Latest acquisitions (Nov 2021)

3 Nov

Blue Pennant blotter

Found in an antique centre, you know the kind – filled to the rafters with interesting items. Ford’s are a well-known maker of blotting paper. The company advertised in the Braemar Gathering on samples of their blotting paper.

Buxton Town Guide 1908

A 1908 dated tourism booklet featuring shops and spas in Buxton. Comes with a map of the area and many local adverts. A fabulous glimpse of Edwardian leisure and tourism.

Car magazine

Tony Thorpe, one of our supporters, has donated a four year run of Car Magazine that fills a gap in our collection that previously only ran until 2012.

Crawford’s Desk Diary for 1931

Although tired on the outside, the internal part of this is in excellent condition. The whole thing opens out to show a desk blotter while on the left-hand side there is a complete catalogue of Crawford’s products and on the right, there is a postal guide, weights and measures table, a list of French dishes with English translations together with a week-to-week desk diary.

Gardening Illustrated magazine

Five volumes of this monthly magazine each one complete with covers and advertisements.

Gramophone Magazine

A 40-year run (with about 100 of the free CDs) of the monthly magazine has been donated by David Culshaw. Gramophone magazine was started in 1923, by the author Compton Mackenzie.

The Leisure Hour and The Quiver magazines

Following the success of my talk at the Heritage Open Day my interest in Victorian engravers has encouraged me to search out further copies of these magazines. As usual, it is almost impossible to find loose copies of these so I have focused my search on bound volumes.

Although there are plenty to be found on the internet I have tried to keep to a maximum budget for each volume. Even with this proviso, I have already managed to increase our collection and look forward to continuing the search to build up complete sets of these magazines. It is fascinating to see the change from engravings to half-tone printing and the introduction of colour plates.

Motorist and Sportsman magazine

An unusual and exciting find is this Irish magazine. This copy is a pre-launch copy sent out presumably to potential advertisers to encourage them to take out advertising. It serves its purpose by showcasing both the quality of the paper used but also an example of the editorial to be used in the first issue. Take note of the advertising spaces already earmarked to take their adverts.

Phoenix 11.9 h.p. brochure

The Phoenix 11.9 h.p. model was made from 1913-1922 and approximately 600 cars of this model were made. This brochure was probably published after the First World War.

All these items and more will be on display at our upcoming open evening on Monday 8th November from 7 pm. See you there!

MotoringThe Leisure HourThe QuiverTourism BrochureEdwardian AdvertisingVictorian AdvertisingPhoenix Automobile Brochure

Richard A Roberts.

Richard is a mechanical engineer and former information technology project manager who first became interested in advertising of all kinds in the early 2000s.

His interest turned to a passion that has led to his founding of the Richard Roberts Archive – an important collection of magazines and their advertisements from the early years of the nineteenth century to the present day. The archive has been converted from Richard’s private collection to a publicly accessible research centre.

He is a director of the Society of Automotive Historians in Britain and is its archive consultant. He has owned several Rolls-Royce Silver Shadows and a rare 1956 James Young Silver Cloud saloon.