#90 Arm & Hammer
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Amperbr& series

Happy Bicarbonate of Soda Day

In oth­er words, Hap­py Bak­ing Soda Day, which is Decem­ber 3o every year. We all know Arm & Ham­mer is the Kleenex, Stein­way & Cray­ola of bak­ing soda. Arm & Ham­mer is also the sec­ond in the Amperbr&™ series of Amper­Art posters, which fea­ture just the amper­sands of famous brand names. More about Amperbr& at the end of this article.

Decem­ber 30 is also Nation­al Bacon Day, but you can’t do near­ly as many things with bacon as you can with bak­ing soda. I know some peo­ple who would mask stale air with the aro­ma of siz­zling bacon, & die-​hard bacon fans prob­a­bly brush their teeth with crisp bacon bits, but I would­n’t want to throw bacon in my laun­dry to make it whiter & brighter nor use bacon to exfo­li­ate my skin. So we’ll stick to cel­e­brat­ing Arm & Ham­mer today.

Here are some of the many uses for Arm & Ham­mer bak­ing soda:

• Add bak­ing soda to your bath water to relieve sun­burned or itchy skin.
• Make a paste of bak­ing soda and water, and apply to a burn or an insect bite for relief.
• Clean your refrig­er­a­tor with a solu­tion of one tea­spoon bak­ing soda to one quart of warm water.
• Pour a cup of bak­ing soda into the open­ing of your clogged drain and then add a cup of hot vine­gar. After a few min­utes, flush the drain with a quart of boil­ing water.
• To remove per­spi­ra­tion stains, make a thick paste of bak­ing soda and water. Rub paste into the stain, let it sit for an hour and then laun­der as usual.
• If you crave sweets, rinse your mouth with one-​teaspoon bak­ing soda dis­solved in a glass of warm water. Don’t swal­low the mix­ture; spit it out. Your crav­ing should dis­ap­pear instantly.
• Add a pinch of bak­ing soda to boiled syrup to pre­vent it from crystallizing.
• To remove pes­ti­cides, dirt, and wax from fresh fruits and veg­eta­bles, wash them in a large bowl of cool water to which you’ve added two to three table­spoons of bak­ing soda.
• Soak tooth­brush­es in bak­ing soda and warm water overnight to clean bristles.
• Gaso­line and oil odors can be removed by putting clothes in a trash bag with bak­ing soda for a few days before wash­ing them.
• Lay down a bar­ri­er of bak­ing soda under sink pipe open­ings and along base­ment win­dows to keep car­pen­ter ants, sil­ver­fish, and roach­es from invad­ing. Roach­es eat the bak­ing soda, dehy­drate, and die.
• A light bak­ing soda paste on a damp cloth will remove bugs and tar from cars with­out dam­ag­ing the paint. Let the paste sit for a few min­utes before wip­ing and rins­ing clean.
• To remove stains from your cof­fee and tea cups, wipe them with a damp sponge dipped in bak­ing soda paste.
• Keep your rub­ber gloves dry and smelling good by sprin­kling bak­ing soda inside them. They’ll slip on more eas­i­ly too!
• Sprin­kling bak­ing soda on your front steps will pro­vide trac­tion and melt the ice. Unlike rock salt, kit­ty lit­ter, or sand, it won’t dam­age out­door or indoor sur­faces or shoes.
• Boil two inch­es of water in a pan with a burned bot­tom, turn off the heat, then add half a cup of bak­ing soda. Let it sit overnight. In the morn­ing it will be easy to clean.
• Sprin­kle a tea­spoon of bak­ing soda on the bot­tom of your toast­er oven to elim­i­nate the burned smell from drip­pings and crumbs.
• A paste of bak­ing soda removes red sauce stains from plastic.

