IN a time when in the western world only sailors and servicemen had ink under their skin, there weren’t much tattoos to choose from.  Most of the pieces on a tattoo flash were anchors, hearts and skulls. The tattoo artist had 50 to 100 drawings in his parlor to pick from and the only custom work in those days was your name or the date. The tattoos on this page must have found their way to the biceps of melancholic sailors. The pieces date from around the Second World War.

FINSTA is a cold war kid from Western Europe. Sweden to be precisely. You can see in his style that he’s grown up in a time when the United States was a place that not only provided protecting against the Russians, but also dominated popular culture. Our fascination with the New World started with Alf, the  A-Team and E.T. After that Yo! MTV Raps, the book Spraycan Art from Henry Chalfant and comics from Robert Crumb and Vaughn Bode influenced a generation. See more work from the illustrator here.

WILLIAM Howard Taft was the last president of the United States that wore a moustache (in office 1909-1913). The last bearded president was Benjamin Harrison (in office 1889-1893). The hairstyle of Jimmy Carter (in office 1977-1981) was a seventies look and the coupe of Ronald Reagan (in office 1981-1989) was eighties. Illustrator Christina Christoforou focused for the New York Times only on the hair of the 44 presidents. Check out all of them here. She also did the hair of the first ladies and rock bands.

STEPHEN C. Henkel has a fixation on bicycles. He even wrote a book on the subject called Bikes ‘A How-to-do-it Guide to Selection, Care, Repair, Maintenance, Decoration, Safety and Fun on your Bicycle.’ And with a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Princeton I guess he was the right person to do that. The cool thing about the book is that the author also made the illustrations. For instance, he drew types of handlebars and the all the parts of a rear wheel hub. The Chatham Press published the book in 1972.

SOMETIMES you have to play against the rules. For instance, for the game of quartet group you need four cards of the same kind to win. I’m afraid I only used three. The Dutch postal service issued this deck of card in a time when it was ok to smoke a pipe in the office and you had to control your car by speech.

TINY drawings illustrate this article in the magazine Domus from November 1963. Maria Perego, an Italian designer of dolls, made the little figures while writing about her own work. In the article in Domus she told about the role of her puppets in her life.

A good illustration can be found everywhere. It could even be a spread from the engineering and art section of the 1963 Annual of the Prat Institute. Three artists by the name of H. Brandes, M. Hampton and J. Toto with the help of art director Ryszard Horowitz are responsible for the image of the little bird on the shoulders of the Greek bust.

GREEK statues don’t have to be ancient. Illustrator Miroslav Sasek brought them into modern times by introducing them to telephones, cocktails and press conferences. The drawings are part of a book called ‘Stone Is Not Cold’.  Miroslav Sasek (1916–1980) was born in Prague and escaped to the West when the Communist Party in 1948 came to power. Sasek in more known for his ‘This Is’ books. In each one he portrayed a city like Paris, London and San Francisco with his illustrations.

THIS is so hip it hurts. The drawing certainly would look cool on a t-shirt. But the artist who made it is probably in his late sixties. The man in question is Dennis Johnson and his illustration was used in 1970 for an advertisement for Wanamaker department stores to promote night sales.

AS a kid I frequently visited local car dealers in the hope the salesmen were kind enough to give a seven year old kid their shiny catalogues. First in line was the Audi dealer, and the goal was a brochure from the Audi Quattro. But I also liked the dealers of Japanese vehicles because their catalogues had cool illustrations of cars that never had to pop the hood to show the engine inside. In the early eighties Japan had a big scene of illustrators that followed the ‘super-realistic’ style. It was clearly a men’s world, because the subjects are mostly machines and nude women. Next to the fact that you can show the engine with a closed hood, the illustrations were popular because the drawings often gave a sharper impression than a photo.