World War One artist, magazine illustrator and typeface designer did a pen and ink drawing of Kern's design for use in advertising and printed materials.

There are two discrepancies between the description of Kern's design and Dunn's drawing. The two dies cut for the medal by Medallic Art Co. illustrate this. They are reciprocating dies. The central device is flipped from left to right and the upper and lower legends are switched from top to bottom. Since dies were cut, examples must exist of both varieties. The description of Kern's design describes the 4 1/2-inch bronze medallion, which has the figure facing right and SERVANT TO THE HOME as the lower legend.

These images are from the Medallic Art Company database on the American Numismatic Society website. Images courtesy American Numismatic Society, MACO Archives. They illustrate the flip-flop and legend switch. They are MACo #1924-024 (1 3/8-inch diameter) to the right and MACo #1924-024-001 (1&3/16-inch diameter) to the left. Both are bronze and have mostly plain reverses.

The above medal is the springboard for this article. It is bronze, 1 3/8-inches in diameter and suspended from an orange and black ribbon with a crimp-back brooch at the top. It is edge marked MEDALLIC ART CO. N.Y. The obverse depicts a carefully draped nude male figure balancing on his left foot amid the rooftops of a small village, all in a shallow depression. He is holding out a helping hand outlined with stars. •SERVANT•TO•THE•HOME• fills the upper border with •HOOVER• below. It is signed JOSEPHINE KERN in tiny letters just within the depression at the ME of HOME.

The reverse has a decorative garniture at the top with a 2-line inscription just below: THE HOOVER COMPANY / MAXIMAN A third of a laurel wreath is at the bottom with a stylized capital H in a box at the center. The empty space above the wreath is engraved in 2-lines on center: / D. F. MOSES /1932.

In 1926, The Hoover Company introduced their new 700 series vacuum cleaner and this machine was state of the art. On the back page of the cleaner's manual was Harvey Dunn's pen & ink drawing which that year became a registered trademark of the company. This Servant To The Home image is cast into the top of the motor housing of every Model 700 vacuum cleaner made in the U.S. from 1926 to 1929. The Hedlite Model also has the same image on top. The 700 series made in Canada for export to the United Kingdom has the Royal Coat of Arms on the top of the motor housing.

The brass employee pass is 34mm at it widest with no maker's mark. It is pierced at the top. This pass was the first one seen by the Hoover Historical Center. When and how it was used is a subject for further research.

The Medallic Art Company made this small sterling silver lapel pin. MACo #1924-024-002. It is 3/4 of an inch across and has a locking pin keeper on the back. The lapel pin is something a salesman might have received when he sold his first electric sweeper.

The SERVANT TO THE HOME emblem also appeared on large circular bas-reliefs just below the arch above the front doors of the company gatehouses. These bas-reliefs are close to three feet wide. The gatehouses were pedestrian entrances and they flanked the breezeway of the vehicular entrance to the Hoover plant. The driveway was signposted General Office Entrance. The 10-foot friezes were installed in 1925 and were there until the gatehouses were torn down in 1968.

HOOVER SERVANT TO THE HOME MEDALS

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