This list is from http://​www​.almanac​.com/​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​/​h​o​u​s​e​h​o​l​d​-​u​s​e​s​-​b​a​k​i​n​g​-​s​oda# but I discovered it first at one of my favorite sites, National Day Calendar. (That’s where I discovered December 30 is also National Bacon Day, Falling Needles Family Fest Day to celebrate live Christmas trees, & No Interruptions Day (which is why I’m getting this article finished on time.) Check out nation​al​day​cal​en​dar​.com—it’s where you’ll also see National Ampersand Day is September 8.

You’ll find many more uses for Arm & Ham­mer Bak­ing Soda at the offi­cial Arm & Ham­mer web­site. Accord­ing to the Church & Dwight Com­pa­ny, mak­ers of Arm & Ham­mer Bak­ing Soda…

For over 160 years, ARM & HAMMER™ Bak­ing Soda has been a nat­ur­al and afford­able way to clean and fresh­en all around your home. Bak­ing Soda is pure, safe, and effec­tive, which makes it a great alter­na­tive to using harsh chemicals.

Bak­ing Soda is nat­ur­al, so it’s no sur­prise ARM & HAMMER™ has a long his­to­ry of envi­ron­men­tal aware­ness. We start­ed using recy­cled paper­board in 1907, and we were the sole cor­po­rate spon­sor of the first Earth Day in 1970. Today our com­mit­ment to the Earth remains stronger than ever.

Fam­i­lies use Bak­ing Soda in hun­dreds of dif­fer­ent ways:

• Sprin­kle a lit­tle in smelly shoes to deodor­ize them

• Make a paste to gen­tly scrub away scuffs and cray­on marks from walls.

• Sprin­kle on a damp sponge to clean stain­less all around the kitchen with­out scratching

• Mix a pinch with your facial cleanser for a gen­tle, yet effec­tive, exfoliant

• Sprin­kle on car­pets, wait 15 min­utes, then vac­u­um up smells

• And much more

I’m a huge fan of Arm & Ham­mer Bak­ing Soda, from brush­ing my teeth (Arm & Ham­mer tooth­paste with mint) to fresh­en­ing the car­pet to unclog­ging the toi­let (mix bak­ing soda with vine­gar but stand back! — then fol­low with very hot water). Nev­er used it to bake cook­ies, though. So it real­ly is for bak­ing, huh?

Armand Hammer

Armand Hammer 1898 – 1990 
Pictured here in 1982
Composite graphic by Chaz DeSimone

I’m also a huge fan of any­one who buys out a com­pa­ny just because it sounds like his name. That’s what Armand Ham­mer did (sort of). First, a lit­tle about Armand Ham­mer — or spelled Amper­Art style, Arm& Ham­mer. Here’s an excerpt from Wikipedia:

Ham­mer (1898 – 1990) was born in New York City. His father came to the Unit­ed States from Odessa in the Russ­ian Empire (today Ukraine) in 1875, and set­tled in the Bronx, where he ran a gen­er­al med­ical prac­tice and five drugstores.

Ham­mer was named after the “arm & ham­mer” graph­ic sym­bol of the Social­ist Labor Par­ty of Amer­i­ca, in which his father had a lead­er­ship role.

He attend­ed med­ical school at Colum­bia (M.D., 1921). After grad­u­at­ing from med­ical school, Ham­mer extend­ed ear­li­er entre­pre­neur­ial ven­tures with a suc­cess­ful busi­ness import­ing many goods from and export­ing phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals to the new­ly formed Sovi­et Union, togeth­er with his younger broth­er Victor.

Ham­mer entered into a diverse array of busi­ness, art, cul­tur­al, and human­i­tar­i­an endeav­ors, includ­ing invest­ing in var­i­ous U.S. oil pro­duc­tion efforts. These oil invest­ments were lat­er par­layed into con­trol of Occi­den­tal Petro­le­um. Nation­al Geo­graph­ic described Occi­den­tal chair­man Ham­mer as “a pio­neer in the syn­fu­els boom.”

