In our age of extreme convenience it is easy to forget that many staples were not always within an arm’s reach – this is especially true of frozen foods, which require specialized techniques for preparation and special packaging to maintain hygiene, and which must be stored in purpose-built appliances to ensure freshness and taste. Ice cream is no exception. Although available to the masses starting in the middle of the nineteenth century, the explosive demand for ice cream skyrocketed with the proliferation of American industry around the turn of the twentieth century. Ice cream’s ephemeral nature drew particular attention from early researchers, marketers, and consumers alike, and advances in food packaging and marketing allowed the frozen treat to move from the ice cream parlor and into the home. This transition democratized a foodstuff once reserved for the wealthy but also led to curious and persistent conceptions about women as consumers. Using Henry Dreyfuss’s 1930s package prototypes for National Dairy Ice Cream in Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum’s collection as a material entry point, this paper examines the rise of ice cream consumption and elucidates the history of production, packaging, and marketing in early twentieth-century America.
About the presenterRachel Hedy Rosengarten Hunnicutt
Rachel H. R. Hunnicutt is an American Studies PhD candidate at William & Mary. Her research areas include twentieth-century design and material culture, corporate culture, and bureaucracy. She holds an MA in History of Design and Curatorial Studies from Parsons School of Design, and previously served as a cataloguer in the Department of Drawings, Prints & Graphic Design at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.