You may remember that enamel advertising was arranged by the advertisers through an agent such as W.H.Smith, who dealt with the railway companies. Adverts were fixed to walls, fences and other structures overlooking the railway, almost exclusively those facing the trains, although station approaches were sometimes used as well. The adverts themselves were made by firing layers of coloured glass powder in a kiln on a thin iron plate, the result being known as porcelain enamel. The sizes varied considerably, usually being dimensioned to fit brick courses, up to a maximum of eight feet. Anything bigger than that had to be made up from more than one enamel. Subjects varied too, but on the whole concentrating on soap, household goods, engineering and commerce, agricultural, beverages, alcohol, some comestibles and medicines, a few newspapers and a little tobacco. Pet foods and motor products were ignored for railway purposes. The heyday of the enamel advert was from 1890 to 1920, but thereafter there was a decline in use, sharply dropping in the 1930s, until by the 1950s they had nearly all disappeared from railway property. An example of the decline could be seen at Liverpool Street station, where the interior of the east wall was covered in enamels in 1922, and yet fifteen years later they had all gone, replaced by huge paper adverts.
For this article, I have arranged the illustrations in a better manner so that the enamels can be scaled directly from the brick courses on a wall. I have kept to the groupings featured in the previous articles and mentioned above, but some merging has occurred where the number of examples is small. I have had to clean up some enamels digitally where they were very distressed, but on the whole I have left them as they are now, with chips and blemishes, and reflecting the light a little with their glossy finish.
Soaps accounted for the majority of railway enamel advertising, and Pears' Soap still reigns supreme. I have made great progress with Pears, having acquired one of the rectangular red and white ones myself, and finding definitive information on the domed one, narrowly missing the purchase of an example on two occasions. The central domed portion is blue, not red as I previously thought, and the small lettering above and below is in red rather than black. The "Good Morning Have You Used Pears Soap" is again in blue, red and white, not the colours I suggested before. I have also to correct the Hudsons Super Soap, as its background was green, not blue. Additions to the group are Borax, Gossages, Terebene, Venus, Vinolia and the impressive Lux enamel.
Having found a Lux, I could compare it with the miniature signs once produced by Basset-Lowke in O Gauge, a few of which I have pictured. As you can see, the Lux is a very close match. I am confident that the others are also accurate representations, and they have convinced me that the background colour for Sutton's Seeds is blue, rather than red or black, but I still do not have a photographic example of this sign in colour. Can anybody help? Also included on this wall is a Remington Typewriters from Jordan's catalogue. Jordan's was one of the premier enamel manufacturers, along with others such as the Patent Enamel Co, Chromographic Enamel Co. and Falkirk Iron Co., all of whom emerged in the 1880s and 1890s. Jordan's catalogues contain very close representations of their range.
In the realm of household goods, I was pleased to be able to track down at last a Field's Candles, a Price's Candles and an International Stores. New examples seen are Cock Leather, Freeman Hardy Willis, Vigil Silk (a firm of the 1920s), and Monkey Brand Soap. The latter is in this group as it is not for washing, but for scouring and burnishing metal.
Disappointingly, in the engineering and commerce department, I have not been able to turn up a Crossley's Gas Engines, however I managed to find a Crossley's Oil Engines, whose orange background colour has interesting connotations for the other Crossley enamels. New entries are an alternative colouring for National Gas & Oil Engines, two sorts of Petter Oil Engines and Tangye Engines. I have pinpointed actual examples of the two sorts of Royal Insurance enamels too, shown here with the only two additions to the agricultural group; Carter's Seeds and the suggested blue Sutton's Seeds.
In the beverages department, I now have proper examples of Blue Cross Tea, Hornimans Tea, Epps's Cocoa, Van Houten's Cocoa and Bovril, plus some additional types in Tower Tea and a worded version of Nectar Tea. You will notice that pictorial signs were not common on the railway, worded signs being preferred (and cheaper to produce). There also seems to be a regional variation, Blue Cross and Tower Tea being more common in the eastern counties. I am indebted to Andy May, both for his discovery of the Epps's Cocoa on the Bluebell Railway and the CD of hundreds of images of enamels which he had saved over the years. The simple black and white colouring of the Epps enamel was a little disappointing, although undoubtedly authentic. I am convinced there is another form with shading to the letters, but I will probably never be able to prove it. I like very much the graceful "arts and crafts" style of lettering on this sign. I must also correct my initial impressions of the large Lipton's Tea sign often found on station fences. The background to this is a light green, not blue, as shown by numerous smaller Lipton's Tea signs I have seen, and suggested by the Basset-Lowke example.
Under the heading of alcoholic beverages, there has been a great advance. New signs are Allsopp's Milk Stout, plus Vitali Italian Wine and Big Tree, who join Emu and Burgoyne's as wine importers. Big Tree specialised in Burgundy and Muscatel. I have been able to correct the Whitbread's Ales, which are black and yellow in at least two forms, although I have recently found a red and yellow one. The best discovery has been the Bass Stout, one of which I have acquired, although in a distressed state. I have digitally restored it for the illustration. Particularly fascinating is the gradual shading of the background from yellow to green. I have also included a Dewar's Whisky to show the proper shade of light blue.
