A history of visual merchandising and American firearms

Firearms possess formidable visual powers that have attracted the gaze of viewers for centuries. The prominent place of guns in American culture has been secured in part by their frequent illustrations in advertising and commercial ephemera, and in popular media, such as newspapers, magazines, motion pictures, television and video games. Images of firearms have been applied onto two-dimensional surfaces – material, analog and digital – and guns have been components of three-dimensional bronze castings. This paper explores something different: how at different times sellers have displayed actual firearms at or near their point of purchase. Choices sellers have made in showing guns to potential buyers via exterior window displays and interior cabinets, racks and tables have constituted practical merchandising influenced by the business, technological and cultural milieus of a given period. The visual placement of firearms has not equaled the visual power of fine art installations, stage and set decorations or even most department store tableaux, but the practice has had an everyday, commercial quality that provides fascinating insight into still another long thread in the history of American firearms.

The research process started with my general knowledge of firearms marketing history and recall of examples of visual gun merchandising I had seen. While reviewing the secondary literature, I tracked down, whenever possible, the primary sources authors had named. Fortunately, a number of the 19th-century newspapers and other documents cited were available digitally. Meanwhile, new evidence appeared from Google searches and, more importantly, from combing the visual databases at the McCracken Research Library at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, the USA Library of Congress (LOC) Prints and Photographs Online Catalog, the collections of the Museum of the City of New York and the New York Public Library and Wikimedia Commons. The McCracken collection of the Winchester Herald trade magazine for retailers was especially helpful (see Witkowski, 2022). Several of the sections below were not originally anticipated and resulted from serendipitous discoveries of additional visual evidence.

The remainder of this paper begins with a short history of visual merchandising and its technology from ancient Rome to early professionalization in America circa 1900 and into the 21st century. The following section describes how the inimitable Samuel Colt showcased his well-made percussion revolvers at the early world expositions held in London (1851), New York City (1853–1854) and Paris (1855). A visual examination of some storefronts and interiors from the second half of the 19th century comes next, followed by a dive into the 1920s, a time when the Winchester and Remington companies actively collaborated with independent retailers for the purpose of improving local window and floor displays of branded sporting rifles, shotguns, ammunition and other goods. The last three sections consider photographs of gun merchandising in New York, review recent practices by gun stores, auctioneers and gun show dealers and offer some concluding thoughts.

Visual merchandising entails placing goods purposefully where shoppers can easily see them to motivate purchasing. The practice undoubtedly has roots extending far back in time to the ongoing and periodic public markets and small private shops of the ancient world. Numerous sources – architectural, decorative art (sculptures, mosaics, wall paintings) and literary – provide strong evidence of widespread and highly visible commercial activity in the Roman world. Vendors set up stalls in a multitude of outdoor locations, while roving hawkers openly carried their items or used small carts for transport. Many domestic dwellings contained one or more ground-floor tabernae, typically single-room retail units with one side open to the street or a portico. Proprietors arrayed their merchandise on and under wooden tables or upon stone surfaces sometimes spilling out into streets (Dixon, 1995; Holleran, 2012). At night, they closed up shop with wooden shutters. Roman glass technology was too primitive for use in display cases or windows. It seems reasonable to assume that sellers gave at least some thought to the most effective visual presentation of their goods in terms of, say, ordering them by type, size, color and quality. One of the best examples from this period is a relief carved scene on the side of a marble altar-ossuary commissioned by Lucius Cornelius Atimetus in the second century CE. It portrays two men in togas and sandals, one showing a knife and the other holding his purse, flanking a neat vertical display of cutlery for sale behind a counter with a drawer (Vatican Museum, 2024).

In Shopping in the Renaissance, historian Evelyn Welch (2005) has assembled an impressively large quantity of evidence documenting visual merchandising in Italy during the period 1400 to 1600. Numerous printed woodcuts and engravings in black and white, along with codex drawings, oil paintings and frescoes in full color, depict male and female sellers working in teeming outdoor markets and in busy shops bordering city streets. Letters, diaries, literary references, criminal records, statutes and additional written sources provide context for these images. The layout of small retail establishments in this period seems to have been similar to that of their forerunners in Roman times. One of the frescoes decorating the inner courtyard of Issogne Castle in Italy, painted between 1489 and 1502, shows a well-stocked apothecary shop with carefully arranged jars conveying visual power through repetition (Plate 1). The technology for making clear flat glass had gradually developed, and by the late middle ages, a number of European domestic and public buildings incorporated reasonably transparent glazed windows. Consumer goods, however, continued to be displayed in the open air.

In the 17th century, small windowpanes started becoming more common in ordinary houses. Glass makers had refined the process of cylinder glassblowing. In this technique, workers first blew molten glass into an iron mold to form a cylinder. After it cooled, they sheared off the ends, slit it lengthwise and then reheated, flattened and polished the glass sheet. Window glass technology continued to progress, reaching an important milestone with the 1851 Great Exhibition of the Works Industry of All Nations. Situated in London’s Hyde Park, this first modern world’s fair was housed in a special building nicknamed the “Crystal Palace.” The massive hall featured innovative construction based on cast iron frame components and large glass panes. Six million visitors saw thousands of well-illuminated displays put up by exhibitors from Britain, its colonies and 44 other countries in their own sections. A series of wood engravings in The Illustrated London News (1851) depicted a family-friendly event with many men, women and children together inspecting displays from a number of different nations. Parker (2003) contends that the sensory bombardment consumers enjoyed and then expected in this and in subsequent World Expositions accelerated the practice of visual merchandising by retail stores in many countries.

Throughout history sellers at open air markets, traders on local street corners and itinerant peddlers have displayed their foodstuffs and other wares openly. In contrast, shopkeepers in more northern climes tended to stock their merchandise out of view to passersby. Stores were dimly lit inside, perhaps on purpose. In his Essay on Drapery published in 1635, William Scott of London criticized this practice as deceptive “to make the wares seem better than they are, that the seller may receive for them more than they are worth” (cited in Shaw, 2015, p. 396). Then, around the end of the 18th century, a long trend toward more visual products display commenced. Stores installed divided-pane exterior windows that bathed inside rooms in more daylight and afforded shoppers with visual access to the selected items put out to be seen (Laermans, 1993; Parker, 2003). By the second half of the 19th century, glass-fronted interior display cases started to become common (Strege, 1999).

