The Celebrated Blue Elephant
A few months ago, I obtained some lovely pieces of vintage and antique haberdashery notions from a contact of mine in Dorset who seems to always find me interesting pieces. Amongst the items that caught my eye were this wonderful Edwardian era Celebrated Elephant Machine Silk spool, lovely needle packet and a selection of cobalt buttons.
Those attached to their original card are hard plastic, but the latticed ones and the other stylised Art Deco one are glass and date from the 1920s. The buttons all matched cobalt blue of the silk on the spool that I had to put them together! The grey and blue marbleised buckle you can see in the background is Bakelite and also dates from the 1920s.
I'm afraid that after a thorough search, the only thing I could establish about "Celebrated Elephant Machine Silk" is that at one time it was produced by Perivale Sewing Silks. They had a number of different elephant lines including Black Label, Red Label (which consisted of two tone spools of thread) and Blue Label. In addition I know they also made coloured thread for fishing lines. The Perivale Sewing Company had a factory in the Perivale Industrial Estate in Perivale, and that it burnt to the ground around 1968 and was replaced by Perivale Gütermann (an amalgam of the Perivale Sewing Company with Gütermann Cottons).
The Celebrated Blue Elephant
A few months ago, I obtained some lovely pieces of vintage and antique haberdashery notions from a contact of mine in Dorset who seems to always find me interesting pieces. Amongst the items that caught my eye were this wonderful Edwardian era Celebrated Elephant Machine Silk spool, lovely needle packet and a selection of cobalt buttons.
Those attached to their original card are hard plastic, but the latticed ones and the other stylised Art Deco one are glass and date from the 1920s. The buttons all matched cobalt blue of the silk on the spool that I had to put them together! The grey and blue marbleised buckle you can see in the background is Bakelite and also dates from the 1920s.
I'm afraid that after a thorough search, the only thing I could establish about "Celebrated Elephant Machine Silk" is that at one time it was produced by Perivale Sewing Silks. They had a number of different elephant lines including Black Label, Red Label (which consisted of two tone spools of thread) and Blue Label. In addition I know they also made coloured thread for fishing lines. The Perivale Sewing Company had a factory in the Perivale Industrial Estate in Perivale, and that it burnt to the ground around 1968 and was replaced by Perivale Gütermann (an amalgam of the Perivale Sewing Company with Gütermann Cottons).