Even the remains of dinner had a job to do.
A thread of cooking fat runs from the skillet to a shell burst. Henry Koerner (born in Vienna in 1915) trained in graphic design and left Austria after the 1938 Anschluss. In New York he worked as a commercial artist, and later became a painter and a Time magazine cover artist. He designed this poster in 1943 for the US Office of War Information (OWI Poster No. 63), as part of the War Production Board's campaign to collect household cooking fat as a source of glycerine for munitions.
The Board had begun urging American women to save fat in 1942. MoMA holds a copy.
On the poster
A hand grips a cast-iron skillet from the upper right and tilts it, so that cooking fat pours in a single thread toward the centre. Below, thirteen artillery shells and bombs converge tail-first on a white-orange explosion. Yellow sans-serif type reads "Save waste fats for explosives." A black footer band in white capitals adds "Take them to your meat dealer."
About this print
A digitally restored reproduction, printed on 200gsm Enhanced Matte Fine Art paper with pigment inks.