Meanwhile, advances in plate glass technology greatly enhanced the promotional and myth-making powers of storefronts (Wilson, 2001). Pioneered by France’s Bon Marché in 1877 and quickly adopted by commercial counterparts in America and elsewhere, plate glass windows became vital to the success of department stores, as well as to many smaller retail concerns. They presented a sizeable visual expanse for drawing the attention of passersby to do some “window shopping.” They also were easier to clean than traditional windows comprised of multiple panes of glass separated by mullions. Combined with new electrical lighting, such presentations could dazzle at all hours and stores started to compete to create the most elaborate window displays (Mosher, 2012). By 1900, realistic mannequins were being added to display clothing, but early ones made from wax sometimes melted in hot sunlight. Papier mâché or plaster composite versions worked better in this situation (Strege, 1999). During the first half of the 20th century, store windows with the power to attract the gaze of engrossed shoppers became a popular subject for photographers whose many images further enhanced their mythic properties (see Rose, 2012, pp. 20-23).

A new profession of window trimmer (aka window dresser or decorator) began to emerge. On November 1, 1897, writer and editor L. Frank Baum (1856–1919) of Chicago launched a new monthly trade journal titled The Show Window: A Journal of Practical Window Trimming for the Merchant and the Professional (Plate 2). Baum had never worked as a window trimmer, but had had experience in the theatre, in the dry goods trade and in small-town newspaper publishing. The visual wizardry of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exhibition, where detailed plaster facades recreated marble temples, had impressed him greatly. He wrote most of the copy for The Show Window and illustrated the magazine with photos of window displays, some of which he took himself. In 1898 Baum was elected secretary of the National Association of Window Trimmers of America, a group he had founded that year (Culver, 1988; Rogers, 2002).

Baum published two influential books in 1900. One was The Art of Decorating Dry Goods Windows and Interiors, a compendium of practical advice for attracting attention and selling goods. He advised against cluttered displays, discussed color theory and harmony and gave instructions for “draping and building backgrounds, creating mechanically operated moving displays, and procuring dazzling effects with electric light” (Burns, 1996, p. 55). This book went through at least five editions, with the fifth published in 1924. Baum’s other book from 1900 was The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the fairy tale that made him famous. In their emphasis on stagecraft, the power of illusion and the manipulation of mythic elements, these two books share some common themes. Baum’s contribution to visual merchandising was significant and striking window displays became ever more common in cities across the USA in the early 20th century. Baum sold his interest in The Show Window in 1900 and soon devoted full time to writing children’s fiction (Rogers, 2002). In 1903, the National Association of Window Trimmers renamed The Show Window as the Merchants Record and Show Window and, in 1938, again retitled it to Display World.

One of the most noted window dressers of the early 20th century was Arthur Fraser who worked from 1895 until 1944 for the Marshall Field and Company department store in Chicago. With great visual artistry, Fraser transformed window displays often crammed with merchandise into something simpler and more theatrical. He soon received positive notice for these tableaux in both the popular and trade press. Field’s flagship store on State Street had 67 ground floor windows to decorate. They were changed weekly except for the Fall, Christmas and Spring displays which stayed in place for two to three weeks. By 1916 Fraser was managing a staff of 50 with budgets ranging from $150,000 to $175,000 (Strege, 1999). His very popular Christmas windows undoubtedly influenced aspiring decorators nationwide.

Along with Fraser and the many other talented practitioners of the window trimming profession, a few renowned artists tried their hand. In 1936, a mustachioed Salvador Dali, already famous for his melting watch painting, “Persistence of Memory,” created surrealistically staged windows for Bonwit Teller in New York. This same luxury department store hired a rising commercial illustrator in 1955 named Andy Warhol who brought his own original, modernistic vision to its windows. Of course, the average visual decorator possessed a more limited skill set and many were rank amateurs. Into the 21st century, the art and management of interior and exterior displays has continued to receive attention from retailers and designers, teachers and students and visual culture scholars.

The British press considered the American contingent at the 1851 Crystal Palace Exhibition an unimpressive lot overall, but one particular exhibit won public acclaim and official favor. It presented the new revolvers made by Samuel Colt (1814–1862), arguably the most famous person in the history of American firearms. Colt was absorbed in an important patent infringement lawsuit that spring, so in his place he sent a young assistant, Thomas Peard, along with as many as 500 guns. Colt wrote detailed instructions about securing adequate wall, table and floor space and obtaining a suitable display case. Peard also was responsible for arranging the arms in a composition for viewing.

A small detail in an engraving published in the Illustrated London News on December 6, 1851, shows Colt’s display amid other exhibits from the USA. It consisted of two upright cabinets with glass fronts and a horizontal case set on a table fitted with a fabric skirt. According to Wilson (1985), the stand held about 450 guns in all. In the illustration, we see two men in uniform inspecting the items. Another man and a woman are walking away with his right hand gesturing back toward the Colt showcases. Many of those who stopped to look came away duly impressed with both the display and with the well-crafted revolvers Peard let them handle (Cooper, 2006; Randell, 2014; Rasenberger, 2020). Local newspapers gave good coverage with The Times of London (1851a, p. 4) wryly commenting:

Many visitors had known about Colts from reading entertaining stories of shoot-outs and assorted Western adventures printed by the London press. Some writers found this mayhem rather disturbing and questioned the benefits of Colt’s invention (Rasenberger, 2020). The British weekly humor magazine, Punch and or the London Charivari (1851, p. 11), poked fun at Exhibition visitors including a shady character at “the stall of American revolvers” who pressed the attendant for instruction.

