Chess Explorations (89)
By Edward Winter
Smoking used to be a common theme in chess-related advertisements. For instance, C.N. 4622 gave, courtesy of Jim Kulbacki (Cheyenne, WY, USA), an item featuring Frank J. Marshall, from the Saturday Evening Post, 28 April 1934:

Click to enlarge
An oddity was shown in C.N. 5218: a promotional photograph, probably from the
1950s, for women’s pipe-smoking:

We found the picture on page 182 of The Ultimate Pipe Book by Richard
Carleton Hacker (Beverly Hills, 1984).
C.N. 7513 showed a selection of chess-related advertisements in an article
‘Echecs et publicité’ by Jean Buchet on pages 28-30
of L’Echiquier de Paris, March-April 1949:

Larger version
It was stated that the three olympiad posters (by, respectively, B. Juan Dell’Acqua,
Ernesto M. Scotti and Alfredo Franzetti) were the winners of a competition set
by the organizing committee, that the Norwich Union poster appeared during the
Nottingham, 1936 tournament, that the photograph in the top right-hand corner
was published in the Schweizer Illustrierte Zeitung of 10 February
1937 in an advertisement for the painkiller Togal, and that the light-bulb advertisement
(Philips) was taken from the Algemeen Dagblad of 16 March 1948.
On the subject of posters with chess connections, in C.N. 7524 Michaël
Smorowski (La Garde, France) reported that he had acquired the one below, dated
1972, in St Petersburg. It concerns a production of The Apple Cart by
George Bernard Shaw:

Finally, C.N. 7533 reproduced an advertisement for Probak blades which we
found on page 65 of True Detective Mysteries, December 1931:


Submit information
or suggestions on chess explorations
All ChessBase articles
by Edward Winter
Edward Winter is the editor of Chess
Notes, which was founded in January 1982 as "a forum for aficionados
to discuss all matters relating to the Royal Pastime". Since then, over 7,780
items have been published, and the series has resulted in four books by Winter:
Chess
Explorations (1996), Kings,
Commoners and Knaves (1999), A
Chess Omnibus (2003) and Chess
Facts and Fables (2006). He is also the author of a monograph on Capablanca
(1989). In 2011 a paperback
edition was issued.
Chess Notes is well known for its historical research, and anyone browsing
in its archives
will find a wealth of unknown games, accounts of historical mysteries, quotes
and quips, and other material of every kind imaginable. Correspondents from
around the world contribute items, and they include not only "ordinary readers"
but also some eminent historians – and, indeed, some eminent masters. Chess
Notes is located at the Chess
History Center. Signed copies of Edward Winter's publications are
currently available.