by Karen L. Johnson

Deep in the archives of the Olympia Tumwater Foundation is a set of colored illustrations on lightweight cardstock. Some of the drawings are humorous, and others portray beautiful women drawn in the Art Nouveau style. All are pencil-dated “1912” on the back and all advertise Olympia Beer. Each card is signed “Dwig.”

A little online investigation showed that the artist’s full name was Clare Victor Dwiggins, who was born in 1874 in Wilmington, Ohio. His first career interest was architecture, but after some of his artwork was published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper, he detoured into cartooning. In 1903, a few of his cartoons were published as postcards by Raphael Tuck and Sons, a well-known British postcard producer. (The early 1900s were the Golden Age of postcards, and publishers were always on the look-out for new artists.)

Dwiggins quickly became a well-known illustrator and cartoonist, and also created several long-running comic strips for American newspapers. Dwiggins usually signed his works “Dwig.” His illustration career continued until he passed away in 1958.

But how did Dwig happen to draw cartoons for Olympia Beer ads? Actually, he didn’t, at least not specifically. Raphael Tuck and Sons produced several of his colorful postcard designs with blank spaces so a purchaser could fill in a company name. The Olympia Brewing Company bought the postcard blanks, contracted with Tuck to print “Olympia Beer—It’s the Water” in an appropriate spot, and a new ad was born.