About Vintage Stuff

The aim of Vintage Stuff is to display some of the ephemera that I have collected, often inadvertently, over the years. I am now deliberately seeking out interesting old adverts, screen shots, leaflets, obscure record covers, picture postcards and illustrations; anything that catches my eye, in fact. They will be mainly, but not exclusively of UK origin (so many vintage blogs appear to be American) and almost always a scan from something that I actually have in my collection, rather than off the net. If you do re-blog, please acknowledge the source. Further stuff, mainly photographs, can be found on my Flickr pages, via the Benny Hill record cover.
Showing posts with label 1950s. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1950s. Show all posts

Monday, 1 April 2024

 Pre-war



I have not been able to post for ages, due, in part, from not being able to access my account, so here is  some definitely vintage stuff.


A Ford and an Austin on the south coast in the Portsmouth/Southsea area around 1951, scanned from a negative in my collection.

Friday, 4 March 2016

Home time

Remembering a time when lines of buses and trams would await home-going workers in industrial towns, Sheffield Corporation trams gather in Bridge Street, outside the works of Gilbow Tool & Steel Co. during the 1950s.


Sunday, 23 March 2014

The Car's the Star

Tourists mill around Anne Hathaway's cottage near Stratford-upon-Avon in the early 1950s. Of course the real interest in this view, scanned from a recently acquired red-bordered Kodachrome slide, is the hefty-looking Hillman Sixteen of 1936/37. Of some 700 built, only a couple are known to survive.


Friday, 26 April 2013

Shrewsbury

Scanning an old calender of railway posters recently, the one featuring Shrewsbury looked strangely familiar. As it turned out, I had an early 1970s guide book with the same illustration on the cover, although I suspect that the original was done in the 1950s. The artist was Jack Merriott (1901-68), a landscape and portrait painter in both oil and watercolour.



Saturday, 18 August 2012

Senior Service Satisfy

As a non-smoker, I can't say whether it does satisfy or not, but it was a very popular brand of cigarette. My mother smoked Guards until she gave up, whilst my father's tobacco of choice was Old Holborn. I was regularly sent to the local shop, three doors down, for "Half an ounce of Old Holborn and a packet of green", the green being Rizla cigarette papers. Rolling your own appeared to be very economical smoke, with very little wastage, There would always be 'dog ends' lying around our house, waiting for their last puffs. A girl I knew back in the 1970s rolled her own too, as did her mother, I recall. Heaven forbid that I should condone smoking, but I did raise a smile when I saw a girl student on a bus recently, painstakingly constructing a cigarette from the contents of a battered old pouch so as to be ready on the completion of her journey.

Many adverts for Senior Service had a nautical theme, understandable as that was also the nickname for the Royal Navy.









The two colourful adverts depicting naval scenes heading this post were painted by Harold Wylie and appeared in Punch magazines in1960/61, and that with the red background from a 1960s theatre programme. The three black & white illustrations were found in various editions of Picture Post of the early 1950s. Lastly, the photograph above was taken in 2010 of an old shop front in Margate, now a cafe, but retaining the old sign-age above the lovely curved windows. The owner did give me a funny look though! The brand was first manufactured in 1925 and is still sold today.