Vintage 1960s Dentistry Decal 🦷 Embla Crest Dental Emblem Foil Sticker, Unopened

Remember Dentistry Decals? 🦷 Dentistry Emblem Self-Stick Decal, Embla Crest, Sealed on Its Card

Size: 3" ~ Factory sealed, little to no wear. ~ It is unknown if the adhesive still works, as that is usually the first thing to fail.

Embla Crest, a vintage 1960s Dentistry decal, is a highly collectible item. Factory sealed. These are likely the last of their kind in the world, serving as a poignant reminder of a time when we celebrated our community and their contributions. The supply is finite. Nobody's printing 69-cent dental emblems anymore, so once these sealed cards are gone, they will be very difficult to acquire.

They carry the official emblem of dentistry: a triangle and a circle around a serpent climbing a staff with a pointed tip, with a leafy spray on either side. The word DENTISTRY sits along the base of the circle.

It is unknown if the adhesive still works, as that is usually the first thing to fail. It may require assistance, also known as glue, to affix.

🏷️ What's Printed on It

• DENTISTRY
• Card: EMBLA CREST, EASY TO APPLY-SELF-STICK, 69¢

It's stapled to a coral hang card and sealed in a clear sleeve, with the hang hole punched through the printed header. The back of the card is plain apart from the hang hole and the staple.

🐍 One Snake, No Wings

Neat fact about this piece. And this is me, not AI. The caduceus was a symbol for Hermes, the Greek God, commerce, and negotiation throughout history. Somehow, in the USA, we got it confused with the Rod of Asclepius, which traditionally was a medical symbol but has only one snake and no wings. Even today, we still use these symbols interchangeably. This is a neat piece because it uses the Rod of Asclepius correctly.

The ADA's own description of its rod is a serpent wrapped around a cautery, an old instrument for sealing wounds with heat. That's why the staff on these decals ends in a point instead of a knob.

🦷 How Dentistry Got Its Emblem

The idea came from a librarian. Josephine Hunt ran the American Dental Association's library from 1927 to 1948, and in 1938 she suggested to Dr. Lon Morrey, head of the ADA Bureau of Public Relations, that dentistry ought to have an insignia like medicine's. Morrey made a quick sketch. The final design was drawn by Melville Stenfels, a freelancer the ADA hired for the job. The Bureau showed it to the Board of Trustees in 1938, and in 1940 the ADA House of Delegates adopted it as the official emblem of dentistry.

Every piece of it means something. The triangle is the Greek letter delta, for dentistry. The circle is omicron, for odont, the Greek word for tooth, with DENTISTRY set along its base. On the full emblem you can count 32 leaves for the permanent teeth and 20 berries for the baby teeth. In 1965 the House of Delegates reaffirmed the emblem, at the prompting of ADA Library Director Dr. Donald Washburn, and made its use standing policy. The ADA treats the emblem as copyright free, open to anyone.

The ADA even suggests the colors. Its recommended scheme puts the gold circle, the black triangle and the white snake on lilac, which was set as dentistry's academic color back in 1897. These Embla Crest decals follow that pretty closely, with a gold ring, a black triangle, a white serpent and a deep violet-blue ground.

🏷️ Embla Crest

Embla Crest sold its self-stick emblems on little hang cards for less than a dollar. Another Embla Crest card of mine, a different design, carries the Atlantic Emblem Co. name with Walterboro, South Carolina printed beneath the Embla Crest banner. That card has a five-digit ZIP code, so it can't be older than July 1, 1963, and an 803 phone number, which Walterboro's part of the state swapped for 843 in 1998. Walterboro was a Lowcountry town that the railroad tied to Columbia and Charleston in the 1880s.

🏡 Display

It's a great little gift for a dentist, a hygienist or a dental student, and it looks sharp framed on its card in an office or a waiting room.

Please refer to the pictures. It provides details and is considered part of the description for you.

Bring this bit of vintage memorabilia home and let it brighten up your room!