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Illustrated using watercolor with watercolor pencils. See website www.robinmaclean.moonfruit.com/ for additional illustrations by Robin MacLean, including additional fig illustrations for Bakery Wagon and Mother's fig bar packaging.
Copyright Robin MacLean 2007.
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A page from the Crawford's 1936 price list that forms part of a fine fold out desk calendar and desk blotter that the company issued on an annual basis during the inter-war years. The left hand fold contains a well printed colour catalogue showing 28 pages of their biscuit range both pre-packed and loose for sale by weight. These pages show part of the range of pre-packed biscuits in "Keepcrisp' airtight packaging - airtight paper based packaging, at the start of cellophane sheet wrappings, was an important step forward in allowing the display and sale of biscuits.
The pages show a mix of mostly sweet biscuits, along with some savouries, and includes some of the brands, including City, Rover and Everytime Assorted, that were also sold loose. Whereas Rich Tea biscuits are still available the exotic sounding Tri-Fruit Pufflets sadly are not! The list also gives recommended retail prices in shillings and pence.
William Crawford & Sons were a well-known biscuit manufacturer's and national brand who in 1856 had acquired a bakery in Leith; the 1813 establishment date they always quoted refers to the original opening of a bakers of ships biscuits that formed the original concern. The company grew and when their new and highly mechanised plant in Liverpool opened in 1897 they were amongst the biggest biscuit makers in the UK. They would, in 1960, be acquired by United Biscuits and the brand is still available.
It has been a while since I added to my packaging and tin collection but I simply could not resist this. A beautifully crafted biscuit tin, or barrel, made by Metal Box to hold 1 pound 3 oz. of Cadbury's Milk Assorted Chocolate Biscuits. I'm guessing from the style it is early 1960s and what a shame it does not have a designer credited. The cheerful birds and decorations are rather poster in style.
Reproduced as a representative sample of the work of printers and publishers in the 1935 Penroses Annual is this plate showing the quality of four colour reproduction from electros by the printers W F Sedgwick Ltd and using inks from Lorilleux & Bolton Ltd. Crawford's, as a brand name, still exists but at the time of this advert they were a long established Edinburgh based bakers and biscuit manufacturers with, since the 1890s, a large site in Liverpool. The latter works was of a scale and using new technology to allow a wide range of biscuit products to be manufactured including the Cream Crackers seen here.
Crawford's had many distinctive designs for their tins and labels as this large tin of crackers shows.
A page from the Crawford's 1936 price list that forms part of a fine fold out desk calendar and desk blotter that the company issued on an annual basis during the inter-war years. The left hand fold contains a well printed colour catalogue showing 28 pages of their biscuit range both pre-packed and loose for sale by weight.
These pages show the large tins - or 'drums' - of branded biscuits that were usually displayed in grocers in large display cabinets with hinged glass tops allowing the assistant to weigh out the loose biscuits for the customer. The prcie per pound is shown in shillings and pence. Mostly sweet biscuits several of Crawford's biggest lines are shown here including Rover Assorted, Savoy Assorted and Everytime Assorted Biscuits. Some of these were also available in smaller sealed boxes for retail sale. Crawford's Cheese Biscuits are also shown here sold loose.
William Crawford & Sons were a well-known biscuit manufacturer's and national brand who in 1856 had acquired a bakery in Leith; the 1813 establishment date they always quoted refers to the original opening of a bakers of ships biscuits that formed the original concern. The company grew and when their new and highly mechanised plant in Liverpool opened in 1897 they were amongst the biggest biscuit makers in the UK. They would, in 1960, be acquired by United Biscuits and the brand is still available.
I can't quite believe that as a school pupil I wrote off to so many companies asking for examples of wrappers or packaging or that so many replied positively! One was local Birmingam concern of Cadbury's and this is a wrapper for the Applejack apple jelly bar they made. I don't think it was available for very long but I do recall liking it!