Colt himself finally arrived in August. A very astute salesman, not only did he leverage his firearms booth to maximize public interest but also cultivated influential persons and arranged sales to eager customers. An October 30 article in The Times of London (1851b, p. 5), reported Colt had written to the Lords of the Treasury saying he had brought:

Colt frequently gave handsome cased gun sets to people he thought had been or could be of service to him and his company. The Institution of Civil Engineers in London reciprocated Colt’s positive attention by inviting him to read a paper on revolving arms and their manufacture at the meeting held on November 25, 1851 (The Times of London, 1851c). In early 1852, the Institution inducted Colt as an honorary member and awarded him the Telford Medal for his paper. This may have compensated for winning only an honorable mention prize at the Great Exhibition. The gold medal went to a British arms inventor named Robert Adams. Perhaps the threatened British arms industry had influenced the judges’ decision (Rasenberger, 2020).

Across the Atlantic, the New-York Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations opened in July 1853 to become America’s first World’s Fair. Inspired by the successful London show, the organizers built their own “Crystal Palace” of iron and glass shaped like a Greek cross and sited on land that later became Bryant Park adjacent to the Main Branch of the New York Public Library. This expo had only one-third the number of exhibits as the London extravaganza. Many featured art and design rather than industry and inventions. With free admission and much to see, attendance and press coverage were substantial, but the event was not a financial success. New York’s P.T. Barnum, a relentless showman and marketer who knew how to appeal to the public, took over management in 1854 and even he could not avoid further losses (Upton, 2000). The building burned down in 1858.

Colt had lived in and frequently visited New York, maintained a sales office in the city and marked the barrels of many of his guns ADDRESS SAM^L COLT/NEW-YORK CITY. Naturally, he participated in the exhibition and indeed had been appointed a “commissioner” from Hartford County by the Governor of Connecticut (New York Herald, 1853). Colt and his crew drew favorable attention by arranging a panoply of guns into an eye-catching giant shield topped by elaborate scrollwork. The engraving illustrated in Plate 3 shows revolvers, revolving rifles and brass powder flasks. Both the vertical and horizontal cabinets appear to be behind glass. Near the top, the words, “Colt’s Patent,” are prominent. Colt had won a major patent infringement lawsuit brought against Massachusetts Arms Company in 1851 and he remained quite concerned about protecting his intellectual property (Marcot and Ron Paxton, 2011; Rasenberger, 2020). The three men and two women in the picture wear fashionable clothing. The man at the left may have been the attendant demonstrating a revolver’s action. Presumably, sales were made to the public at the show, though whether someone actually could have paid onsite and walked off with a gun remains unknown. This image and the surrounding text appeared in Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, November 12, 1853, p. 320.

Colt transported arms to Paris for the 1855 Exposition Universelle, which took place from 15 May to 15 November in different buildings spread over 40 acres (16 hectares) near the Champs–Élysées. The organizers erected the main hall, the massive Palais de l’Industrie, in an attempt to surpass London’s famous Crystal Palace. No visual record of Colt’s actual display seems to exist, but some indication of what it may have contained can be found in a series of engravings of revolver and revolving rifle printed in two celebratory books, Histoire Illustrée de L’Exposition Universelle (Robin, 1855) and Album de L’Exposition Universelle (Brisse, 1857). Material evidence also has survived. Among the assemblage of weapons, Colt probably showed one particular Model 1851 Navy at both the New York and Paris expos. The factory’s primary engraving contractor at the time, German immigrant Gustave Young, had embellished this showpiece with gold inlay scenes of a buffalo hunt and, cheekily, a bust of Colonel Colt himself. This gun is now in the collection of the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles (Richardson, 2013).

The local response to Colt was mixed and his exhibit received only a third-level silver medal (pictured in Houze, 2006, p. 114). Critics raised concerns about the societal consequences of modern American firearms technology. In 1858, for example, an official French commission finally published its commentary on London’s Great Exhibition held seven years earlier. The report pointedly observed how Colt revolvers contributed to American gun violence:

Filibusters or freebooters were men who engaged in unauthorized military activities abroad. During the 1850s a number of them from the USA traveled to Latin American countries to engage in some serious meddling (May, 2002).

In contrast to the optically enthusiastic British and Americans, a strain of critical French discourse expressed skepticism about the overall visual mentality that expositions represented and encouraged. As harbingers of a questionable mass culture, these large, bright events dazzled, deceived and seduced rather than enlightened or instructed, so commentators lectured (Gralton, 2014). Despite such flak from cultural elites, France hosted additional world expositions in 1867, 1878, 1889 and 1900, which, as mentioned above, inspired Paris department stores to practice state-of-the-art visual merchandising.

A few eye-catching photographs and illustrations from the latter half of the 19th century provide some tentative indication of how storefront windows and interior displays in this period visually marketed firearms. Plate 4 shows a street view, taken about 1880, of the establishment of John Krider (1813–1886) located at the corner of 2nd and Walnut Streets in Philadelphia. Krider was a gun maker and sporting goods merchant who started in business in 1836. According to the LOC notes, the initial construction of this building started in 1751. The divided light bay windows in the photo were typical of urban shops in 18th-century Britain and colonial North America. The merchandise shown in the Krider windows appears varied and no individual gun can be discerned. The sign immediately above the door reads “J. Krider, Gun Maker”; the one to the left says “John Krider. Gun Manufacturer,” and the second-floor sign states “John Krider, Shot Gun, Pistol, and Rifle Manufacturer.” On the sidewalk, a policeman stands near a street lamp. Given the time and effort involved in setting up a camera in this period, the inclusion of this character must have been deliberate. However, the rationale is unclear. Was he guarding the property of an important person or was this meant to be a subtle association of the Krider name and inventory with law and order?

