BOAC CREW Luggage label

Nice vintage BOAC Crew Luggage label. We've shown the front and back.

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!

Sasek Matchbox booklet for Liberty's London 1964

Much excitement in the Mendelsson household last week, when this dropped through the post! I hadn't checked ebay for a while for Sasek, as its become rather tedious trawling through all the modern reissues of his, This is series!

However a couple of weeks ago, I hit the search button, and was delighted to discover this rather battered matchbox booklet by the man himself. The booklet has some rather scratchy pen and ink drawings, depicting various modes of transport in London.
















The booklet measures 320 x 65mm, was made in Finland in 1964 for Liberty's of London, it has a brilliant red interior and once contained 150 Crown matches.

Heavy weight Baggage labels

Sorting through an old folder of ephemera I found these three luggage labels. The top two both date from the eighties and are from airlines. The bottom one is from a cruise ship and dates from the sixties.

Daddy Sugar Wrappers, France 1998 World Cup

Another topical post tonight, as France crash to a 2-0 defeat at the hands of Mexico in the FIFA World Cup. Back in 1998 France hosted the Tournament and won it, but tonight that must seem a distant memory.

As with all these Global events, companies are only too pleased to produce commemoratives, and back in the 1990s, Daddy, the king of paper wrapped sugar cubes produced these rather fetching sugar wrappers. I do believe that like matchbox labels, theres an army of collectors of paper wrapped Sugar cubes. These wrappers are the sort that used to be very popular at service stations and cafes.

1970s Post office booklet cover

Another small collection, that turned up recently, this time of stamp booklet covers. Back in the Seventies, the booklets were dispensed from machines outside the Post Office.

How simple, and beautiful, one colour printing on a heavyweight card is, and stitch bound too.
There are a few more examples here.

Ardizzone pantomime theatre

In 1947 Edward Ardizzone created a charming model theatre, to cut out and keep. It was for the December issue of The Strand Magazine. He also illustrated the cover, which is shown above.

As a special Christmas treat, Ive uploaded the 8 pages and instructions, as a pdf. So now you too can create his Pantomime Cinderella at home. The file is 7.9Mb, and can be downloaded here.

Below is one of the pages.

Baby Bubbly Beer mats

1960 Baby Bubbly beer mats.

Flags of the World tin badges

Ten lovely tin badges that are still on their original display card. Theres something very attractive about printing on tin. The little feet at the bottom of each flag are to bend round and attach to your lapel. They remind me of the paper World War One, Flag day pins you used to be able to get quite cheaply at the Ephemera society.

I couldnt find many images on line but theres a nice page in Robert Opies Great War Scrapbook.

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.

RUB DOWN & PEEL OFF!

All that talk about Action Transfers got me thinking about those childhood transfer booklets, and guess what? I found them! Theyre Fantastic, and even better than I remembered.

Here in all its glory, A Busy Bee Instant Picture Book. Made by Letraset in the late 60s this is Book No. 6 "Make your own cartoons". You can make up to 40 funny faces and figures with rub down pictures.

If you want to know more about this, and the Patterson Blick Instant Picture Books that I mentioned last week, head over to Seven wonder. It has a full resume of the whole series, including some Ive never seen and some Ill never forget.

When I saw The Patterson 3D Blick Peep Shows my heart skipped a beat. Various scenarios came to life in these shoe box sized dioramas. At one end there was a peep hole, and along the top, a cellophane window that illuminated the 3D scene inside. Wow! I never thought Id see those again, and all in one piece too. Heady days indeed!

Fruit Wrappers

While I was at art college in Liverpool in the Eighties, I was lucky enough to be taught by a great lecturer, John Sandford. He was full of energy and passionate about making the college a vibrant and dynamic place to be. Amongst his many passions were Magic, Masks, Fruit wrappers & Derby County Football Club.

It was John who suggested putting down the pencil to persue a more photographic route as an illustrator, and He who started my collection of fruit wrappers, after a trip to Spain where he visited the factory that printed the wrappers. We spent a couple of years swapping wrappers but sadly John died shortly after we graduated.

A little bit like the culture of collecting from skips, the joy of fruit wrappers, was that most green grocers would give you the wrappers for free. I dont think printing on the lightweight tissue paper was the easiest! Sometimes, as a result, there would be the added bonus of the image being misregistered.

Protective wrappers were introduced in the 19th Century when paper costs had come down in price and to safeguard fruit in transit. Traditionally they had wrapped Oranges & Lemons, but I have seen one or two pear wrappers from China.

The V&A Museum in London hosted an exhibition of Wrappers in 1985, which was accompanied by a rather beautiful catalogue designed by The Partners. Twenty one wrappers were faithfully reproduced in full colour, on authentic lightweight tissue.

The four featured here are some of my favourite. The two older images were from one of the Ephemera Societys' monthly bazaars. If youre ever in London its well worth getting along to. Even if prices have rocketed in the last few years!