Norman Rockwell, the 1950s, and The Saturday Evening Post are so closely tied in association one cannot think of one without the other.  

This particular illustration graced the cover of the Post on June 29, 1957, one of three covers he produced that year and the 296th he produced in his forty-seven year career at the Post.  Just two days before, Hurricane Audrey struck Texas and the British Medical Research Council published a report suggesting a link between smoking and lung cancer.  Not that it stopped the contemporary Westerner: even a decade later people were still smoking packs with children present and in every public locale imaginable.  Just look at "Mad Men."

It seems ordinary enough: the maids just happened to come upon a room that a wedding was consummated in.  However, two things stand out: the confetti in the dustpan and the old brown shoe in the taller maid’s hands.  It was custom in the 1950s to throw confetti instead of rice like how all the corny rom coms in the later half of the 20th century depicted.  The brown shoe alludes to an association millenia old:  the Assyrians, Egyptians, and Hebrews traded sandals as business transactions were completed, similar to how champagne or liquor would be exchanged as a gesture of goodwill in the modern day.  A reference to the old tradition in context to marital commitment actually shows up in the Bible, in Ruth 4:7.  The shoe itself symbolized a willingness to honor a transaction.  In the context of a wedding, it symbolizes devotion and commitment in the same way a ring or a marriage contract would today.  The old shoe at the time would be tied to the rear bumper of a car in the same way tin cans would be.

The man whose name graces the bequeathment fund, J. Willard Loos, was a close friend of Rockwell’s, who gave his entire collection of studies and finished works upon his passing to Loos and his wife, Allie, who in turn gave it all to the Columbus Museum of Art.