ENJOY WALKERS CRISPS NOW

Super late Sixties beer mat promoting Walkers Crisps and Potato Sticks. The photo shows the front and back of the same beer mat. The bold stylized image, and the two colour printing reminds me of the programme covers for Stoke and Coventry City football club from the early Seventies.

John Elvin & Bernard Gallacher at Sportsgraphic were responsible for the programmes at Coventry and also produced work for Aston Villa and West Bromwich Albion football clubs. In 1972 their work was recognised with a D&AD award. It would be nice to think they were responsible for the Walker beer mats too!

Vintage paper plates

Serpo, vinyl sticker. Rue Chaudrier, La Rochelle

The pick of todays finds was this delighful vinyl sticker, for Serpo, a French photographic store in La Rochelle. Fixed to the side of a crumbling old Polaroid camera bag, it now has a new home!

1970's Ribbon spools

Composite beer bottle stoppers

Following last weeks Antiques Roadshow, at The British Museum. I was reminded of my mudlarking days! The chap on TV had 1000s of items from The Thames including coins and clay pipes as well as some old bottle stoppers!

My small collection of bottle stoppers also came from The Thames, from just beneath Tower Bridge, each stopper carries a different Brewery logo. Its fun to imagine the identity of the previous owner, who opened his bottle of beer and threw the stopper into the Thames.

Wicker Man Cheeseboard

This lovely Cheeseboard turned up at the local charity shop, last month. It measures 13.5" in diameter and has a metal rim, but like so many of my favourite things, it has no makers mark.

The figures are all in national costume and have a Scandanavian folk feel, but, underlying that, theres something sinister. It could be their raised hands! Are they praising the cheese? ( I like that idea!)

Whatever it is there's something a little bit Wicker man!

Isnt it time you changed your shorts?

UK Decimal Currency Converter 1971

On Monday 15 February 1971, Britain went decimal. Old money - pounds, shillings and pence was replaced by a new system that had a 100 pence in the pound. Shillings became a thing of the past!

There was much confusion at the time and a whole set of promotional items were created to launch and promote the new money. Todays post is a rather nice information wheel which converts old money into new.

Unobtainable Under Private ownership

The pick of yesterdays booty. One of a number of beer mats.

Optical toy discs

These six optical toy discs, came to me recently as part of an old collection of toys. They're stunning! The discs measure 4.5" across and came with spindles, that should drive, and spin the cards, but I cant see a way how you can insert the card on to the spindle without ruining the images.

Ive seen Phenakistiscope images online that look similar, but they appear to have slits on the outer edge, that look to fit some kind of contraption. The ones posted here, just have a central hole.

Hopefully, theres a clever soul out there that can tell us all about it. It would be good to shed more light on them.

Until next time........................

Information Wheel charts

I was delighted to find this rather nice paper wheel chart just the other day. Made in 1989 by the Wheel Ease corporation in Canada. Its a reference guide for programming the Lotus 1.2.3. Computer.

Paper wheels charts are a way of relaying information in a concise and articulate form. There are many different types, but like the Lotus one here, there is a rotating inner wheel, which has a cut out window. Through the window specific information is retrieved.

The first one I remember, was the one the bookmakers William Hill brought out for a European Championship. Im sure I still have it somewhere.

Theres a stupendous book by Jessica Helfland, Reinventing the Wheel, that documents over a hundred information wheels. All beautifully photographed with a concise overview. Published by Princeton Architectural Press, its now available in paperback. Its well worth a look!












Above are two more larger format wheels that I found some time ago. They were given away with The Book of Knowledge in the 1960s. The Historical chart on the left, documents the reign of each British monarch, while the Geographical Wheel gives population, principal rivers, natural resources and mountains of 90 countries. Below is a detail of the cut out window.