The striking photograph in Plate 5 documents the evolution of storefront windows. Taken in 1882, it shows five Browning brothers plus another man standing in front of the brick, “J. M. Browning and Bro.” building in Ogden, UT. In this carefully staged composition, each of them holds a longarm, several of which were Browning made. Two men wear mechanic work aprons indicating active gun manufacturing and/or repair on the premises. Although the windows are of the divided light variety, they are far larger than those seen in the older Krider building. Each of the four panes in the first tier appears to have one or more guns along with some other items behind the glass. Attractive crown molding caps the entire window unit and above it are the bold and legible store name and product line: “Guns, Pistols, Amunition [sic] and Fishing Tackle.” Ammunition appears misspelled, but the modern English word does derive from the French term, amunition. Or perhaps the sign painter ran out of space for two ems. All in all, the image exudes confidence. Note that it has been cropped at the top. Another photo in the Utah State Archives includes a still higher sign for “Browning Bros” with a large picture of what appears to be a Marlin–Ballard, a single-shot sporting rifle with double set triggers.

Few names in American firearms history have been as illustrious as that of John Moses Browning (1855–1926). The son of Mormon pioneers, he was awarded 128 firearms patents in his lifetime, the first at age 24 in 1879. Browning, who in the photo leans against the door jamb with his arms folded, made substantial improvements to single-shot, lever action and pump action rifles and shotguns, but is best known for his significant contribution to the technology of autoloading pistols and rifles (Gorenstein, 2021). During his career he ran his own businesses, designed guns for Winchester, Colt, Remington, Savage and Stevens and negotiated licensing agreements with Belgium’s leading arms company, Fabrique Nationale. His M1911 automatic pistol in 0.45 caliber first manufactured by Colt presents a distinctive profile that has become visually iconic. Some of Browning’s guns are still made today. In 2011 Utah designated the M1911 its official state firearm.

On March 1, 1854, Jacob Schuyler, Marcellus Hartley and Malcolm Graham established a new company at 13 Maiden Lane in Manhattan to sell military goods (guns, swords, uniforms and musical instruments), sporting arms and related accessories. Hartley had been a clerk in the firearms department of the import house, Francis Tomes and Sons, while Schuyler and Graham had worked for the competing firm of Smith, Young and Company. With a modest letter of credit, Schuyler and Hartley traveled to England and the Continent to buy merchandise and establish relationships with suppliers that would past for decades. After about four months of acquiring inventory, they returned to New York to help Graham market their goods across the USA to hunters, target shooters and those who needed protection. The firm flourished as both a retailer and a wholesaler, easily survived the financial Panic of 1857 and soon became America’s largest firearms importer and distributor. In 1862 and 1863 Hartley went to England on behalf of the US Government to procure muskets for the war effort. To get better prices, Hartley kept his government connection secret and negotiated as a private business that intended to resell the arms (Marcot, 2000).

Schuyler, Hartley and Graham compiled catalogs and their 1864 edition includes drawings of both the exterior of their store as well as its capacious interior. The former shows a view of the five-story building at 19 Maiden Lane where the store had recently expanded. Maiden Lane had long been a shopping street in New York City’s financial district. A dozen men and women mill about on the sidewalk in front. On the street, a boy holds the reins to a horse and a man loads a box on a horse-drawn cart. The storefront windows are hard to decipher from the image but appear to consist of reasonably large divided panes of glass. One can make out a uniform mounted upright on a dress form. An awning juts out from the window and immediately above it is a sign for “Schuyler, Hartley and Graham.” Above the fourth floor, another sign says, “Military Goods” and one story down hangs a second company name sign. The illustration is signed “Lossing-Barritt” for the engravers Benson John Lossing and William Barritt.

The front view of the building suggests a solid establishment, while the interior scene impresses with retail grandeur (Plate 6). We see a large showroom with a very high ceiling. At one end stairs on each side lead to a second floor. Banks of outside-facing windows separate both levels. Natural light illuminates the premises. The modest chandelier in the center probably housed gas lamps. In the rest of the room, tall wood and glass cabinets extend halfway up the high walls and, in front of them, glass showcases about four-foot-high house more merchandise. Swords are visible to the left and longarms and handguns to the right. Three military drums are stacked near the front of the view. Over two dozen men (no women) are on the floor engaged in buying and selling. The Civil War was still raging, and many men purchased their own sidearms and swords. Some of the customers wear military uniforms topped by different types of service hats. The civilian buyers in the center have on clothes more suited for the field, while a man on the right next to the counter sports finer attire and a top hat. The young salesmen, all cleanly shaven, are the hatless ones.

The McCracken Research Library owns the photograph of the Winchester exhibit at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago (Plate 7). The central display case had striking proportions. Three large panes of glass spanned the front of the towering upright section, which was topped with bold crown molding and featured crisp signage for “Winchester Repeating Arms Company/New Haven, Connecticut, USA.” The vertical component sat on a substantial horizontal section with more glass cases on top and wainscoting on the sides. In the photo, five rifles lean against one end of the case, undoubtedly for visitors to see and handle. The four standing men dressed in suits and bowler hats, likely company staff, look toward the camera. The mounted moose and bighorn sheep heads to the right of the picture would seem to have been part of Winchester’s exhibit given the emphasis on using its rifles and shotguns for hunting. The smaller case to the right had nearly identical wainscoting, so it too was connected, but what exactly it contained is unclear.

After World War I, the Winchester Repeating Arms Company of New Haven, Connecticut, launched a diversification program, dubbed the “Winchester Plan.” Management purchased 11 small cutlery and sporting goods firms. In addition to arms and ammunition, Winchester now used its plants to fabricate knives, axes, athletic supplies, fishing equipment and ice and roller skates (Webster, 2005; Williamson, 1952). It opened Winchester retail stores in Boston and Springfield, Massachusetts, Providence, RI and Troy and New York, New York. In 1922, Winchester merged with the Associated Simmons Hardware Companies, renaming itself the Winchester-Simmons Company. The product line expanded further with additional types of hardware, paint and even razor and blade sets (Houze, 1994; Williamson, 1952).