On Wednesday 12 May 1937, amidst great pomp and ceremony in Westminster King George VI and Queen Elizabeth were crowned and through Britain and the then Empire and Colonies there was much official, and unofficial, celebrations. In Liverpool, one of the world's great ports and a major centre of commerce and industry, the City Council like almost every other UK municipal government, prepared to hang out the bunting and put on a show. This is the lavishly printed 'official programme' and it details a week long series of celebrations and events to be held around the city. This coming May will see the Coronation of the UK's new monarch, Charles III, but I doubt any festivities this time round will match these!
Numerous events are listed for each day ranging from "pageants, plays and services", to "hospitalities" and "Bands, entertainments and other engagements". Ships were decorated and illuminated on the River Mersey, numerous bands including that of the city's Passenger Transport Department, played in halls and parks, trees were planted and tea parties given to 147,000 school children. Gun salutes, firework displays and a procession and pageant made its way through the city's streets. Even the timetable for the operation of the illuminated tramcar is published here.
The programme also includes numerous adverts from local and national concerns whose fees would have helped off-set some of the costs of the programme brochure. No artist is given for the suitably 'regal' front cover or the various adverts but one advert is for the Liverpool based company of Dellagana and Denby who produced drawings, photographs and printing blocks for the publication and I wonder if their in-house artists are responsible for some of the work.
William Crawford & Sons were a well-known biscuit manufacturer's and national brand who in 1856 had acquired a bakery in Leith; the 1813 establishment date they always quoted refers to the original opening of a bakers of ships biscuits that formed the original concern. The company grew and when their new and highly mechanised plant in Liverpool opened in 1897 they were amongst the biggest biscuit makers in the UK. They would, in 1960, be acquired by United Biscuits and the brand is still available. This is for their packets of cream crackers, a type of biscuit more often associated with rival bakers Jacob's.
I have more reason to recall Transparent Paper Ltd than Wright's Bourbon Creams as, despite the London address given 'under' the film, the company's mills were at Heap Bridge on the boundary between what was then Heywood and Bury in Lancashire and a trip on the 21 bus past the place really did make you realise that paper and cellulose manufacturing stank! It wasn't helped that they were next door to another major paper mill on the River Roch, Yates Duxbury - no wonder the water quality was zilch. Transparent Paper Ltd dated from a post-WW1 restructuring of Wrigley's paper mills whose origins went back to at least 1716. After cellulose production started in 1928 TPL went on to be one of the largest such manufacturers in the UK and Diophane was typical of their products.
It enabled a radical change in the packaging of consumer goods such as biscuits - away from purchasing them 'loose' and by weight to pre-packed sealed packets such as these Wright's Bourbon Creams that could be stacked on self-service shelves and keep the contents dry and free from taint. Wright's - with their 'mischief' biscuit eating mascot - dated back to 1790 when they began making ship's biscuit for local trade. They grew into sweet biscuit making and were restructured in the 1930s by which time they'd acquired other concerns such as Middlemass of Edinburgh. In post-war years they expanded into cakes and grocery shops - both acquiring other companies and also divesting themselves of some subsidiaries such as cake making to J Lyons in 1962. Eventually in 1972 they were bought out by Cavenham Foods who sold the biscuit side of the business on to United Biscuits production at South Shields ceasing the following year.
Picture Post - in its day a highly influential British magazine although by this date it was within a year of closure, a victim of several factors including a degree of editiorial instability with the owner attempting unsuccessfully to re-orientate the magazine and readership.
The back cover is a single page advert issued by the world famous Birmingham based chocolate and confectionery makers Cadbury's and is for their Chocolate Biscuit range, more specifically the half-pound packet that retailed for 2/- in old money (10p). Cadbury's had been making chocolate covered or coated biscuits since the 1890s but it doesn't appear to have been until post-WW1 years that they formed a significant part of the business. In 1986, some years after the merger with Schweppes, the beverages and foods division (that included biscuits and cakes) was hived off as Premier Foods who continue (I think) to manufacture and market "Cadbury's Biscuits".
CD packaging for the band “Splitting Adam”. The concept surrounds a fictitious character named Adam and his internal struggle with an audio triggered bipolar disorder. The cover splits Adam to reveal inside his head, a 3D animated hologram which morphs from a passive lamb into an aggressive ape. The cd and insert artwork documents Adam’s mental state along with vital stats and final prognosis.
