Eran Litvin, curator and researcher, sent me an ad for cigarettes "Amir" which appeared in November 1934 in “Kol-Noa”. This date is very close to the arrival of my uncle Maxim Scheftelovich (later to become Shamir) and his wife Musia (around October 1934) in Palestine. My parents Gabriel Scheftelovich (Shamir) and his wife Pnina (Both graphic artists) joined Maxim in Palestine in May 1935.

We know very little about the period when Maxim worked in Palestine alone. In files discovered by his son, Gideon Shamir, I found Maxim's correspondence with the Taunus Brothers, Arab importers of trucks and buses. The letters mentioned design work and production of cinema transparencies. My search for transparencies so far raised only one transparency (then called – Diapozitiv): an advertisement for Ford. A Black / White photo appeared in a 1936 catalogue of Hebrew Commercial Artists in Eretz Israel.

Mickey Engel, a collector of cigarette packets, wrote to me saying that cigarettes "Amir" were a major brand at the time. Five years later Shamir Brothers switched to working for the competitor Bejarano Brothers.

The ad was signed with a large Hebrew letter “Shin” presumably to represent “Scheftelovich” the original surname of Maxim and Gabriel. The name "Shamir" was adopted in 1935 when they established their joint studio. They continued to use the large “Shin” signature, that was probably designed by Maxim, on newspaper ads. This can be seen in a self-promoting ad, published in Haaretz in 1936, in which they used the word "studia" as pronounced in Russian instead of “studio”.

Kol-Noa" was a bi-weekly illustrated magazine published in 1930-35 by Eitan Nahum (Itin) (1902-1976). “Illustrated” does not mean that the magazine was full of drawings but rather that articles were accompanied by photographs. Given that Eitan owned the first Zincography (according to Wikipedia) in the country we can understand how he could afford to produce a magazine using so many printing blocks.

 2009 Yoram Shamir