Between 1918 and 1920, Winchester developed three new house magazines: the Winchester Record for its employees, the Winchester Junior Rifle Corps News for its young customers and the Winchester Herald for its “agents” or dealer network (Witkowski, 2022). The Winchester Herald mobilized retailer outreach to consumers. Articles and trade ads explained visual merchandising, retail advertising, salesmanship, promotions, local market conditions and ways to manage business costs and inventories. They also featured case studies of individual retailers, news of regional dealer meetings and national conventions and trade ads for different product lines. The magazine had good production values for the day and included numerous photographs and sometimes four-color covers. Plate 8 shows one by Western artist Harry C. Edwards (1868–1922) who also did covers for the Saturday Evening Post. By this time, illustrators working for Winchester and other gun companies had repeatedly depicted man versus angry bear scenarios (Rattenbury, 2004). Winchester’s firearms received their share of reporting in the Herald. Guns contributed substantial sales and profits and many hardware and sporting goods stores carried them. But much of the magazine’s content addressed other product lines.

The McCracken Research Library shares 57 issues of the Winchester Herald published from 1920 until 1927. The very first issue of February 1920 stressed visual merchandising. It contained articles for hardware store managers on “Fundamentals of Effective Display” and “Putting Fixtures on Your Selling Force.” Neither of these articles mentioned firearms, though their two accompanying photos did show guns on display. Among other topics, the first article advocated simplicity as a focal idea, as well as posting prices and changing windows on a weekly basis. The second observed how window displays should work: “Your newspaper advertising is the invitation to those who read and your show windows are the hand of welcome by your front door to those who read and accepted the invitation. They should be dressed as befits the occasion of receiving guests” (Sterling, 1920, pp. 25-26).

On page 32 of this issue, a trade ad for the Winchester Junior Rifle Corps (Plate 9) encouraged dealers who had not yet received one, to mail in the coupon for a copy of the company’s plan to cultivate demand among “America’s red-blooded boys.” The ad’s headline, “The Purchasing Power of Bill Is—,” leaves the sentence unfinished, but its point was understood. Admen and publishers of the time considered boys a desirable target market. They were avid, informed and influential consumers (Jacobson, 2001, 2004; Witkowski, 2020a). The illustration suggests the power visual displays might have over this segment. It depicts three well-dressed boys, all with caps and wearing knickers – knickerbockers in British English – standing in front of an exterior window display. They appear engrossed in discussing the merits of the guns in front of them. The window was working its magic. Another trade ad in the April 1925 issue for “Winchester Twenty-Twos” and headlined “Profitable Summer Sales” also linked boy customers with window displays. In this image, a boy, wearing a jacket, tie, cap and knickers, stands with his back to a window appointed with Winchester rifles. He waves his outstretched right arm, while his left hand holds a 0.22 rifle. His dog looks on approvingly. The body copy advises retailers on how to market to the “boy trade” and to customers coming in for vacation and camping supplies. It stressed “forceful newspaper advertising, attractive window displays and good store service” and encouraged stocking up with guns and cartridges.

In the March 1920 issue of the Winchester Herald, C. S. Hutt (1920) from the advertising department reviewed the “Fall Hunting Window Display Contest.” The article tells how this contest began in 1918 when it offered 41 cash prizes totaling $1000 – about $20,642 in 2023 dollars (Friedman, 2024) – for the best windows. In the 1919 competition, hardware stores and sporting goods dealers from across the USA and from Canada submitted photographs of their creations. The entrants were classified as A, B, C or D depending upon the size of their town or city. Each group received similar awards. Two of the first prize winners, stores in Providence, RI, and Austin, MN, had created imaginary log cabins deep in hunting country (Plate 10). Both contained a mock fireplace with a hanging kettle and surrounded by rustic furniture. Moose and deer heads, mounted birds and groupings of animal pelts covered the walls. Rifles and shotguns casually leaned against them and boxes of ammunition sat on the floors. Signage and imprinted wall calendars conveyed the Winchester brand name. These displays seem intended to induce cozy reveries among the aspiring hunters of the day. Comparable ones received coverage in later issues of the Herald. Cabin and camp scene photographs from the decades around 1900 in the LOCs show similarly rustic structures, dead animals and their skins and firearms. Present-day sportsmen might prefer more creature comforts.

Turning a few more pages, the reader would come across an article by R. S. Heller (1920a, p. 25) entitled “From Both Sides of the Plate Glass.” Heller, from Winchester’s Sales Service Department, described window dressers as definitely male:

The illustration shows the display man arranging a Winchester-themed hunting season window while another gent stands outside watching him. The message for the trade was to think about store windows from your male customer’s point of view. Throughout all the issues of the Herald analyzed, window trimmers and retail clerks always were assumed to be male.

Two issues later, Frank Mappes (1920, p. 23), described as a Winchester “Store Engineer,” contributed an article on “How to Arrange Your Stock and Why.” He wrote:

Mappes also discussed the problem of having stock on shelves so high that a ladder was needed to fetch it. Store clerks did not like making the effort to climb up and down repeatedly. Poor arrangement of merchandise made small sales, less than 25 cents, unprofitable because of time spent waiting on customers. There were good reasons for switching to self-service, though even today handling firearms by customers still requires the attention of store personnel or dealers at gun shows.

In November 1920, Heller (1920b) wrote an almost theoretical essay about the purposes of “Different Types of Window Displays.” Some were for direct selling and others for indirect selling. Direct selling displays, which motivated customers to immediately enter the store, could be divided further into price value, catalog and construction or utility displays. The article did not explain the differences among them. Indirect selling displays drew attention, but not immediate patronage. They included an institutional type that promoted the store and its prestige, but also creative, educational, moving or mechanical, novelty and patriotic varieties. Heller did not define the categories and assumed their names provided the reader description enough. These ideas may have been original to Heller or repeated from books like the one L. Frank Baum compiled in 1900.