The photo of Adam was created using combination of all 5 band members photos. Each band member needed to be shot in rotation which was
used as the basis to create the smooth animated sequence. The packaging dieline was developed custom for this project and the hologram
manufactured in Russia.
What a lovely memory of Barrow's, the Birmingham grocers whose Corporation Street store was a childhood favourite of mine! The long established concern, whose origins dated back to 1824 as tea merchants and involved the Cadbury of chocolate fame, sadly did not survive a takeover by Fitch Lovell in 1964 as it simply merged it into the Key Markets chain in 1973. The stores had moved from vast Victorian premises further along Corporation St into new, smaller premises as part of Birmingham's vast '60s reconstruction.
Barrow's had high standards of publicity and packaging - this fine cardboard tea box (printed by Robinson's of Bristol) includes some great typography of a 'tea chest stencil' style, and the logo designed by Reynolds Stone. This, for Chungalla fine Ceylon Tea, also includes the 'Ceylon Tea lion' motif as used by the Ceylon Tea Board at the time, and was one of a range of similar cartons for the various tea ranges.
A remarkable document this - a spirally bound 140 pages of nuts, bolts, fixings, fasteners and special forgings that were in production at the Atlas Works of Guest, Keen & Nettlefolds (Midlands) Ltd. at Darlaston in Staffordshire. The well produced catalogue has been thoughtfully published using index tabs and colours to cover the seven sections, covering black bolts and screws, high tensile, 'Bright" bolts and screws, brass as well as Specilaities and appendices.
GKN was a sprawling conglomerate based on the 1902 merger of Nettlefolds of Birmingham with Guest, Keen & Co who were themselves the product of Guest's (associated with the Welsh Dowlais Iron Co) and Keen's Patent Nut & Bolt Co. again of Birmingham. Over the decades they acquired many other similar concerns becoming a 'verically integrated' concern in that they produced iron and steel as well as formed metal into a wide variety of products. They had a loose 'structure' at the time of this catalogue although there was to be a brief interlude when the 'producing companies' were nationalised in 1951 before being reacquired between 1954 and 1955. The concern later morphed into GKN.
Opposite a selection of machined bolts and nuts are examples of the box end labels used for the various products. These colour coded and grouped labels used to fascinate me in ironmongers shops as a child!
The CWS had its own tobacco and cigarette works. This advert mentions just two of their many brands - Navy Cut and Raydex.
At brithdays, or at Christmas time - even on a trip to the pictures, as a child a great treat was this - a quarter pound box of Smarties as against the usual cardborad tube! At this time Smarties were still made by the independent Rowntree company based in York, England.
Back in the day when chocolate and sugar/sweetie 'cigarettes' for children were seen as acceptable - a 'packet' of Nestlé "Royals" that were sold in an actual flip-top cardboard cigarette carton. I suspect this dates to the 1970s.
The well known confectioners Clarnico were based in east London and famous for mint creams and confectionery such as these Fruit Jellies. Clarnico stood for Clarke, Nichol and Coombes who from 1879 were based in Hackney Wick until this year when they moved to new works a little further east in 1955. They were acquired by the other east London mint makers Trebor and so merged into Cadburys who keep the brand name.
As a school student I wrote to Clarnico who were kind enough to send me a selction fo their publicity and display material; this 18" high cardboard die-cut showcard is so designed as to move the box forward of the main background, giving a 'three-D' effect. The price, 17p a box, also helps date this!
What a wonderful design for Yardleys' of London's packaging for their April Voilets scent range. It apepars to be one of the first of many designs by Reco Capey (1895 - 1961), the designer who spent nearly all his working life with Yardley's, from 1928 until 1959. There he designed not only packaging such as this but also elements of their shops and brand. The company's 'head office' was in the heart of fashionable Bond St but the 'works' was in industrial Stratford - a later office block there had its gable end adorned with a tiled mosaic of the famous 'Lavender Girl" used by the company who later moved further out in the Essex new town of Basildon.
