Quick and dirty

Shelf Appeal has been all about the paper recently. So when I found this small tin whilst putting away Christmas decorations, I thought I would get a bit dimensional.

I used to collect packaging. But watching my brothers house slowly turn itself into the second coming of Robert Opie sort of put me off. But I couldn’t quite seem to part with this little number. That picture on the lid is nothing if not a fashion illustration, complete with berets and a plaid skirt. Very similar to the little vignettes dotted across the pages of Vogue, or the tasty illustrative Jaeger advertising of the 1930s. Which probably explains why it is a lone (ish) packaging survivor on my shelf.

I found the thing in a box of tat at some Manchester flea market, I think. Years later, studying for an MPhil and getting very good use out of a staff pass for the National Art Library in the V&A (the best thing by far about that studying) I found a reference to it in a packaging magazine of 1938. I wasn’t looking for it but that is when you turn up things.

I really miss those V&A stacks. As far as the greedy design historian eye could see there were journals and books on designy things. I am pretty sure I got through every British Vogue up to about 1950. Art & Industry. Display. Architectural Review. Commercial Art. Graphis annuals galore. And only some little part of all that browsing was relevant to what I was actually supposed to be researching.

It seems they made a bigger Quickies tin, too. All the better for displaying on a shelf. All the better for seeing the nice illustration and sweet rope-like typeface used for the name. Not that I’d want two Quickie tins, you understand..

Masculine whim

The Austin Reed man was a bit spoilt with nice graphics and advertising in the mid-twentieth century. Austin Reed is a brand that struggles a little with its place in the market these days. But those days, well. They used poster designer of choice Tom Purvis, illustrator of choice Fougasse, and a lot of other commercial artists whose illustrations without provenance just tease me to try and find out more.

This is a Christmas booklet from the late 1940s. They are my mostest favourite things these shop booklets. Presumably mailed out to ladies and gentlemen so that they would know what to buy their particular gentlemen. Reassured that at Austin Reed: ‘masculine whims and vanities are served at all seasons and in all circumstances.’

It is a grand cover design though. A little bit yet not quite Fougasse. Inside the booklet there are illustrations of slippers, socks, dressing gowns, pyjamas – and even a pipe – as worn on the cover. Everything except the stripy chair is for sale, for Christmas.

I posted about some socks from this booklet before. And about another Austin Reed booklet too. I do like to get my monies-worth from these bits of paper. I can’t promise this will be the last time, either. The ‘Whims and Fancies’ page from this one deserves a post all to itself.

I’ll finish this post and the year with a pair of slippers. Such a lovely, simple illustration of a very nice pair of slippers.

The sweetest thing

It’s the little things. I bought this tiny (8cm long) bit of nonsense for 50p. OK, you might say I was done. I probably was. But it’s a nice illustration and makes me happy.

Of course I Googled it. Found out it is a sugar wrapper. Opened up a scary world of sugar wrapper collectors to me. I can see the attraction but am glad I don’t feel the need to go there. Hundreds of the things, scanned and catalogued here. Some rather lovely packets. A terrible website – usability-wise.

I like that it’s Joan of Arc in a chainmail top. Can’t make out the name of the illustrator. It’s made by a Dutch sugar company called Oordt & Co of Rotterdam.

The Dutch strapline seems to translate as ‘She’s writing with Reynolds.’ Reynolds, the wiki-p tells me, is a company founded in the USA by Milton Reynolds. He ripped off Biro pens and manufactured them to great success as the Reynolds Rocket in 1945. Go him.

Post a dog

I can’t be collecting posters as well as books and bits of paper. They are too big and wall space is in short supply. But this little beauty is small enough to tuck away at 9×6” or Demy if we are using the nice Imperial paper names.

It is designed by Leonard Beaumont, a Sheffield chap. I leave the real postery-ness to the experts who do it properly. But I do believe this was a counter poster, put just where you could see it when buying your stamps. Wherever he was, this dachshund would be sure to make you remember to post early. The knot in his tail reiterating the message, somewhat painfully.

There is not much info on Mr Beaumont to be found though, except a nice bit of telephony from 1942. Unusually, nothing comes up under his name in a search across London Transport posters, where most commercial artists were earning a design crust in those days.

I also just realised I have blogged Mr Beaumonts work on Shelf Appeal before. He was a design consultant for Sainsbury’s (doing rather nice egg packaging) around the same time he designed this poster in 1950. A bit of design serendipity going on then.

A book of toys

This is my ideal book really. It’s a King Penguin book – a superlative set of illustrated books from around the 1940s of just exactly the right size. The book is about toys. I really like toys. The toys are all from museum collections. I also like museums. The book weaves illustrations of the toys in with hand drawn type telling their stories, across the pages, walking them from one chapter into the next, literally and illustratively. At the back it tells you which museum the toys live in. Add a cracking cover and, well, there it is.