Original Metropolis film programme for the British premiere of Fritz Lang’s film in 1927.
The world’s most valuable movie poster, for Fritz Lang’s 1927 masterpiece Metropolis, is to be auctioned again after making a record $690,000 in 2005. Ephemera related to the film is notoriously scarce, with only four copies of the poster known to survive.
Almost as uncommon is this amazing Metropolis film programme produced for the London premiere at the Marble Arch Pavilion on March 21, 1927, one of only three copies that we have handled.
Not only a list of cast and crew, it includes eleven short pieces on the making of the movie, commentary from the director and cast, and numerous production photographs and film stills, many attractively arranged as modernist collages.
One of the most interesting sections shows in parallel columns how a passage of film scenes was adapted from the novel of the same name by Lang’s wife, Thea von Harbou.
Below the fold you’ll find the complete booklet – just click any image for the high-res version:
I found this ad in a copy of The Butterfly, a literary magazine published in London in March of 1899. This must be one of the very earliest ads for plasticine, which was invented in 1897 by an art instructor named William Harbutt. After teaching at the Royal College of Art he moved to Bath in 1874, where he founded his own academy, the Paragon School of Art. Harbutt noticed that many of his beginning students had difficulty using clay, which was heavy and often dried out before projects could be completed. In the search for a suitable alternative he began experimenting with different substances at home, involving the whole family and using a garden roller to squeeze excess water out of his concoctions. Harbutt perfected the formula in 1897 and began supplying it to his students, and then to other artists who heard of the material by word of mouth. But it was his grandchildren’s interest in the substance that convinced him he might have a successful toy in the making. The patent on plasticine was granted in 1899, so this must be one of the earliest ads for the new material, and I strongly suspect that the rather dour child in the photo is Harbutt’s grandson. Later Harbutt would hire the graphic designer John Hassell, who became famous for his commercial posters, to design colourful and eye-catching ads, as well as the plasticine packaging. Harbutt’s big break came when he was able to purchase an ad in a new publication called The Royal Magazine, which premiered in 1898. Unfortunately, I can’t determine whether that ad appeared before this one did. This ad is, in any case, a delightful bit of late-Victorian marketing, particularly the tagline “A capital present for any child either ‘Bright or Backward'”.
For further reading, the best place to go is probably the book companion to the BBC documentary series James May’s Toy Stories, which included an entire episode on plasticine. You can buy the book online, and the Google Books preview includes a number of the pages on the history of plasticine. As part of the documentary, May and a group of volunteers created a plasticine garden and entered it in the Chelsea Flower Show, which you can see here.
I did find an image of one other early ad for plasticine, though this one is much more sophisticated and probably several years later than ours. If you know of any others that have been digitised please do leave a comment!
Wanted for Incitement to Murder: Nazi propaganda leaflet of Churchill with a Thompson sub-machine gun.
One of the most famous propaganda images of the Second World War, this photo of Winston Churchill with a Thompson sub-machine gun, or Tommy gun, was taken while the Prime Minister was inspecting a coastal defence unit at Hartlepool in July 1940. But Churchill’s resemblance to a stereotypical American mobster wasn’t lost on the Nazis, who began dropping these propaganda leaflets over Britain within weeks of the photo being taken. These leaflets are very delicate, making original copies extremely uncommon.
We just made a very fun acquisition: style books and advertising material for The Diamond Tailoring Company, a “bespoke” tailoring firm based in Chicago during the 1920s. Rather than making clothes at individual premises, the parent company licensed outlets (probably department stores, small clothing shops, or similar) and provided them with them with style books like these. Customers visited their local shop to select from the available cuts and fabrics, and to have their measurements taken. A detailed order slip was filled out by the staff and mailed back to Diamond for tailoring, which would have been carried out on a large scale either as piece-work or within a factory, though we haven’t been able to find out which. Much about the company is a mystery to us–how it was structured, the extent of its reach across the US, and the length of time it was in business. Please leave a comment if you have any information about Diamond or similar tailoring operations; we’d love to know more. (And as usual, click to enlarge the images).
Diamond Tailoring Company Style Book with cloth swatches.
Above, a style book open to display fabric samples and fashion plates. These books are very large (18 ×15.5 inches, and 2 inches deep) and heavy. They’re nearly as big as I am, and I’m afraid I’ve made a comical sight carrying them around the shop this week. (A good indication that Diamond was using outlets rather than traveling salesmen!)
