Free Fifties Clip Art, People, Fashion, Food & Ads

You don't have to be a baby boomer to enjoy the "good old days" of 1950s America. From mid-century modern designers, like the Eames, to nostalgic, never-seen-in-real-life nuclear families like the Nelsons and the Petries, to those delightfully un-PC magazine and television ads and how-tos ("How to Capture a Husband")--there's something for everyone to enjoy..

The atomic age! My parents never had to build a bomb shelter--we lived on military bases. Everybody ran to the basement of the elementary school when the siren went off. But we had all the popular items of the time: melamine dishes, a percolating coffee pot, giant Zenith console tv, Colorforms, Tinkertoys, Mr. Potato Head (when you used a real potato!), tuna casserole, American chop suey, lime green jello molds embedded with miscellaneous food bits and a disgusting concoction known politely as "creamed chipped beef on toast".

More on my retro trip down memory lane later...

Why offer free images?

I've searched endlessly online for free retro clip art and graphics to use in my websites, zines, cards, journals and other creative projects, only to end up with very little. What I have found are mostly small graphics, unusable for printing (I used to make zines). This inspired me to create my own website. I've been fortunate enough to acquire a stash of magazines from the 1950s and early 1960s. I've spent many hours scanning and cleaning up these images to offer them to you, retro lovers. I'm always on the look-out for more image sources, so expect to see this collection grow.

If you're interested in high-res, 300 DPI images (in some cases vector format), I will be putting them on CD and offering them for a small donation to cover mailing costs.

Not all of these pictures are copyright-free; so, if you are thinking of using any of them for commercial use (which I don't advise), please do the homework. Click on the thumbnail to be taken to the larger image.