We love this 1951 collection of kitchen tips and short cuts mostly for the graphics (we wish we knew the name of the artist responsible for them; we would gladly give due credit, if we could). The tips are kind of interesting, too, but we spend so little time in the kitchen that we haven’t much use for them.
But we hope that the cooks among you will give them a try and report back to let us know how they worked out.
You’ve seen the design, we’re sure—on posters, postcards, t-shirts, coffee mugs. And, like us, you’ve no doubt been led to understand that the original posters from which the design was taken appeared throughout England for the duration of World War II.
Keep Calm and Carry On.
You’ve seen it, right?
Well, the thing is, the above account of the design’s history isn’t quite correct. This design was created in the lead-up to World War II, and it was selected by the British government, along with a couple of other designs, to be used on a series of propaganda posters meant to help foster a sense of confidence, optimism, and yes, calm during a time fraught with worry and danger.
Only it was the other two designs that got used; they were distributed throughout the country in September 1939. The design so familiar today, the one pictured to the right, was designated by the government to be used in case of extreme emergency—in case of a Nazi invasion of English soil, for example.
As such, the design was never put into wide use and was all but forgotten until the year 2000, when Stuart and Mary Manley, the owners of Barter Books, a used book shop in the northeast of England—Alnwick, Northumberland, to be precise—found one of the posters in a box of old books.
We’ll hold off on telling you the rest of the delightful story. You can watch it for yourself in the following video. The footage of the Manleys’ shop alone makes the video well worth watching, but you’ll also learn what bits of copy were used in the other two poster designs. They’re effective enough, but they fall short of the to-the-point pithiness of “Keep Calm and Carry On.”
One of our favorite things about flea markets, vintage shops, antique malls and thrift stores is finding a product or artifact we never even knew existed.
One recent example is this bit of ephemera from 1933. It’s a collection of small cardboard cards cut jigsaw-style but left intact. The idea was that one (carefully, we presume) wrote a note to a friend, paramour or family member on the card, broke it up into pieces and then mailed it in the envelope provided. The recipient then had to piece together the puzzle in order to partake of one’s wit and wisdom.
We think this is a rather charming idea, and we’re sorry its time seems to have passed. But when we saw a batch of these at a neighborhood flea market, we couldn’t resist springing for them and sharing them with you, the Cladrite community.
Anyone who spends time browsing antique fairs, flea markets, and eBay knows that vintage retail catalogues are in demand and command a pretty penny, but no catalogues are more coveted than vintage Christmas catalogues.
As we’ve said here before, there’s something about Christmas that fosters a wistful nostalgia more potent than any other holiday, and it’s the pull of Christmases past, we’re convinced, that keeps these old mail-order catalogues in such demand.
If you find you can’t swing the price of one of these treasured commercial publications, don’t despair. We’ve found a site that will fill in ably while you’re saving your pennies.
Wishbookweb.com boasts scans of complete Christmas catalogues dating all the way back to 1933 (and up to 1988). The majority of the catalogues featured are from Sears, but there are other delights to be enjoyed, too, including a 1941 Lord and Taylor catalogue and a Spiegel catalogue from 1933.
And this site doesn’t just offer selected highlights from these forty-plus catalogues; they’ve scanned and posted each in its entirety.
So if you’ve ever wondered what kind of holiday toys might have enticed your parents, your grandparents or, heck, even your great-grandparents when they were whippersnappers, you need wonder no more.
And of course, Christmas catalogues don’t limit themselves to toys—these publications are terrific resources for researching and tracking the changes and advances in clothing, furniture, electronics, housewares, and so much more.
And if you find yourself wondering, while perusing these catalogues, “What would that gorgeous console radio that cost $52 in 1937 run me today?”, just call up the Inflation Calculator, which compares and contrasts prices from as far back as 1800 all the way up to 2010. (To answer our own question: $52 in 1937 was the equivalent of $781 in 2010.)
We don’t view the Cladrite Era as the good ol’ days in the sense that we’re convinced life was better then than now. Different, sure, and it’s those differences that fascinate us. But better? In some ways, yes, but worse in others. We figure things tend to balance out over time. Every era has its highlights and low points.
But we do mourn the passing of certain practices and traditions, and high on that list is the telegram.
Truth be told, we’d give our eye teeth to be able to observe special occasions by sending telegrams. Sure, sure, email’s great, and Facebook, texting and Tweeting all have their place, but none possess the charm or carry the weight of a telegram. And while Christmas cards are a delight to send and receive, imagine sending Christmas telegrams!
We, alas, have never received a telegram, and we’ve sent only one, in 1984 (it never arrived, and to this day, we have no idea whether we were charged for it). But we perk right up any time we see a telegraph office or a telegram delivery depicted in an old movie. The practice and process of sending telegrams continues to fascinate us.
So we were very pleased to come across this promotional pamphlet for Postal Telegraph, Commercial Cables, and All-America Cables (were they all owned by the same concern? We assume so, but we don’t really know. If there are any telegraph experts reading this, by all means, please clue us in).
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We like that telegrams are pitched in the pamphlet’s copy as the “modern way” to send holiday greetings, as the “convenient and timely way of sending good wishes.”
And we love the list of suggested messages on the back. We’d heard that one could order a pre-written telegram by the number, like an item on a menu at a Chinese restaurant, but we’d never seen a list of pre-composed messages and their accompanying numbers. Clearly one would hope to receive a telegram bearing one of the messages numbered from 134-141, since they were all intended to accompanied by wired money. Happy holidays, indeed!