History of the high street found in a drawer (All that is left behind: Case study of British graphic design on paper bags)

Selfridges / Festival of Britain

When searching for materials to work with I often discover items that I had no intention of finding.
On a recent salvaging expedition I collected together one persons history of shopping as it was discarded at the end of a house clearance. As the waste-not-want-not ethic erodes and hoarders are in decline I feel there is great value in recording elements of everyday life that are deemed to be worthless financially. Many of the bags were found being used as drawer liners, others packed into drawers fresh from the shops with the original purchased contents still intact and unused. The original owner appears to be a single lady living in south east London. Here follows a selection.

Boot prescription bag

Tollit and Harvey Ltd. Manufacturing Stationers & Printers

Wests of Ilford 

Chiesmans The Family Stored

Selfridges 

Harrods

D H Evans, Oxford Street 

W H Smiths (medium size) 

Neatawear of Regents Street

Bourne & Hollingsworth Ltd, Oxford Street

John Menzies with useful Decimal Currency converter

John Lewis, Oxford Street (small bag)

Bentleys Bread (one of my favourites) 

Sainsbury's - Good food costs less at - (how long have they been using that?)

Sainsbury's - Make it a Sainsbury chicken for a change

Chiesmans The Family Stores (small bag)

Batters Better Bread, Croydon, Surrey (another lovely bread bag) 

Needlewoman. 146-148 Regents Street 

Bow Bells Wool Shop. 48 Cheapside, London EC1

D H Evans (chic small bag with carry handle) 

Denis Weaver Ltd, Stationery, Dover & Deal (shopping on holiday?) 

Achille Serre. cobblers shoe bag?

St Michael the brand name of Marks & Spencer

John Hood Ltd. The leaders in modern cleaning!

Nicholsons. St.Paul's Churchyard 

Gamages, Holborn

Youngs of Bexleyheath 

British Home Stores (sounds much better than BHS) 'Prova' for quality

Not a bag, Early brown printed wrapping paper for John Lewis, Oxford Street 

...and a late 60s early 70s John Lewis bag. Never knowingly undersold.

Twitter #FontSunday at the Design Museum

All that is left behind / Things i can't throw away / Letter R

 I've been rather rubbish at updating this blog with new work & personal interests during the past year. must try harder (day-dreamer was also on my school reports). It has been an amazing year making new work, teaching at the RCA, talking at the V&A, working on fun projects and meeting heroes.
Some of you might have noticed that I have been spending far too much time on Twitter, you can find me @rupertblanchard
For a while now the Design Museum in London has been hosting a weekly event on Twitter called #FontSunday
Each week they pick a new subject from the world of typography for tweeters to 'show & tell' about. Being a Designer, Maker and Collector with a background in Graphic Design I've become a bit of a fan of #FontSunday and I hope to share my tweets here every Sunday (when participating) for those of you that don't tweet. Here are a few of my images from last week, please note that I only use the camera that is built into my phone as the event is rather spontaneous with the subject often being announced on Sunday mornings before tweeting from midday. On a separate matter, I am currently looking for a photographer to record my new furniture collection, please get in touch if you can help, thank you.

A section of signage used on one of my new cabinets

Collection of door numbers salvaged from doors that were beyond use

8 new cardboard boxes for my collection of hundreds

cardboard box love

Selfridges

 regular readers of my blog will know i'm a bit of a cardboard box nerd. here is a selection of what i call 'shop shirt boxes'. These were all found in car boot sales and house clearances. Originally produced by high end retailers to present or post goods, garments and alterations to customers. Always constructed from a hard-wall cardboard with metal stapled joints, never from cheaper corrugated cardboard. often, but not always designed with an area to label the recipient's address. double click images to view larger.

Burberrys

John Lewis 

Jenners

Asprey

Harrods 

Harrods

Harvey Nichols

Liberty

Liberty

Simpson - great carry handle detail

Garrard & Co Ltd

Peter Jones (John Lewis)

Anderson & Sheppard, Savile Row

Tobias Bros

Beale & Inman Ltd 

Marshall & Snelgrove

Schofields Ltd 

Lovely telephone number change/correction on the Schofields box

Detail on John Lewis box: 'Must arrive Wednesday, Customer going on holiday'