It has been a while since I added to my packaging and tin collection but I simply could not resist this. A beautifully crafted biscuit tin, or barrel, made by Metal Box to hold 1 pound 3 oz. of Cadbury's Milk Assorted Chocolate Biscuits. I'm guessing from the style it is early 1960s and what a shame it does not have a designer credited. The cheerful birds and decorations are rather poster in style.
Robinsons were a major printing company who specialised in packaging and this advert, from the January - February 1955 issue of the trade journal "Sales Appeal", is showing three examples of colour printing product wrappers - a market Robinson's were well known for.
The three examples are real wrappers tipped in to the advert and are for three chocolate and confectionery companies. Cadbury's Dairy Milk Chocolate is probably one of the world's best brands and the wrapper seen here is the the re-design Cadbury's had introduced only a few years earlier and that was designed by Norbert Dutton. It forms the basis of the wrapper still used today. Fry's of Bristol's "Crunchie" comes from the same stable as Cadbury's as the Birmingham based company had owned Fry's of Bristol since 1919.
The final example is from the once famous Edinburgh company of Duncan's who, for many years, used the strapline "The Scots word for Chocolate". This wrapper label is for their Milk Chocolate Nutty Crisp. W & M Duncan's had introduced the 'Walnut Whip' in 1910 and it is still produced by Nestle who eventually acquired the product via their takeover of Rowntree Mackintosh as Rowntree's had acquired the concern in 1927. The Edinburgh factory closed in 1987 although for some years a buy-out reintroducing the Duncan's brand was attempted.
Nice colourful advert from a 1955 magazine of two products still with us - Frys and Weetabix.
By this date Fry's were already part of Cadbury's although their factory and production was still in their historic base of Bristol, or rather the new factory they'd build on the outskirts of the city in the inter-war years. Although that has gone, along with Cadbury's independence and most of the Fry's brands, thsi actually keeps its Fry's branding. At the time other variations on the filled bars were made such as Peppermint and the real treat - the five fruit flavours one!
Weetabix has been made in the UK since the 1930s and was, I think, based on the Australian Weet-Bix product. Although still made in the UK the company and brand is now owned by an overseas company.
In 1955 Milner Gray, the famous British designer and teacher, edited one of The Studio's "How to do it" series of books on art and design, Number 59 "Package Design". The illustrated book looks at the "why", "how" and "techniques" of designing packaging for a wide range of products and goods and looks at the allied requirements of issues such as brands and corporate identity. One sequence of illustrated examples relates to "brand families"; similar product packaging used across a range of goods or services and this shows the wide adaptation of a similar 'look' across the products of J Sainsbury Ltd.
At the time Sainsbury's were a major grocery chain based in London and serving large areas of the "Home Counties". By the mid-1950s they were not only expanding but starting the radical change from 'traditional' grocery shops to the new self-service and 'supermarket' methods being imported from the US. As part fo this different styles of packaging were key as more products were on open shelves and the 'look' or 'appeal' of such products was key to awareness and rapid recognition. Sainsbury's became famous for their brand identity and indeed had their own graphic design department who managed the whole range of design, display, packaging and advertising. This 'family design', showing a variety of dried goods, cooking ingredients and spices as well as prepacked margarine, was designed by Leonard Beaumont who made extensive use of Monotype's 1930s Albertus typeface for the titling.
This advert appears in the May - June 1953 issue of the excellent Sales Appeal trade journal. The magazine dealt with matters relating to packaging, display, marketing and industrial design.
It is one of a series issued by Fisher's Foils Ltd and consists of two pages - this front sheet die-cut to allow a view of the second, backing sheet that is a sheet of decorative foil. The company were based on the site of the old 1924/25 British Empire Exhibition at Wembley whose grounds, and many exhibition buildings, became an industrial estate until modern redevelopment swept them away.
Fisher's was founded in 1929 and were a major concern. In 1964 they were acquired by one of the aluminium industry giants Alcan.
Over the years London Transport turned its hands to the manufacturing of many things - some more obvious such as bus stop posts, some less known such as aircraft and components during WW2. However, for many years, the undertaking ran its own extensive Catering services and this included not only staff canteens and the training school that backed the staff therebut also the preperation of foodstuffs.
