Category: Vintage

Vintage and antique stuff I see

Emerson Safety Bicycle Shoe (scan)

Vintage Advertisement - text below

This is an ad from McClure’s Magazine, from about 1900? I can’t find anything about Emerson bicycle shoes, but the Butler Boys were professional cyclists in 1890-1910. Only Nat has a reasonable sized Wikipedia article (Tom has a stub and Frank has nothing at all). While born in Halifax, Canada, they grew up in Cambridge Massachusetts and raced in America and Europe.

I’m guessing the ‘safety’ part of it meant that the laces weren’t long enough to get caught in the chain. Pratt Fasteners are a way to secure the laces without tying – it looks like they’re kind of like keychain rings? You seem to slide the lace between two metal rings. The best image I can find is at Getty Images (I had to turn off my ad-block to see the image) Pratt Fasteners were apparently popular for a while – a google image search finds a good number of ads mentioning them.

Transcription:

The Butler Boys prefer the Emerson Safety Bicycle Shoe

Elastic Gores.

Pratt Fasteners. No knots to tie or untie – Always Sure.

Fast Color Eyelets and Hooks. Never get brassy.

Best on Earth.

The safest, easiest and best bicycle shoe ever made. Strong, light, best of stock and workmanship. The very flexible shank, elastic gores and Pratt Fasteners are essential elements of ease, comfort and safety.

Sold only in our 27 Emerson Stores ore by mail. Send for “Mail” Catalogue. R.B. Grover & Co., Brockton, Mass.

$3.50 or $3.75 if sent by mail.

Please mention McClure’s when you write to advertisers.

(end of Transcription)

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Interest of the moment: Monograms

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One of my favorite parts of buying old linens and handkerchiefs is seeing the monograms. And because I love lettering, I like to design them too. It’s this dance of ‘how decorative can I get this before it’s undecipherable?’ Which is really fun. I have probably hundreds of pictures that I’ve found on the web that I use as inspiration. My preference is for the ones with interlocking and interweaving letters.

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Here are my three most recent ones:

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I need to work on my script lettering. It’s not my strong point at all.

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And then my initials, if not my style:

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Vintage Write-Up – Swanky Swigs Kiddie Kups

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Swanky Swigs are decorated tumblers that were originally sold by Kraft, starting in 1933. They had Kraft cheese spread in them and were sealed with metal lids with rubber gaskets. They’re 4 1/2 inches tall and were hand-decorated with stenciled patterns. Kiddie Kups were released in 1956 and I haven’t found any online sources with all the designs, so here you go. If you can find them, they usually go for fairly cheap and are some of the more common Swanky Swigs.

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Each cup has a different animal on each side, facing a toy version of itself. Around the top on each side, in white, is a duck, deer, bunny, pig, bird, rooster, and dog, which matches one of each of the designs.

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In red, a bird and an elephant.

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In orange, a dog and a rooster.

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In green, a bunny and a kitty (the green is a bright spectrum green).

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In blue, a teddy and a pig (and the pig is the only design where the real animal is to the right of the toy).

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In brown, a deer and a squirrel (it’s a chocolate brown, which didn’t show up well in the picture).

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In black, a duck and a horse.

Like any screen-printed glass, you can’t put these in the dishwasher because it will dull and scratch the design. I love my glasses. Only one is chipped (unfortunately not one of the ones I have three of). The black and the brown are my favorite.

Sources:

http://antiques.about.com/od/madeofglass/a/aa062101.htm

http://www.mountainstatescollector.com/articles.asp?ArticleID=132

http://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/1956-kiddie-kup-swanky-swig-set

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Latest (for some value of ‘late) Vintage Finds

Most of these are buys from Attaboy Vintage, which is my favorite store in Ventura. They always have cool stuff and it’s rare that I go in there without coming out with something. I’ve been holding on to some of these pictures for months (a bunch of this I bought right before the RenFaire in July…). Sorry about that. And I have some other things I need to take non-cell phone pictures of to share. Anyway, let’s get to the point – pictures!

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