9UNP1543HD_Joe_Kapler_Evergleam_Aluminum_Christmas_Tree.rtf  - Today, we are pleased to introduce Joe Kapler as part of the Wisconsin Historical Museum's “History Sandwiched In” lecture series. Joe is the Wisconsin Historical Society's curator of cultural history. He's been with the Society since 2001 and oversees a wide variety of Society collections, including paintings, furniture, and decorative arts, as well as developing content for exhibitions, publications, and other Society initiatives. Here today to explore the history of the Evergleam aluminum Christmas tree, please join me in welcoming Joe Kapler.  - I want to echo Katie's comments there regarding the cold weather. It seems seasonally appropriate, but thank you for taking the time and making the effort to come in today. I generally work at the Historical Society's headquarters building, which is eight blocks away on Library Mall. So I make the trek back and forth, up and down State Street an awful lot, and today was particularly brisk. It didn't matter which direction you were facing either. The wind was in your face. So, I will talk today for 35-40 minutes, and we'll talk about, obviously, why we're all here, shining, aluminum Christmas trees. I'll leave a little time for Q&A, and if you have to leave before 1:00, if you have to leave at one o'clock, feel free. Please do so. And I'll stick around for more questions and answers after that, and then, obviously, since what we're talking about is right outside the doors, I encourage you to take advantage of the opportunity while you're here and visit the exhibition. So Katie mentioned a little bit of my background, and I don't know where aluminum Christmas trees fall into art, decorative arts, material culture. And I'm not sure it matters because one heck of a great story. And let's not classify it too much, and let's just talk about a great Wisconsin story, a great Wisconsin business story, really. So here they are. Aluminum Christmas trees. And these are three from the Wisconsin Historical Society museum's permanent collection. Actually three of the more special trees. Color, true taper. On the far right, you'll learn a little bit about that guy as well. This is our sixth exhibition on these trees, either featuring or including aluminum Christmas trees, since 2005. And then, this year, a different theme to it. We've titled the exhibition Evergleaming. Obviously a clear play on the brand name. The tag line, “The enduring love affair with the aluminum Christmas tree.” And we'll kind of conclude with why we picked that tag line. But here we are in 2016 and we're still talking about them, and we're probably talking about them more now than perhaps even they were spoken about then. So let's start our journey. I'm just going to run through here real quick kind of some key dates, and then the rest of the presentation will be fleshing these points out. But just to kind of set the stage regarding the trees and kind of their place in American history. They're often confused as 1950s aluminum tree, and they're 1960s really. And that's because in December of 1958, the head of sales for Aluminum Specialty Company, aluminum goods and manufacturing novelty household goods company out of Manitowoc, had already been in business for a little over 50 years at that point. Their head of sales was down in Chicago going by a Ben Franklin, looking in the storefront and sees a shiny, aluminum Christmas. Hmm, we make aluminum products, we make aluminum Christmas decorations. Buys one, takes it back to Manitowoc, and has the engineers look at this, kind of deconstruct it. The one that was in Chicago, it was made by Modern Coatings, Inc., another aluminum goods type of company. And they made and sold early trees, early relative to the story. And Aluminum Specialty thought maybe we could do a little better, a little more affordable. And they had lots of reasons to think that. And we'll see them as they play out. And so they quick, in a couple months, banged out a prototype in time for the New York Toy Fair, which is going to be in March of 1959. And this is where the Christmas season, decorations, toys, all that is launched. Manufacturers, makers of toys and goods and products and Christmas paper and all that meet with retailers, buyers for retailers, and they meet in New York and they do this in March ahead of the following December's Christmas season. The tree was a big hit amongst the buyers. And they taking orders right there, and then kind of getting a gauge. Retailers know their customers. That's the idea there. And Aluminum Specialty thought, hmm, this could be. They threw out many ideas a year and even prototype a fewer number but,