Vintage 1970s Coca-Cola Felt Calendar Scroll 🥤 Commemorative Reissue of the 1899 Calendar, Victorian Lady, Fringed Wall Hanging

Size: 21" x 11 1/2" ~ Calendar - Tassels add another 2 1/2"~ New old stock, unused. They vary a little one to the next.

🖼️ Drink Coca-Cola, 1899

"Drink Coca-Cola" runs across the top in red-orange script, "Delicious and Refreshing" underneath in blue, and a spray of white daisies and a big red bow fill out the top of this black flocked cloth. Inside a gold frame with its own tiny "Drink Coca-Cola" crest sits a Victorian lady, hair piled up, quill pen raised in her hand, a vase of red roses at her elbow and a half-written letter on the desk in front of her. Below her is the calendar itself - "1899 February 1899," the days laid out correctly for that month - and "Sold Everywhere 5¢" in blue across the bottom. Gold fringe finishes the hem, and it hangs from a black rod with brass caps and a gold cord at the top.

🌹 Who's the Lady?

Collectors often say she's Hilda Clark - a comic-opera soprano with the Bostonians before Coca-Cola made her its first celebrity face. Her portrait ran on the company's calendars, trays, signs and trade cards from 1899 into 1903. This scroll doesn't print her name, but it's the same face that's carried her name in the trade for well over a century.

💌 A Nickel That Never Changed

Coca-Cola held its price at a nickel from 1886 all the way to 1959, so "Sold Everywhere 5¢" on this scroll is that same nickel talking. The company's first calendar year was 1891, which makes this 1899 writing-desk design already their ninth. They clearly loved it: in 1973, Coca-Cola USA brought the same lady, daisies and bow back as a paper Valentine calendar, with a note on the back thanking customers for keeping "our love affair with America going for 87 years." This flocked scroll carries that same 1899 artwork but isn't stamped with the 1973 copyright line, so it's its own, unmarked piece from around that later run of Coca-Cola nostalgia rather than the Valentine reissue itself.

🥤 A Piece Worth Having

I like that it still says exactly what it said in 1899 - Delicious and Refreshing, five cents, sold everywhere. Black cloth instead of paper means the color holds and it rolls up without cracking. Hang it, frame it, or keep it rolled in its sleeve - either way it's a nice chunk of Coca-Cola's advertising history for the wall.