Comestibles now include Bermaline Bread and Foster's Soup, as well as Palethorpe's Sausages, which I eventually had to concede did turn up on railways, although not until the 1920s. The discovery of a Brand's Essence finally resolved my doubts over this sign, turning out to be a plain rectangle and not shaped at all. The more commonly produced Brand's Beef Tea had the colours reversed. The Mellin's Food is a confirmed alternative to the one featured in the previous article, and the Robertson's Jam and Golden Shred show the correct red and golden yellow colours. The smaller one is included for reference, but on the railways the larger size was used as shown by the Jam enamel, merely with the word "MARMALADE" substituted for "JAMS". The Veno's Cough Cure shows the alternative to the better-known sign, being in a narrow landscape aspect. Its yellow background is a common alternative to the orange background on both signs.
The final miscellaneous grouping includes enamels for various newspapers, and a nice example of BDV Tobacco (one of the earliest of all designs), but the greatest gain has been the finding of the Player's Navy Cut tobacco. Since staring the search for enamels, I have never found a satisfactory match for the Players I could see on stations. There have been similar examples, but none identical, until now. When this enamel came to light it immediately rang a bell in my mind. I was fortunate to have on my computer some scans of a series of photographs taken in 1902, previously only available in book form. Close investigation of the Players adverts seen on this pictures revealed traces of the two lower roundels and the double line of lettering at the top. Being a light shade, the photos suggested a white or light blue background, which indeed turned out to be the case, but the details were too faint to spot on screened reproductions in books and so I missed them the first time. This enamel was one of the few that were routinely framed, probably because of its size and shape. Big enamels such as this are heavy and notoriously bendy and would not be stable on a fence (their usual haunt) without support. The roiginal was a bit distressed, and so I have digitally restored it.
I am very grateful to Andrew Morley of the Street Jewellery Society for his support and encouragement, and to Andy May for his excellent supply of images, and to eBay, without whom I could not have possibly found (let alone afforded) the collection of twelve enamels I now have. Some collectors get a bit sniffy about eBay, maintaining that it has taken the fun and skill out of collecting, and that it has artificially increased prices. I have found the opposite. Dealers and antique shops seem to have an inflated idea of the value of even the most mundane and common signs, whereas online you can get a decent deal. I blame the collectors themselves, as their single-minded pursuit of "pictorial" enamels has encouraged the dealers to charge as much as they think they can get, pushing signs such as Webbs Seeds or United Kingdom Teas far beyond the resources of my pocket, yet I need them for a full collection of enamels featured on the M&GN, which is my ultimate goal.
For further information, see "The Art of Street Jewellery" by Christopher Baglee & Andrew Morley, just published by New Cavendish Books.
A1 Brand Sauce
Alexandra Oil
Allen & Daws Jewellers
Allsops Beers
Bass Stout
BDV Tobacco
Beefex
Bermaline Bread
Big Tree Burgundy
Bird's Custard
Blue Cross Tea
Boots Cash Chemists
Borax Soap
Bovril
Brand's Beef Tea / Essence / Essence of Beef / Meat Juice
Brand's Soups
Bryant & May Matches
Burgoyne's Australian Wine
Burgoyne's Harvest Burgundy
Camp Coffee
Carter's Seeds
Cock Leather
Crossley's Gas Engines
Daily Chronicle
Davies Bacon
Dewar's Whisky
Dr. Ridge's Food
Earle's Cement
Emu Australian Burgundy
Emu Australian Wines
Epps's Cocoa
Field's Candles
Foster Clark's Custard
Foster Clark's Soup
Fraser's of Ipswich
Freeman Hardy Willis
Fuller's Ales
Gardiner & Co. Outfitters
W&A Gilbey / Glen Spey Whisky
Glentakit Whisky
Gossage's Dry Soap
Hampton's Furniture
Home & Colonial
Horniman's Tea
Hudson's Soap
Hudson's Super Soap
Inde Coope Ales
International Stores
Jeyes Fluid
John Elkan's Rings
K Boots
Keiller Cocoa
Keloert's Lard
Ketton Cement
Lennard's Boots
Lifebuoy Soap
Lipton's Tea
Lux
Manchester Hotel
Maple & Co
Marigold Flake
Mason's Extract of Herbs
Matthew's Breakfast Bacon
Mazawattee Tea
Mellin's Food
Midland Hotel
Millennium Bread
Monkey Brand Soap
Morgan's Ales
National Gas & Oil Engines
Nectar Tea
Nestles Milk
New Hudson Bicycles
News of the World
Ogden's Guinea Gold Cigarettes
Oxo
Palethorpe's Sausages
Pears' Soap
Petter's Oil Engines
Pheonix Fire
Player's Tobacco
Price's Candles
Punch
Remington Typewriters
Rinso
Robertson's Golden Shred / Jam
Royal Fire Insurance
Salutaris Table Water
Sanitas Disinfectant
Savill's Ales & Stout
Sketchley Cleaners
Stephen's Ink / Gum / Carbon
Sunlight Soap / £1000 Reward / Boy
Sutton's Seeds
Swan Soap
Tangye Engines
Terebene Soap
Tit-Bits
The People
The Sphere
The Times
Tower Tea
Truman's Ales & Stout
United Kingdom Tea Company
Van Houten's Cocoa
Veno's Lightning Cough Cure
Venus Soap
Vigil Silk
Vim
Vinolia Soap
Virol
Vitali's Italian Wines
Waterloo Cakes
Watson's Matchless Cleanser
Waverley Pens
Webb's Seeds
Whitbread Stout & Ale / Bottled Beer
Willing Cigarettes
Wincarnis
Wood Milne Shoeshine / Rubber Heels
Wright's Coal Tar Soap
Yost Typewriters
