In March 1951, shoppers of all ages descended on Macy’s in New York City’s Herald Square. Though the holidays were long over, eager customers packed in for a glimpse of the first in-store ...

A dime store hobby turned most everyone into an artist. The popular paint by numbers after some 71 years since the first kit was introduced at the 1951 New York Toy Fair is still a very popular ...

In the 1950s, the most popular artwork to grace the walls of an American household wasn't a Pollack, a de Kooning or a Rothko. Instead, odds are it would have been a paint-by-number picture. Dan ...

Critics were aghast, but hobbyists couldn't get enough of it: In the mid-1950s, paint-by-numbers kits were all the rage. Dan Robbins, the artist who helped invent those kits, died at a hospice on ...

In 1954, a White House appointments secretary named Thomas E. Stephens distributed paint-by-numbers kits to senior officials under president Dwight Eisenhower, who sometimes gave such kits to Oval ...

Dan Robbins, inventor of paint-by-numbers, pictured here at work on a “personal portrait” painting, circa 1954. (all images courtesy of Sarah Robbins) Though sales of paint-by-number painting kits ...