I just acquire this ticket, named “Rest Wall”.

Without the caption, I may as a Westerner looked at the design as just three random Indian people.

But it isn’t. The title describes exactly what is happening and it is an absolutely logical and charming detail of life in rural India. Obviously with no shade and heavy loads to carry upon your head, wouldn’t it be marvelous if there were a small section of wall built that meant instead of putting your load down when having a rest, it could be temporarily held at head height on top of the wall.

The added bonus of the wall would be to provide some much needed shade, in which a cigarette could be enjoyed.

A simple but elegant part of rural Indian life illustrated here as a trade mark to remind cloth buyers how good life can be. Much better than putting a picture of Queen Victoria, Empress of India on the label.rest-wall

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I recently acquired around 50 original paintings used by Manchester merchants to create tickets for the Chinese and Japanese markets.

Some are painted on art card, some on thin paper and some on silk with dates marked at around 1910. The ones from religious fables have a description on the back explaining what is the meaning of the illustration. The style and quality varies across the collection but they do seem to be drawn by an artist from that region rather than by a Manchester artist imitating Asian techniques. Althought the image quality is kept purposefully low to prevent copying from this site, there is a zoomed in detail shown of one of the pieces of art to show the technique. Maybe original artwork was bought from the Far East and adapted, with borders added by Manchester artists to convert the image to the style of a ticket.

The subject matter ranges from daily life such as cycling around, to religious, to more abstract.

If anyone can provide any translations, or has any knowledge of the subject matter, significance or any other thoughts on the first examples I have found of original artwork, I would love to hear from you.DSC00038 DSC00058 DSC00061 DSC00077

 

 

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I am well aware that the British Empire was responsible for many atrocities, divisions and oppression. However, it is a commonly held belief that the British imposed religion and cultures upon those people it came across, with little regard for their existing beliefs or traditions.

In terms of India, the ticket below epitomises probably how most people think the empire looked upon the country

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But what is clear from my collection is that, in terms of cotton merchants at least, there was a great deal of interest and respect of local customs. This may have been simply because if local Hindu buyers saw images of the deity Shiva  stuck to the cloth they would be more inclined to buy it, rather than one with a depiction of Queen Victoria. However we may discount the motivation, the end result is more important than the reason, because it has left us with the largest collection of “ethnic” imagery ever amassed. It is a shame only a fraction exists but I thought it would be interesting to compare a Western cliche image and its Indian counterpart as a simple visual demonstration of exactly how reverential and interested Manchester textile merchants were in using images which had relevance to local buyers on the other side of the world.

Bear in mind these are just a few examples of a huge forgotten chapter in art history. One merchant could have 10,000 different trademarks, all of which were drawn and printed among the sooty factories of an industrial English city, but were destined for village markets and stores across the world. In fact, the merchants became so astute at manufacturing and marketing their fabric, that 85% of the world’s population wore cloth from Manchester in the 1880’s.

I have similar examples from Africa, South America and China

Respecting and celebrating the culture of your customer was obviously good business and I would argue more ethical than the homogenous globalisation of brands and logo’s we see today from the likes of Starbucks, McDonalds or Nike.

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I was recently contacted through this site by a couple who’s grandfather, Thomas Winterbottom, worked at the River Etherow Bleaching Company, Hollingworth, Hyde near Manchester.

Ash-tray

Apparently when the bleachworks closed down, employees could pick stamps to keep as a momento, so he chose the following stamps, which have now been passed on and are part of my collection, along with the ashtray.

Thanks so much. They are in good hands

 

eagle-stamp

race-stamp

 

 

I decided it would be nice to print the stamps again and by adding some of my own, came up with these designs

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American stamp found

by admin on 20/04/2014

After a 10 year search I finally own a trademark stamp made in America. The stamp is the exact standard depth of Manchester stamps and the 8 inch wide design depicts the Mexican national emblem of an eagle stood on a cactus holding a snake. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coat_of_arms_of_Mexico Mexico Coat of Arms stamp

The coat of arms changed over the years and this design, by José Mariano Torreblanca, was used from 1823-64 and then from 1867-93, so the stamp was made during one of these two periods. stamp-3

The stamp was made by J Cosgrove, Providence, R.I. and a Census lists a John Cosgrove working as a stencil cutter (The American term for a stamp maker) in Providence in 1880.

This is where things get interesting. The census lists John Cosgrove as being English, born in 1833 with an English father and an Irish mother.

His wife Sarah is listed as Irish and his 4 children were born in various places:

Matilda COSGROVE, 18, birthplace, Ireland

Albert E. COSGROVE, 17 birthplace, Ireland, Occupation: Stencil Cutter

Alice J. COSGROVE , 12, birthplace, Massachusetts

John COSGROVE, 8 birthplace, Rhode Island John Cosgrove

Searching for a John Cosgrove who was born in England in 1833…….