By the way, does anyone else think that the guy on the right in the image above looks like F. Scott Fitzgerald?
Diamond Tailoring Company order form.
Above and below, the front and back of an order slip. Salespeople were asked to go into as much detail as possible, describing the age, body type and occupation of the gentleman, even what type of underwear he had on. This gives a good idea of the difficulties involved in making “bespoke” clothing for customers you can’t actually see. The detailed instructions for taking measurements also indicate that Diamond did not expect everyone using its order forms to be a professional tailor.
Two hanging signs. These each measure about 20 × 10 inches and would have been displayed in the local outlet.
Most of the fashion plates depict men running industrial empires (often with machinery visible behind them), having important meetings, or acting paternally towards children. These were aspirational images, intended to appeal to middle class workers and young men with dreams of achieving greater things. Diamond took advantage of Chicago’s extensive industrial resources (technology & efficient factories, transportation links, and surplus labour) to provide a cheaper form of bespoke fashion for those who couldn’t afford traditional high-end tailoring.
In addition to being of historical significance, these books are unusual in that they’re so well preserved. Typically, the style books would have seen much wear and tear in a shop, the order slips would all be used up, and the posters would have become faded by the sun. The survival of these items as a group indicates that a shop owner probably became a Diamond licensee and received the basic kit for 1920-21, but for some reason never began operating. The books must have sat somewhere safe for a long time before finding their way to us, making this a very lucky survival of Jazz Age fashion ephemera.
All we know is that it’s the most interesting page from a 19th-century scrapbook we recently acquired. And to be honest, the mystery is probably more fun than learning the truth, as the last couple of days have been dominated by discussions of “what the wheel is for” (he runs along an electric tram track, obviously) and “why does he have a sponge cake on his head?” August is a slow month in the book trade.
Even disregarding the silly picture the scrapbook is great. The hobby was incredibly popular–as early as the late 18th century stationers were selling blank books for people to fill with prints and other ephemera, and it remained an important activity for young women throughout the nineteenth century.
This particular book was produced in 1829 (according to the title page), and the binding is typical of the period: red half skiver, a form of cheap, thin leather produced from the inner side of a sheepskin. We can tell that this scrapbook was well cared for because the fragile skiver has not deteriorated. The book’s condition and the obvious care taken in cutting out, placing, and coloring the scraps within it indicate that it was a much-loved item.
One of the most interesting parts of the book is the title page, itself an ephemeral item that was meant to be removed by the purchaser. It’s unusual to find one intact, and this example is a typographic masterpiece, weaving together a variety of typefaces including the tiniest I’ve ever seen forming decorative curls around the larger phrases.
Definitely click to enlarge!
There’s also a guide, in case you can’t read the very tiny text!
It’s been pasted into the very back of the book.
The contents of the scrapbook date from the end of the 1700s to at least the 1850s, with some items entered at the time of their publication and others culled from older books or periodicals. The compiler seems to have had an interest in fashion, devoting a number of pages to fashion plates, and in many cases cutting out individual figures and carefully combining them in hand-coloured vignettes, as below. This was a common practice of scrapbookers during the period.
Also popular with this compiler was a series of prints depicting South American people, produced by John Skinner in 1805.
Each individual and caption was delicately cut from the original print and pasted into the scrapbook.
Either the compiler or a family member or friend was an amateur artist, and many pages are filled with humorous original sketches and visual puns.
The kind of innocuous things you can imagine as the result of parlor games, though that “scotch crab” is kind of freaking me out.
There are lots of engravings of tourist attractions and scenic areas. The borders around these have been hand-painted:
There are quite a lot of these very dull, very badly written, moralistic poems and vignettes. Was our compiler the Ned Flanders of the 1850s?
Then there are some entries that are more random – things that happened to catch the eye of the compiler. Like our strange wheeled friend above.
Scrapbooks, as well as being entertaining, are a great resource for understanding the viewpoints and leisure pursuits of middle and upper class women during the nineteenth century. I can’t help but wonder what historians of the future would make of the wall behind my desk, covered in postcards, clipped out comic strips, silly notes from colleagues, and the wrappers to French sweets.
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