These took the form of many prepared foods - such as bakery products - that were delivered across the whole LT area on a daily basis from the Food Preperation Centre at Croydon, south London, but also certain raw materials. These included butchery products and items such as these - LT sausages. As may be gathered the fact that these were also available direct to staff for purchase as part of 'home deliveries' and such products also included LT tea and coffee as well as seasonal hampers that included the famous LT Christmas Pudding. This wrapper is for the Pork Chipolatas range.
The Centre was closed as part of the contraction of LT in the '70s and '80s. For many years it used, as a logo or brand, the heraldic 'griffin' that London Transport had adopted upon its formation as the London Passenger Transport Board in 1933.
This catalogue for 1929 showing box tops for chocolates and biscuits was issued by the Leeds colour printers George H Harrison & Sons of the Statue Printing Works. It was issued in two formats, for large and small cartons, and contains numerous stock designs that could be overprinted with a brand and retailers name. The colourways and designs are very 1920s 'chocolate box' in style with little of contemporary graphic design! They show very traditional scenes, Christmas and such, as well as charming 1920s 'flappers' along with a smattering of historical and 'Far Eastern" promise and delights! The prices ranged from 55/- per thousand for designs in Section C, through 65/- in Section B and Section A's designs coming in at 75/-.
This is the embossed cover with much use of gold ink.
Mackintosh's were a long established Halifax, West Yorkshire, concern who made their name in the making of soft toffees before also branching out into other areas of confectionery and chocolates. Indeed, for many years they used the address of "Toffee Town". They in time merged with York based Rowntree's before being taken over by Nestlé who still have a plant in the town.
Before Quality Street was launched in the late 1930s Mackintosh's two biggest 'lines' of mixtures were Carnival and Toffee de Luxe. This small tin is one of the Toffee de Luxe line branded as "Nurseryland" and that was, I think, issued with other nursery rhyme characters on - this being Little Jack Horner. As can be seen these were aimed at the children's market as they have "small pieces specially for children" so as hopefully not to choke any youngsters during the festive period.
E S & A Robinson were a major printing company who specialised in packaging and this advert, from the January - February 1955 issue of the trade journal "Sales Appeal", is showing two types of protective packaging. By the 1950s the increasing availability and use of plastics was revolutionising packaging and allowing manufacturers to radically the retailing of many products.
Here Robinson's show two examples - tipped in to the advert - they produced for two major customers. Rington's tea and coffee suppliers based in Newcastle on Tyne are still in business and this example of a coffee pack for them uses "Flav-o-tainer" with an inner plastic lining that retained the flavour of such a product as ground coffee as well as stopping 'taining' by other products stored close by. This would have allowed a fresher product with longer shelf life - ground coffee had, traditionally, been packaged in a sealed tin. The second wrapper is that of "Flex-o-foil" that allowed a foil to paper wrapper to be colour printed and then sealed against moisture, grease and oil. This allowed the packaging of Lyons "Orange Maid" - a 'drink on a stick' - ice lolly that could be stored, displayed and obtained from a chest freezer in a shop thus boosting the market and sales of such frozen products.
Lyons, the tea, baking and confectionery giant had moved into frozen goods such as ice cream under the Lyons Maid name during inter-war years when sales were often from ice cream vendors. When production re-started after WW2 Lyons, as well as Walls, under-estimated the lure of the ice lolly market and Glacier Foods was started by an ex-RAF officer Guy Lawrence. Lyons, realising their mistake, bought into Glacier Foods, who are shown as the manufacturer of this lolly from their factory in Maidenhead. The product, sold at a relatively high price of 6d as it was made from fresh juice, was introduced in 1954. In 1955 production was transferred to the new Lyons Maid Bridge Park factory.
To celebrate the event - a few of the old tea packets and 'souvenirs' in my collection. Several of the brands are still with us, notably the then Birmingham based Typhoo - Ty-phoo Tea and, to a small extent in the UK, Horniman's Tea that is now a bigger brand overseas than here.
The organisation that appears most here is the old Co-operative 99 tea that at the time was a wholly Co-Operative production as, for many decades, tea blending and packing was one of the 'joint' English and Scottish CWS activities. Matheson McLaren were a Leith, Edinburgh, based concern who were in business from the early years of the Twentieth Century and, I think, may have still be on the go during the 1970s when we lived in the city.