A John Cosgrove, born in Lancashire in 1833, was listed as living in Manchester’s Ancoats textile district  in 1841  and 1861 censuses.
In 1880 the USA census states that his son and daughter was Irish and the youngest was 17, which means they must have moved to Ireland at some point.
They must have left for America before 1868 because his daughter Alice was born in Massachusetts.
There is a Thomas John Cosgrove who married a Sarah Mcmullon in 1859 (When John was 26) in Carnmoney, 7 miles from Belfast – the only ‘Sarah’ to marry a Cosgrove in that 20 year period. He is half Irish so he could have gone to Ireland to get married and  moved there just after the 1861 Manchester census, having babies Matilda and Albert (in 1862 and 1863) in Ireland.
He probably learned his stampmaking trade in Manchester and then moved to Belfast. Between 1861-65 there was the “cotton famine” because of over production and a restriction where they couldn’t get cotton from America because of the civil war so many Manchester factories shut down, so it would make sense to move to Belfast where the Irish linen trade was based and much less affected. There were linen trademark labels so I am presuming there were Irish trademark stamps being made in Belfast too.
The alternative is that he married Sarah when she already had children born in Ireland and went straight from Manchester to America, though that seems unlikely as his children are all listed as having an Irish mother and English father.
They emigrated at some point after 1863 and had their daughter Alice in Massachusetts in 1868. The family then made their way to Providence, which was the centre of “Stencil cutting” in the Northeast.
It is interesting that Albert was following his father into the stampmaking trade.
So what this single stamp has showed is that there was a direct link between Manchester stampmakers and American Stencil cutters. The stamps are identical in dimension and construction techniques.
The reasons why John Cosgrove moved from Manchester to Providence via Ireland will probably never be known but putting his name on the side of this stamp for the Mexican market has revealed a wealth of information about the trade and the Cosgrove family history.
The stamp itself would have been made no later than 1893 because the Mexico coat of arms changed in that year but cannot have been made before 1868 because John Cosgrove lived in Ireland at that point.
If anyone wants to add any more information, such as finding information on John Cosgrove’s father, the date when the Cosgrove family emigrated to America, or what happened to the Cosgrove children, I would love to hear from you.

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Although the huge collection I built up was really about being in Manchester when the textile merchants were closing down in the 1980’s, a good source for anyone wanting to start collecting shipper’s tickets is eBay.

Often described as “fabric labels” or “linen labels”, there are a few that appear for sale ranging from $5 to $50 each.

The following designs from  merchant operating in the Far East were recently offered by a German eBay store seller (email can be provided on request)  and really are some great old examples of trademarks that still pop up now and again.

Just don’t bid against me please!
28935f67bf7ceb06b7dab17bf82787379  4047a6bf65813443564cd0a4674da95d4 2731b25c9ad820064c0bae5bc7834d072   300cef7e8a15725576fe76d4fd53e48fa  49f62b9d9c6548c7c156c72f699966b47 44b4e683f30085434b6347e662a62c84b  24cac48e10939b3c5b1621fe26673c4ef

 

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After a chance encounter with Philip Bailey, the artist was asked to produce 35 original pieces for Earth Wind & Fire’s 35th anniversary.

As always, the artist created the art for free and produced the varied interpretations of each year and each song in only two days.

The pieces were given out by the band to people who had played a big part in their career, from fans to musicians.

 

click here or the images below to see all the designs

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New collection of letters acquired

by admin on 18/10/2013

Thanks to this site, a reader from Yorkshire, England contacted me to sell his collection of letter and number stamps, which doubles the size of my single character collection.They were in trays and random but have been since sorted and I share them here with you.

Copyright Adrian WIlson Copyright Adrian Wilson

 

Below is my existing collection of numbers and letters, with several complete alphabets. I hope some of the random spare letters match some of the fonts from the new collection.

I also wonder if missing letters could be made using a 3D printer?

copyright Adrian Wilson

 

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This is my appearance with samples from the collection as a special collector guest on the BBC Antiques Roadshow when it visited Manchester, England.

Click on the image below or here to watch the video

Antiques Roadshow Antiques Roadshow

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The video is copyright BBC and is shown here for non-commercial, educational purposes

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I have just completed the task of scanning and creating an eBook of an old Machester book containing tickets which go back to the 1830’s.

http://www.interiorphotography.net/textile/MalcomRossBook1/MRoss.swf

Malcolm Ross & Co. primarily sold cotton thread into Japan, China and India and this book was put together in around 1925 as a definitive catalogue of the trademarks used by Ross and their customers in the Far East. Judging by the style of printing and illustration, some of the tickets date from the 1830’s and there are some dates in the book as late as the 1920’s, so this collection is unique in that in spans the 100 years of printing and trademark development from plain color bookplate type labels, to 16 colour tickets….

Early label design

 

 

 

 

 

Indian loop the loop ticke 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The ethnic variety is astounding and if any of you can help translate or explain some of the text and imagery, I would really appreciate it. The reason why there are several ticket designs in a variety of colors is that each color denoted a different type of thread, so the buyer could buy using the color coding if they were illiterate.

I would be interested to know the meaning or use of these for instance

letter tickets

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The book contains a photograph of an Indian looking child holding a cricket bat

Indian child cricketer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and the ticket that was created from the photo, which shows that Manchester ticket printers used images supplied from foreign markets to create designs. I assume the child may be the son or daughter of the import merchant

Cricketer ticket

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Many of the tickets are listed as being printed by Norbury Natzio of Manchester which was a large   printing company famous for employing Adolphe Valette at the same time these tickets were drawn, so maybe he had a hand in their creation.

NOTE THAT ALL IMAGES IN THIS ARTICLE ARE COPYRIGHT AND MUST NOT BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION

 

 

 

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