Ralston Rocket Space Patrol Meets Vintage Trailer Print - Lost Highways Archive & Research Library - Old City Philadelphia - Ben Franklin

Ralston Rocket Space Patrol Meets Vintage Trailer Print - Lost Highways Archive & Research Library - Old City Philadelphia - Ben FranklinTreasures from THE CLASSIC TRAILER & MOTOR HOME COLLECTION at Lost Highways Archive & Research Library. By exclusive arrangement with The Grand Review. Print size 24 X 18, and consciously formatted to work with a standard 18 x 24 store bought frame, or custom framed as you see fit. The story of LOST HIGHWAYS ARCHIVE & RESEARCH LIBRARY is one of those long, circuitous yet magic yarns that really conjured treasure from detritus and created something

Treasures from THE CLASSIC TRAILER & MOTOR HOME COLLECTION at Lost Highways Archive & Research Library.  By exclusive arrangement with The Grand Review.

Print size 24 X 18, and consciously formatted to work with a standard 18 x 24 store bought frame, or custom framed as you see fit.

The story of LOST HIGHWAYS ARCHIVE & RESEARCH LIBRARY is one of those long, circuitous yet magic yarns that really conjured treasure from detritus and created something wonderful.

Long ignored by architectural historians and automotive historians, the crazy conveyances that were invented and sold to the public to satisfy our ever growing desire to live on wheels is, was and deserved to be remembered as a crossroads embracing the best, and occasionally the worst,  of American early and mid century design and our ever expanding, ever evolving roadside and recreation style.

Now stored in 100 crates spread over three locations, Lost Highways Archive is the largest private collection on Earth of archival material and artifacts related to the American passion for living on wheels, turn of the 20th century through the 1960s.  Until this collection, now being dug into for a peek here and there for the first time in a decade, finds a new home and purpose, we are thrilled to go spelunking through it for visual delights.  These, as they go through our restoration process, will be made available here on Etsy and on our Facebook page as well.

This print is drawn from a Lost Highways promo poster that used the legendary Ralston Rocket as the embodiment of our approach to vintage trailers, circa mid 1990s.  We dared to have fun, and we still do.  The Ralston Rocket was the grand prize in a huge kiddie contest fueling the hysteria for all things outer space, in this case the Space Patrol TV show sponsored by, you guessed it, Ralston Purina.  There were thousands of smaller prizes of every sort of gew gaws and jimcracks, but there were actually two of these rocket ship play houses built and dropped off at the homes of two lucky winners.

Crazy!

SHIPPING

All prints are shipped in a sturdy mailing tube for $8, which covers postage, tube and S & H.

BUYING MORE THAN ONE PRINT? Add a second print or any number thereafter of this or any other prints in our catalog and shipping is still just $8, total!!!

International shipping is available and reasonable. Please contact us for details.

A NOTE ON OUR PROCESS, OUR CHOICES AND THE QUALITY OF THE GRAPHIC CRAFTSMANSHIP THAT GOES INTO OUR PRINTS.

Every print we deem exciting enough to present to the public via our Etsy store or available here at our studio has gone through a number of steps. The first of those is always discovering and falling in love with an obscure image, always an original that we can hold in our hands. That image is speaking to us, sometime screaming “Don’t leave me here. See what I am, what I was, what I can be, what I SHOULD be!”

There is a real sense of excitement involved, and a great many smiles and knowing grins when we make that deal and bring that ancient print, that battered photo, that scrap of ephemera that contains some scrap of genius from an unknown commercial artist home with us, knowing already how we mean to approach its restoration.

There is the heady promise of a further hunt just as real as what drags a weekend fisherman out of bed at 3AM to work a favorite brook as we start our research, looking for that great backstory, and both ready and willing to tumble down as many rabbit holes as are revealed to us to get that story.

Then there is a meticulous digital restoration that is as often as much fun as riding a vintage Moto Guzzi on a winding coastal road. I don’t care if that sounds crazy, it really is like jumping in the saddle! So many choices, so many chances to take to subtly or spectacularly give new life to otherwise permanently obscure images.

This dedication and the ongoing rush of joy in the accomplishment of it, and the opportunity to share the results in our studio and here on Etsy, is the fire of passion that keeps these engines roaring. We make every effort to ensure our customers are not just satisfied but thrilled, and we happily stand 100% behind our work.