Christmas gifts

Whilst everyone drives themselves silly chasing Christmas, Shelf Appeal chases Christmas past. I love old catalogues, not the big beefy hard to lift kind but the small decorated hard to resist kind.

Barrow’s Stores in Birmingham printed some really lovely things in the first half of the last century, especially at Christmas. Mr Bawden turned his pen for them but I haven’t been lucky enough to purchase any of those. I do have a few more anonymous though no less interesting items, including this booklet from The Gifts China & Glass Department.

This booklet is a classic Curwen Press production, I’m sure. The paper, the printing, the decorations, the colours – all shriek of Curwen. It’s a nice format, a square, folded over. I think it is from Christmas 1939. Firstly because of the text “Don’t Economise this Christmas. Prices are still almost normal.” And secondly because in the lovely little vignette of Ambrose Heath’s food books (in the spread pictured below) is his book ‘Open Sesame: The Way of a Cook With a Can’, published that very year.

There are three pages of yellow paper on each side, covered in lovely illustrations and lists of Christmas goodies to buy. The present categories are very much in the style of a previously posted Heal’s Christmas catalogue: For Handy Children, Boy’s Toys, Toddler’s Toys, In Bed, Good Baskets, Swedish Flower Pots. And an intriguing category Friendly Aliens, consisting of more pots, tableware and objects. The expression ‘Friendly Aliens’ was used for refugees from Nazism. Quite frankly I am a bit flummoxed as to what it means in this context, as the products don’t seem to hail from a specific country or designer.

Four pages of photographs of very tasteful presents make up the middle section of the booklet. Whitefriars and Orrefors glass spread across two and then the centre page is a double spread of glorious children’s books.

It all makes me hum with graphic pleasure.

The main drawer

A return trip to Copenhagen was a nice thing to do. It was cold, cold, cold. So cold the lakes had frozen over, leaving the birds somewhat disconcerted. Unsuitable shoes gained their revenge on the slippery pavements. But still, it all looked lovely, especially from the window of a warm bus.

A return trip to the Design Museum in Copenhagen was a nice thing to do too. It has been gussied up somewhat since I was last there in 2008. A lot of tasteful paint has been splashed around, complementing the original grey marble floors. And some nice displays have been mounted for 20th century stuff, pulling the exhibition displays in to line with the objects they display, aesthetically-speaking.

But this room was my favourite. On the door it was labelled (in nice gilt script) Tekstilrum. Which proved to be the case. Neat wooden drawers hiding piece after piece of antique lace. The lace was a little underwhelming but the room was lovely. Nicely understated. Plain even. But plain in that sort of expensive way I like.

The whole of this museum is classy, helped by the building itself, which was built between 1752-57 as King Frederik’s Hospital. In the 1920s the museum moved in and very nice it looks. Although it’s probably a nightmare to curate in. Never mind keep things in the condition an archivist would want them kept in.

But if you find yourself with an hour or two to spare in Copenhagen and want to look at pretty things.. And what’s more, they let you take photos.

Three is magic

The Ministry of Food (please don’t mention or think about Jamie’s version) is one of those British wartime campaigns that you couldn’t really – in retrospect – make up. The premise was innocuous enough, educate and advise people on how to make the most of food rationing conditions. But the way it rolled out, with mad anthropomorphised fruit and vegetable characters (Doctor Carrot and Potato Pete) plenty of text puns and patronising hints, and lashings of make do and mend vigour, all seem to me to be peculiarly British in tone.

The Ministry’s leaflets and advice seem to have been well disseminated. As well as a popular daily The Kitchen Front broadcast on the Radio and Food Facts in all the press, films showed in cinemas. This suitably plummy film from 1945 is a particular tease because you can see all the lovely leaflets in the background. And yes, I did imagine being able to pop in and take one of each. For posterity, you understand.

Most of the Ministry’s leaflets had a good illustration or two on them, which of course catches my eye. My quivering illustration antennae think this one might be by Ashley Havinden. But I stand to be corrected – because sometimes it starts to sound like I think he drew everything around this period. Anyone might think he sponsors this blog.

So let’s just say this is Havinden-esque and leave it at that. It is a jolly nice blackboard and rubber, whichever way the penmanship debate swings.

Paper bag writer

I have said it before – one person’s tat is another person’s ephemeral slice of apple pie and cream. Not that this piece of ephemera was ever remotely tat nor never meant to be.

A paper version of the classic Loewe Amazona bag. Complete with a paper Loewe tag and a real metal Loewe padlock. All neatly tucked into the substantial (feel the texture) Loewe cardboard product box. Finished off with a ribbon.

The card of provenance inside reads:

Loewe
Madrid
1846
‘Paper Amazona’
Limited Edition
Life Expectancy 30 days!

A substantial paper giveaway for the insubstantial fashion bunny. Kindly given to this wannabe. Referencing everything from Chinese paper clothes burnt to clothe the dead, to Warhol’s paper dresses and the recent cult of paperessness across fashion, art, design and the rest.

Not sure what it says about me that I’d much rather this paper version than the real thing.

Dainties

As you know toys are a bit of a thing here. They are a bit more of a thing on Shelf Appeal’s Flickr. A recent return visit to the small and dusty toy room at Tunbridge Wells Museum resulted in this image of tiny toys of a type new to me.

These tin plate toys are wee, all less than an inch tall. I hadn’t thought much more about that until I was resizing the image and could read the name on the pretty box behind them in the display case. So I looked it up. Ernst Heinrichsen, whom, it turns out, was one of the first makers of miniature toy figures – forerunners of modern plastic toy soldiers. His factory produced all sorts of miniature toy figures from 1939 – 1940. The toys were flat pressed tin shapes, but incredibly detailed for that.

The museum’s case of Heinrichsens contained a lot of gun brandishing soldiers, sailors with their ships and tiny ranks of ready for action roman soldiers. But the ones that caught my eye were the ‘village’ models here. Bucolic maids and farm hands herding their tiny tin plate sheep. With a lovely dovecot, cows and even trees. With her bright red bodice and flushed cheek she looks as perky as the day she went in to the box behind her.

It looks as though the early Heinrichsen models have been re-released in their naked metal forms, ready for painting. I used to love painting my historical Airfix kits of kings and queens when I was a kid. The great smell of the tiny tins of paint and the delicacy of the small brushes. But I am not sure I am brave enough to take on the challenge of painting such dainty things as these.