After 1920, the frequency of such instructional articles diminished considerably, but every issue of the Herald still contained one or more photographs of commendable hardware store windows and interiors. However, the majority of these depicted nonfirearms lines of Winchester branded merchandise. Undoubtedly, many merchants who saw these pictures would copy elements of featured displays for their own front windows and showcases. With the September/October 1925 issue, publishing of the Winchester Herald moved to St. Louis under the direction of the National Association of Winchester Clubs and the central merchandising staff of the Winchester-Simmons Companies. From this point through the end of its run in December 1927, the magazine printed somewhat fewer photographs and definitely had duller and less colorful covers.

In addition to ads and articles published in the Winchester Herald, the company directly assisted its dealers’ visual merchandising by distributing a variety of colorful promotional ephemera that could be placed in front windows or positioned within store interiors. The most powerful visually were the large five-panel window displays. Housed in wooden frames on legs, each panel consisted of one picture or two if both sides were printed, 40” × 19” in size. The five individual panel frames were attached by hinges and could be folded, but the overall assemblage still required about eight linear feet of display space. Tom Webster’s (2005) collector’s book, Winchester Rarities, nicely illustrates 29 one-sided sets and 47 two-sided sets, about 80% of the total number of different sets produced from March 1920 into 1928. Twenty-one of the 76 sets (27.6%) depict rifles, shotguns, hunting and target shooting across the panels. In three more, a gun makes a cameo appearance in just one panel. The Winchester Junior Rifle Corps, hunting and trapshooting themes figured prominently (see Plate 11). The other 55 panels featured tools, cutlery, sporting goods, fishing rods, flashlights, ice and roller skates and paints. Five-panel displays can be seen in a number of the black and white photographs published in the Winchester Herald.

Webster (2005) discusses several other categories of store promotional devices created by Winchester. These included the evocative Winchester wall calendars, wall posters and banners, signs, case inserts and die cuts, point-of-purchase displays, two-sided counter signs, counter pads and more. The calendars could be imprinted with the name of the hardware store. According to trade ads in the Winchester Herald from 1925, 1926 and 1927, dealers needed to pay from 7 to 9 ¾ cents per calendar depending on the number purchased. It is not known how much if anything stores needed to pay for other such material, though trade ads in the March/April 1927 issue did price show window valances at $1 a foot, imprinted advertising hand fans at 2 ¾ to 3 cents and customized “Flexilume” outdoor signs at $127.50 to $153.50 for long store names. Strong graphics and vivid colors gave these items great visual interest and those that have survived to the present day in reasonable condition have become desirable collectibles. Reproductions are also available.

By the closing years of the 1920s, Winchester’s expansion into new product lines far removed from firearms had proven unworkable. Winchester and Simmons worked hard to assist and inspire their channel members through a variety of different programs cheered on by the Herald. Yet, sales of the new lines amounted to only about a third of overall sales and total sales after 1923 were below the period 1920–1923. Firearms and ammunition remained the dominant product lines. Winchester and Simmons Hardware split amicably in 1929, and the Repeating Arms division in New Haven returned to its traditional focus on firearms and ammunition. Then the great depression hit. Winchester’s finances quickly became untenable and in January 1931 it went into receivership. In December that year the Western Cartridge Company, owned by the Olin family, acquired the assets at a bankruptcy auction (Williamson, 1952). John M. Olin, a sportsman and gun enthusiast, ran the company well enough to be marginally profitable in the hard economic times of the 1930s.

Winchester’s main competitor in the rifle and shotgun market, the Remington Arms Company, also sponsored window dressing contests for its dealers (Fosburg, 2012; Witkowski, 2016). These began in 1922 in conjunction with Remington’s “Sportsmen’s Week,” a promotional event held about the second or third week in October near the opening of the Fall hunting and trapping season. Remington promoted its competitions by publishing photographs of the winners in trade magazines such as Hardware Age and Hardware Retailer. Remington display windows appear to have featured mannequins more often than those for Winchester. In The Art of Decorating Dry Goods Windows and Interiors, L. Frank Baum envisioned mannequins as actors in a mythic performance who could add supplemental value to the tangible product by mediating “between consumer and commodity by tempting people to confuse themselves with things” (Culver, 1988, p. 107). Neither the Remington nor the Winchester dealers created displays as thematically sophisticated and visually compelling as the windows created by the accomplished dressers working for major urban department stores. According to the examples in Fosburg (2012), Remington kept the contest going at least until 1935.

In 1892 outdoorsman David T. Abercrombie (1867–1931) established a small, waterfront sporting goods shop at 36 South Street in New York City. Ten years later he took on a wealthy partner, an early and devoted customer named Ezra H. Fitch (1865–1930). They incorporated and adopted the eponymous company name in 1904, but these two opinionated men did not get along. Fitch wanted to expand the business, but Abercrombie did not, preferring to focus on a smaller, camping clientele. Fitch bought him out in 1907, kept the name and ran the business successfully until he retired in 1928. Abercrombie and Fitch Co. (A and F) became known for its great mail-order catalogs, while also being the preferred outfitter for elite hunting and exploratory expeditions, such as the ones favored by that hunter’s hunter, former President Theodore Roosevelt. It counted many celebrities (e.g. Ernest Hemingway and Amelia Earhart) among its loyal customers. In 1917, the company occupied an entire 12-story building on the corner of Madison Avenue and 45th street as its flagship store (Fortune, 1939).

