April 28, 1927 · R.M.S. Olympic · White Star Line · Menu
By 1927 the Olympic had been in service for sixteen years and was approaching the end of her career. The Roaring Twenties had reshaped Atlantic travel: shorter crossings, cocktail culture, and a younger, faster clientele drawn by the post-war boom. The Olympic was refitted multiple times to keep pace with newer rivals like the Berengaria and the Aquitania.
The cover is a fine example of late-1920s Art Deco book illustration. The stylized figure, balanced ring composition, and limited palette are characteristic of the Jazz Age commercial art that briefly transformed even ocean liner ephemera into design statements. R.M.S. Olympic menus from this period are among the most sought-after on the collectors’ market because of the ship’s Titanic-sister-ship association.
White Star Line, founded in 1845 and reorganized in 1869 by Thomas Henry Ismay, became the primary rival to Cunard on the North Atlantic. Under the leadership of J. Bruce Ismay, the company commissioned the famous Olympic-class trio: R.M.S. Olympic (1911), R.M.S. Titanic (1912), and H.M.H.S. Britannic (1915). After Titanic sank in 1912 and Britannic was lost in World War I, the Olympic became White Star’s lone surviving giant. The company merged with Cunard in 1934.
Visual style: Art Deco; stylized illustration of a young woman with celestial spheres.
What you receive
- Three print sizes: 8×10, 11×14, 16×20 inches (300 DPI, ready for any home printer or framing shop).
- Two versions of each size: a pure print (no added text) and a museum print (with a small caption: restaurant or ship, year, and source).
- A 1–2 page PDF with the menu’s historical context.
- One ZIP file, instantly downloadable after checkout.
About the source
This menu is preserved in the Buttolph Collection of Menus at The New York Public Library and is in the public domain in the United States. The Menu Press has curated, digitally restored, and reformatted the work for modern printing.