A couple of the smaller items are promotional 'giveaways' from the '20s and '30s when advertising needle cases and matchbooks were commonly given away at fetes, shows and exhibitions as were the small 'sample tins' also seen here.
This advert appears in the May - June 1953 issue of the excellent Sales Appeal trade journal. The magazine dealt with matters relating to packaging, display, marketing and industrial design.
It is one of a series issued by Fisher's Foils Ltd and consists of two pages - this front sheet die-cut to allow a view of the second, backing sheet that is a sheet of decorative foil. The company were based on the site of the old 1924/25 British Empire Exhibition at Wembley whose grounds, and many exhibition buildings, became an industrial estate until modern redevelopment swept them away.
Fisher's was founded in 1929 and were a major concern. In 1964 they were acquired by one of the aluminium industry giants Alcan.
A mid-1930s biscuit tin that taps in to the contemporary 'vibe' for the healthy outdoor life of hiking and rambling. Mitchelhill's bakery in Edinburgh was a curiously Thirties style construction, just off Craigmillar Rd, that seemed to suit this 'healthy' confection - and their Abernethy biscuits were tasty I recall!
I think in later years they were possibly part of the Scribbans-Kemp empire and that latterly the brand was perhaps acquired by Simmer's and latterly Nairn's.
A charming little colour booklet issued by the famous jam, jelly and fruit canners of Chivers from their Orchard Factory at Histon, near Cambridge. The booklet contains details of the company, the products and recipes that they can be used in. Many of the plates are reproductions of colour advertisments commissioned over the years by Chivers, several from well known artists and illustrators.
These pages show an advert for the company's table fruit jellies - packaged jelly 'lumps' made with gelatine and fruit juices - and the flavours available; lemon, orange, raspberry, strawberry, pineapple, greengage, vanilla, cherry, blackcurrant, lime and tangerine.
What a marvellous selection of packaging - and to be honest, many of these designs would look good on shelves today. A few of the names survive - Brown & Polson (just, and a 'name' rather than company) and Aero, although sadly Rowntrees has vanished. Monk & Glass was a brand custard and jelly powders, manufactured by Monkhouse and Glasscock - the Monkhouse family giving us the comedian Bob Monkhouse.
Sadly no designers are noted, and I only know one for certain - the Kardomah 'Kee-mun' china tea box and label was by Bernard Griffin. Well, I did only know one - I'm now a bit more certain that the Pulvex packets may well be by Milner Gray RDI and Joseph Revill of the Industrial Design Partnership.
Over the years London Transport turned its hands to the manufacturing of many things - some more obvious such as bus stop posts, some less known such as aircraft and components during WW2. However, for many years, the undertaking ran its own extensive Catering services and this included not only staff canteens and the training school that backed the staff therebut also the preperation of foodstuffs.
These took the form of many prepared foods - such as bakery products - that were delivered across the whole LT area on a daily basis from the Food Preperation Centre at Croydon, south London, but also certain raw materials. These included butchery products and items such as these - LT sausages. As may be gathered the fact that these were also available direct to staff for purchase as part of 'home deliveries' and such products also included LT tea and coffee as well as seasonal hampers that included the famous LT Christmas Pudding. This is for the "Farmhouse" sausage made with beef and 'other' meats.
The Centre was closed as part of the contraction of LT in the '70s and '80s. For many years it used, as a logo or brand, the heraldic 'griffin' that London Transport had adopted upon its formation as the London Passenger Transport Board in 1933.
A lavish colour advert that appears in the special Christmas issue of Sport and Country Magazine that went under the name of "Holly Leaves". I can discover very little about Crosbie's Pure Food Co Ltd who appeared to be active in the mid-Twentieth century and whose "Nell Gwyn" marmalade was one of their most advertised products. As can be seen from the advert the company, who appear to have been based in the Grimsby and Bradley areas of Lincolnshire as well as having works in Southall, Middlesex, Whitchurch in Hampshire and in Law, Lanarkshire, manufactured a range of preserves, sauces and associated food products.