The commercial art of Sydney S. Stern is still used on cracker boxes to this day.
By: Anthony Stoeckert
The way Donald Stern remembers it, his father Sydney came home from work one Friday evening in 1934 with a big assignment. Sydney was an artist with the National Biscuit Co., which had developed a new cracker modeled after a competitor’s successful product. Sydney was charged with designing the box he would present at a meeting Monday morning. Speed was of the essence because the company wanted the new cracker on the market as soon as possible. "They felt it might be a money-making cracker," Donald says.
So that Friday after dinner, Sydney went up to the attic where he worked. A few hours later, while Don was sitting on the couch with his brothers and stepmother, "Dad comes downstairs and he’s wearing a fedora hat, and in the hat band he has a blue circle. And it’s not a big circle, so he can only put a four-letter word in there, so he put the word ‘Ritz’ in there," Donald told an audience during a program about his father’s work. "And he said, ‘What do you think of it?’ And we said, ‘Yeah, it’s OK.’ He goes back into the attic and I often wondered what would have happened if we had said, ‘Eh, it’s not so hot.’"
The logo and box Sydney S. Stern developed is one of the most enduring images in American advertising history: A red box decorated with crackers and that blue and yellow logo remain the basic elements of the Ritz Cracker box. Sure, the blue is highlighted with a lighting effect, the letters are more modern and angled and fewer crackers grace the box, but Mr. Stern’s 73-year-old design remains the foundation for the iconic packaging. However, there was one complaint from an executive, who felt the name Ritz wasn’t appropriate during a depression.
"As hard-nosed a business as packaging commercial advertising is, the fact that the Ritz Cracker box with minor adjustments has not changed since the 1930s, for something to last that long in the American conscious is really quite remarkable," says Howard Siskowitz, curator of the South Brunswick Arts Commission’s exhibit of Sydney S. Stern’s art. "That really tells you something about how he managed to strike a chord that worked for the company and worked for the public. So it’s nice that the artist gets brought to the attention of the public in a show like this."
The exhibit at the Gallery at South Brunswick Municipal Building, on view through March 31, features boxes, advertisements and a few original paintings of Mr. Stern’s work for the National Biscuit Co. (now Nabisco), where he worked from 1923 to 1956.
Mr. Stern’s work offers a history lesson on an era of advertising. The boxes and ads designed by Mr. Stern (who died in 1989) feature teapots, flowers, dainty hands (one of the artist’s specialties), and bright but delicate colors that remind the viewer of grandmother’s house.
One of the most striking works is a poster advertisement for Fig Newtons. A plate of the cookies and an elegant box grace the forefront with figs falling from a tree right behind. Beyond that is a beach lined with fig trees under a sunlit sky.
"That’s a wonderful, wonderful piece, and it’s a classic of that period of time," Mr. Siskowitz says. "It’s one of those situations (that remind you that) as we become more advanced technically, there are certain things that get lost, and that kind of lithographic process of poster making is gone. It’s time-consuming and expensive."
Also noteworthy are the two actual paintings of Mr. Stern’s commercial work on display. One is an advertisement for Moonbeams (no longer produced), featuring a cake-like cookie topped with marshmallow and coconut sprinkles. Seeing the brushstrokes within the cookies and the hand lettering make a viewer realize that creating these advertisements was a craft.
"It’s a much more subliminal kind of art form," Mr. Siskowitz says. "It’s a package of a product in a store, and you’re supposed to be able to go into the store and see this box and have it register that, ‘Yes I want to pick that up and buy it and take it home.’" Unlike other artists, Mr. Stern wasn’t concerned with being a personality behind his art. "He worked for a company, that was his job. But he was a gifted fine artist, the way he (drew) commercial advertisements, that’s serious fine art illustration." His talents also are evident in an ad for oyster crackers featuring impressive renderings of oysters.
Another noteworthy hand painting is a car card (a format often seen on subway cars) advertising Fig Newtons. The painting features a teacup, but the company decided it wanted to push the cookies as going well with cream. So another ad in the exhibit features the modified version, a cup of cream replacing the tea.
The artist also made a noted contribution to a popular favorite, the Barnum’s Animal Crackers box. The box had already been on the market, but in redesigning it, Mr. Stern added a bright, white polar bear that stood out among the muted-colored lion and tiger. A problem arose when customers called complaining that there was no polar bear-shaped cracker, so one was added to the mix.
The fun part of the exhibit is learning about products that are no longer produced. An ad for something called a Bouquet Cake features flowers and claims the cake goes well with "beverage ices." A Christmas-themed ad illustrates alphabet-shaped crackers and Log Cabin Brownies, neither of which this writer has ever seen or heard.
In addition to his commercial work, Mr. Stern painted portraits and landscapes. These were exhibited and several pieces sold since the exhibit’s opening, Donald Stern has heard from two people who owned paintings by his father.
Donald Stern’s house is filled with his father’s work, and Mr. Siskowitz says selecting pieces for the exhibit was difficult because of the wealth of choices. In fact, including Mr. Stern’s more personal work wasn’t part of the original plan.
"When I looked at his personal work, I could see influences of art of the day," Mr. Siskowitz says. "Sometimes the background would look cubist. At the time, Picasso was such a huge influence that all artists, when they were doing their personal work, they dabbled in the idea of breaking up space and breaking up color, and Sydney did too. But he was such a good drawer, that he never got too far away from reality in the figure."
One of his last paintings shows Mr. Stern walking through a forest near his home in Florida, where he retired to paint, teach and travel. Donald Stern pointed out that his father painted the entire canvas pink (one of his favorite colors), then painted the scene over it. The flashes of pink underneath add a warmth, providing the effect of the walk taking place at sunset. You get the feeling he was a man satisfied with his work.
The Sydney S. Stern Exhibit is on view at the Gallery at the South Brunswick Municipal Building, 540 Ridge Road, Monmouth Junction, through March 31. Gallery hours: Mon.-Fri. 8:30-4:30. The gallery is also open evenings when meetings are scheduled. Admission is free. For information, call (732) 329-4000, ext. 7635.