Plate 12 shows the gun department in 1913. Photographed by the Byron Company, a firm established in New York City in 1892, this 8 × 10 inch silver gelatin print is part of a large trove from the Byron studio now in the collection of the Museum of the City of New York. The spacious room is furnished with vertical wall units – note the unusual glass windows that slide up and down – and with horizontal glass counters. The wall units hold a large assortment of sporting rifles and shotguns, while revolvers fill the counter shelves. The size of the assortment in 1913 is not known, but in 1939 the store carried an inventory of 1,500 guns ranging in price from a $4.95 single-shot 0.22 rifle to $1,100 for a Boss and Co. or James Purdey and Sons double-barreled shotgun (Fortune, 1939). The photo shows two well-dressed men in hats and overcoats being assisted by two equally well-attired male clerks. A and F salesmen became known for their expertise in the product category. Above the men, the large heads of a buffalo, big horn sheep and deer hang from a central column. Such animal trophies could be found on other floors (Fortune, 1939). The place seems clean, neat and classy. Perhaps the scene was posed for publicity purposes. Between 1935 and 1938, Berenice Abbot (1898–1991) documented urban material culture and the built environment through a landmark series of photographs called “Changing New York.” She and her staff recorded 302 views for the Museum of the City of New York under the auspices of the New Deal Federal Art Project. One picture taken on February 4, 1937, shows, the premises of gunsmith Frank Lava at 6 Centre Market Place (Plate 13). The large, hanging revolver sign is quite distinctive. Behind the plate glass window, which seems more modern than the rest of the façade, we see an array of revolvers. Other gun stores populated this block-long street facing the back of the New York Police Department headquarters building at the time.

That same day, Abbott photographed a corner pawnshop, the Stuyvesant Curiosity Shop, at 48 Third Avenue in Manhattan’s East Village (Plate 14). Times were hard and people left many of their personal possessions with pawnshops in exchange for small loans. Under one window the signage advertises “A Complete Stock of Shot Guns, Rifles, Ammunition Fishing Rods and Reels.” Out on the sidewalk stand four movable glass cases. A sign on the one closest to the viewer reads “Shotguns Rifles $5.00” and inside we see several used guns. The idea of displaying firearms outside so openly, as if they were used books, home goods or clothing, seems odd in 21^st-century America, but during the great depression municipal regulations apparently were laxer and proprietors may have had less to fear from break, snatch and run thieves. One wonders what Abbott thought about such merchandising. She did place the guns prominently front and center in her composition. Photographs are rarely if ever an unbiased record of reality, and instead result from a series of choices made by their creators.

The photo in Plate 15 presents one more example of the visual merchandising of firearms in New York during the first half of the 20th century. It was taken in October 1941 by John Collier Jr (1913–1992) who had been assigned to depict American life while working for the US Farm Security Administration. The scene is the “Gun Shop” in a Syracuse Sears Roebuck store. Sporting rifles and shotguns rest on the table and hang from the wall. While the customers, one of whom is female, wear jackets and overcoats, the clerks are dressed in suits and ties. Note that the table has wood bark on its front and that fall leaves decorate the signage. Apparently, the look of the sales area was meant to evoke the fall hunting season. Collier later went on to make important methodological contributions to the fields of visual anthropology and sociology.

Developments in American retailing after the Second World War worked against the practice of displaying firearms and ammunition in exterior windows. The traditional Main Street hardware and sporting goods stores, whose visual merchandising management Winchester and Remington once nurtured, languished because the customer base shifted toward the postwar suburban sprawl built around shopping malls and automobiles. Large home improvement centers supplanted many small hardware stores during the last quarter of the 20th century. Big box retailers like Lowes and Home Depot do not carry firearms though they do sell gun and hunting accessories. A few sporting goods chains like Cabela’s and Big 5, as well as some Walmart stores, still retail firearms, but the physical design of their buildings usually have not featured storefront windows.

Thousands of independent brick-and-mortar gun shops exist in the USA, so generalizations about their exterior displays would be speculative. However, no photos available online show actual firearms in their often smallish windows. Instead, they carry various types of signage that sometimes cover the entire glass area and block views of the interior. One explanation for these practices is that local (city, county and state) ordinances may discourage visually merchandising firearms to passersby. As early as 1923, for example, a California statute prohibited handguns or their advertising being visible from outside the place of business. This law, which did not similarly restrict the promotion of rifles and shotguns, was struck down in 2018 by a judge in Sacramento who opined that the government cannot restrict commercial speech for a legal and constitutionally protected product (Thanawala, 2018). State and municipal laws may require gun stores to reinforce windows with bars, grates and screens. As a practical business matter, window displays facing parking lots have been vulnerable to burglary. Additional liability and business property insurance costs may convince store owners to avoid them. That said, thieves have been known to smash into stores with stolen vehicles and then head toward interior displays (Mejia, 2024). Some gun shops have erected sturdy bollard posts in front of these windows.

The execution of interior visual merchandising varies among gun retailers, but in general, they display handguns in glass cases and array rifles and shotguns horizontally and vertically on back or side walls behind counters. The photo in Plate 16, taken in 2018, depicts the gun section at Stan’s Merry Mart, a large Ace Hardware and sporting goods store in Wenatchee, WA. Though showing modern lighting and fixtures, the layout is not too different from that in the 1913 photo of Abercrombie and Fitch depicted in Plate 12. Unlike the well-dressed men in New York, the customer wears a hoodie and blue jeans. He bends over to eyeball the pistols, suggesting that self-defense rather than hunting motivates his curiosity. Store interiors frequently are adorned with large posters from manufacturers featuring big photos of guns that impart a sense of excitement and edginess.

A Google search for “retail gun displays” will turn up dozens of links to equipment vendors and their product lines. “Fortress Display,” a product line from the Hoffman Manufacturing Company in Madison, WI, consists of attractive and high-security display cases. Website copy tells readers that:

All cabinet interiors are bright white. The Webpage has a link to a short YouTube video (1:28) where a strong young man repeatedly swings mightily at a glass and steel cabinet with a sledgehammer, but without much effect. Less expensive case goods are also marketed and sellers promote small items such as metal or acrylic stands for handguns and gun cradles for mounting rifles on walls.