Ham­mer pur­chased Knoedler, the old­est art gallery in Amer­i­ca, in 1971. He was a col­lec­tor of Impres­sion­ist and Post-​Impressionist paint­ings. His per­son­al dona­tion forms the core of the per­ma­nent col­lec­tion of the UCLA Ham­mer Muse­um in Los Ange­les, Cal­i­for­nia. Togeth­er with his broth­er Vic­tor, he was the own­er of the famed “Ham­mer Gal­leries” in New York City.

Ham­mer was a phil­an­thropist, sup­port­ing caus­es relat­ed to edu­ca­tion, med­i­cine, and the arts. Among his lega­cies is the Armand Ham­mer Unit­ed World Col­lege of the Amer­i­can West (now gen­er­al­ly called the UWC-​USA, part of the Unit­ed World Col­leges). By the time of his death, Ham­mer had won the Sovi­et Union’s Order of Friend­ship of Peo­ples, the U.S. Nation­al Medal of Arts (1987), France’s Legion of Hon­or, Italy’s Grand Order of Mer­it, Swe­den’s Roy­al Order of the Polar Star, Aus­tri­a’s Knight Com­man­der’s Cross, Pak­istan’s Hilal-​i-​Quaid-​Azam Peace Award, Israel’s Lead­er­ship Award, Venezue­la’s Order of Andrés Bel­lo, Mex­i­co’s Nation­al Recog­ni­tion Award, Bul­gar­i­a’s Jubilee Medal, and Bel­gium’s Order of the Crown. Ham­mer hun­gered for a Nobel Peace Prize, and was repeat­ed­ly nom­i­nat­ed for one, but nev­er won.

In 1986, Forbes mag­a­zine esti­mat­ed his net worth at $200 million.

Arm & Hammer

So you see, Armand Ham­mer actu­al­ly owned part of Arm & Ham­mer. I think that’s cool. I’d sure like to be able to pur­chase a com­pa­ny that has my name as its brand. (Hey, wait a minute — I do: Des­i­mone Design.) I sup­pose if Armand’s name was instead Mike Rosoft he would have owned a chunk of that com­pa­ny, too.

Amperbr&

This Amper­Art piece, #90 Arm & Ham­mer, is the sec­ond in the Amperbr& series. The first is #89 Guns & Ros­es (with an inter­est­ing his­to­ry about the mid-​century idiom & years lat­er, nam­ing the band).

The focal point of each Amperbr& poster is the amper­sand, & obvi­ous­ly only brands are fea­tured that con­tain “&” or “and” or the con­trac­tion “n” (there are sur­pris­ing­ly many). Promi­nent col­ors & shapes of each brand’s logo & trade dress are fea­tured in each piece. In #90 Arm & Ham­mer, the amper­sand is an exact repro­duc­tion of the amper­sand in the logo­type, at the same angle. The burst is radi­at­ing at var­i­ous strengths as well, same as the pack­age. (That was an inter­est­ing dis­cov­ery.) Final­ly, the bor­der dis­plays the red, blue & flesh (the arm) as on the logo &packaging. The col­ors are sam­pled & matched to the brand palette.

Orig­i­nal­ly, the con­cept was to con­tain the brand ele­ments with­in a square, with the name of the brand set in a non­de­script font top & bot­tom, as such:

But you, my dear amper­sand fan, are intel­li­gent & sophis­ti­cat­ed. I need not insult you by spelling out what brand each image rep­re­sents. (How­ev­er, if you are unfa­mil­iar with the brand, it’s in the title of the poster.)

Logos have been my pas­sion since I was a kid. My first logo was a star with a cir­cle drawn around it. It was for an imag­i­nary com­pa­ny called Cir­cle Star. I have no idea how I came up with that name nor what the “com­pa­ny” did. But that was my first logo, prob­a­bly before I even heard that term. (“Cor­po­rate iden­ti­ty” entered my vocab­u­lary not too much later.)

I am very excit­ed about this new series, Amperbr&. Expect a new piece every so often with­in the Amper­Art series of “Ordi­nary Phras­es & Amper­sands Extra­or­di­naire.” Once again, I thank you for your inter­est & sup­port in Amper­Art. I wish you an Awe­some & Amaz­ing New Year.

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