Writing in Shooting Sports Retailer, Tom McHale (2019) applied the visual tactics of grocery stores and big retailers to gun shops. He argued that displays of guns with a “cool factor” or unusual antique guns should be placed near the front entrance to put shoppers in a “gun buying mood.” Equally important, visual displays should tell a story: “Rather than just showing a product, find a group of products that communicate a scenario. For example, if a dealer wants to sell concealed carry products, consider creating an ‘Every Day Carry’ display.” Visual displays should have a focal point and use props, like camo netting table covers and extra ammunition crates for shelves, to tell a story. In-store, McHale recommended placing higher margin items at eye level, moving stuff around from time to time and having good deliberate (directional) lighting. “Deal piles,” which might consist of stacks of unopened cases of ammunition, suggest special buys at great prices. Window displays received less attention:

An article in the online Shooting Industry Magazine by Doug Vanderwoude (2022) offered a few additional tips. Entrances should be visually clear and inviting, provide a “decompression area” for shoppers entering the store and avoid bombarding customers immediately with large signage and displays. Endcaps – product displays at the end of an aisle – are good visual merchandising tools, but need signage explaining why the product deserves this prominent space. The writer did not say if endcaps were suitable for firearms or just for accessories or clothing.

Competing with fixed-place stores, American auction companies sell large quantities of pre-owned firearms. Like gun shops, auction house preview facilities also keep handguns in display cases, but place longarms in vertical racks in the open where customers can inspect them without needing assistance. Most of these rifles and shotguns are either antiques or collectible military and sporting firearms rather than new AR-15 style assault rifles and related tactical weapons. Many purchases at auction are transacted entirely online where buyers forego the opportunity to physically handle the merchandise. The internet and online bidding platforms have enabled auction houses to reach a national and even international market of gun buyers.

Visual merchandising at periodic gun shows has been a relatively straightforward proposition since the Ohio Gun Collector Association organized some of the first ones in the late 1930s (Schiffer, 2013; Witkowski, 2020b). Exhibiters place their firearms assemblages on tables openly or within vitrines of various shapes and sizes. Some dealers bring racks to hold longarms horizontally or vertically. These too are positioned atop the tables. Plenty of edged weapons, gun accouterments and firearms ephemera also join the mix. The cost of table rentals dictates having a maximum amount of product for sale in a given space (Plate 17). On the perimeters of gun shows a few firearms dealers, as well as those selling related lines of accessories or collectibles, occupy larger spaces that visitors can amble into. Auction companies, which preview their upcoming sales for buyers while networking with potential consignors, use both tables and booths. With permission, shoppers can physically handle, carefully work the actions and take a very close look at the guns they see. Depending on local safety codes and show rules, the trigger mechanisms of modern handguns may be secured to prevent accidental discharge of an unknowingly loaded weapon. It has been known to happen, and gun enthusiasts in the line of fire have been seriously injured.

The most spectacular visual merchandising of firearms and gun accessories can be found at a massive business-to-business event – the annual Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade Show in Las Vegas. Sponsored by the National Shooting Sports Foundations, it is said to be the largest gun show in the USA. Hundreds of manufacturers exhibit their new products and the tens of thousands of attendees must demonstrate their place in the firearms industry to secure admission. Independent firms help exhibitors design custom show booths that, judging from photos online, are definitely eye candy for gun enthusiasts (Plate 18).

Firearms possess a formidable visual pull when represented as two and three-dimensional images. Viewers sometimes cannot take their eyes off of them. Different forms of visual merchandising have attempted to capitalize upon this power of attraction with displays of real guns. Store windows outfitted with sporting rifles, shotguns, ammunition boxes and sundry accessories can be documented to the 19th century and appear to have become reasonably common by the 1920s. Their efficacy in generating sales is hard to gauge, but probably was positive. We do know hardware store gun windows lacked the eye-popping theatrical staging created by trimmers working for the great urban department stores, but these small retailers and their staff did what they could. Their best efforts probably took place around the fall hunting seasons, but they likely installed some interesting firearms windows at other times of the year. Interior wall and counter displays have been more subdued. Their appearance has run the gamut from basically functional in small town hardware stores to impressively classy in past New York sporting emporia. Today’s gun shop displays, auction house previews and tables at consumer gun shows may not be visually inspiring for the most part, but they are serviceable for purposes of market exchange. Caution needs to be exercised when selling firearms and dealers keep an eye on their valuable open stock.

Visual records of hardware and sporting goods store windows featuring other brands of rifles and shotguns, such as Marlin, Mossberg, Savage, Stevens and various imports, have yet to be discovered, but chances are good that such tableaux were installed from time to time. Regarding interior displays of these brands, one bit of evidence has been found. The Roy Marcot Firearms Advertising Collection in the McCracken Research Library includes an ad for the J. Stevens Arms and Tool Company, a prolific maker of sporting rifles and pistols, that appeared in the February 1, 1913, issue of the outdoor life magazine Outer’s Book. In the illustration, a male store clerk stands behind the counter holding a pump-action rifle he is demonstrating for a male customer. To the dealer’s left an upright rifle cabinet has a bold “Stevens” sign above its glass doors and some Stevens advertising ephemera decorate additional wall space. Steven firearms competed at retail with some of the guns made by Remington and Winchester. The characters in this ad are white males, as are most of those portrayed in the many visual sources inspected. Women appeared sometimes, but not as store personnel and probably not buyers. African and Asian Americans have been completely absent.

Some of the articles and illustrations in trade publications envisioned how casual passersby and potential customers might react to guns in windows and interior displays. For example, the previously discussed trade ad in the Winchester Herald (Plate 9) depicted three animated boy rifle enthusiasts looking through the glass and talking about the rifles they coveted. These vignettes reflected the expectations of retailer and company staff, not necessarily the reactions of the public at large. First-hand accounts of visual engagement with firearms merchandising by consumers and reported in newspapers and magazines outside industry control or related through personal letters and diaries, may exist but have yet to be discovered. Christopoulou (2011, p. 27) contends that:

Some visual power may have resulted from repetition achieved through stacking box after box of ammunition, lining up numerous rifles and shotguns. Period photos in black and white miss the use of color, but it can be documented through surviving guns, cartridge boxes and ephemera documents.

This history has depended greatly on surviving visual evidence. The best examples have been chosen for discussion and illustration in the figures, but overall the images unearthed have been limited in number. Nevertheless, the research contributes a fresh perspective on the marketing of American firearms and may stimulate further investigation of their visual merchandising.