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Antique and Vintage Typewriter Tins
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Among advertising tins, typewriter tins were palm-sized products that spoke louder than their diminutive size. With their colorful lithographed surfaces emblazoned with the names of typewriter brands such as Remington, Royal, and Smith-Corona,...
Among advertising tins, typewriter tins were palm-sized products that spoke louder than their diminutive size. With their colorful lithographed surfaces emblazoned with the names of typewriter brands such as Remington, Royal, and Smith-Corona, typewriter tins had to be noisy to attract the attention of customers, who had many choices when it came time to replace the ribbons in their machines.
Typewriters had been relying on ink-soaked cotton ribbons (silk and artificial fabrics such as rayon came later) to produce letters and numbers on sheets of paper since the 1870s. To keep these ribbons from drying out, they were packed in small tin cans, some square, others round. For years, many tins were printed with blank or colored bars on them, so that the typewriter model for which the ribbon was designed could be stamped in black or a contrasting color right on the tin.
As with most advertising art, the designs on antique and vintage typewriter tins reflected the aesthetic of the day. During the turn of the century, for example, tins were decorated in the manner of Art Nouveau, while tins produced immediately after World War I were crammed with slogans and patent numbers to assure would-be customers of their quality.
Today, most collectors of these modest artifacts of the office gravitate to typewriter tins featuring bold, colorful, Art Deco and Streamline Moderne fonts and designs. Many of these ribbons boasted brand names that didn't seem to have much to do with the world of the office—Empress and Black Hawk come to mind—while other ribbons made by companies such as Underwood and Curtis Young touted their products as "secretarial ribbon." A few brands, Codo Super-Fiber and Commercial among them, even included a profile of a female secretary at work at her typewriter. Other popular typewriter-tin brands included KeeLox, office-equipment giant Burroughs, Philco, Webster, and Carter's.
Continue readingAmong advertising tins, typewriter tins were palm-sized products that spoke louder than their diminutive size. With their colorful lithographed surfaces emblazoned with the names of typewriter brands such as Remington, Royal, and Smith-Corona, typewriter tins had to be noisy to attract the attention of customers, who had many choices when it came time to replace the ribbons in their machines.
Typewriters had been relying on ink-soaked cotton ribbons (silk and artificial fabrics such as rayon came later) to produce letters and numbers on sheets of paper since the 1870s. To keep these ribbons from drying out, they were packed in small tin cans, some square, others round. For years, many tins were printed with blank or colored bars on them, so that the typewriter model for which the ribbon was designed could be stamped in black or a contrasting color right on the tin.
As with most advertising art, the designs on antique and vintage typewriter tins reflected the aesthetic of the day. During the turn of the century, for example, tins were decorated in the manner of Art Nouveau, while tins produced immediately after World War I were crammed with slogans and patent numbers to assure would-be customers of their quality.
Today, most collectors of these modest artifacts of the office gravitate to typewriter tins featuring bold, colorful, Art Deco and Streamline Moderne fonts and designs. Many of these ribbons boasted brand names that didn't seem to have much to do with the world of the office—Empress and Black Hawk come to mind—while other ribbons made by companies such as Underwood and Curtis Young touted their products as "secretarial ribbon." A few brands, Codo Super-Fiber and Commercial among them, even included a profile of a female secretary at work at her typewriter. Other popular typewriter-tin brands included KeeLox, office-equipment giant Burroughs, Philco, Webster, and Carter's.
Among advertising tins, typewriter tins were palm-sized products that spoke louder than their diminutive size. With their colorful lithographed surfaces emblazoned with the names of typewriter brands such as Remington, Royal, and Smith-Corona, typewriter tins had to be noisy to attract the attention of customers, who had many choices when it came time to replace the ribbons in their machines.
Typewriters had been relying on ink-soaked cotton ribbons (silk and artificial fabrics such as rayon came later) to produce letters and numbers on sheets of paper since the 1870s. To keep these ribbons from drying out, they were packed in small tin cans, some square, others round. For years, many tins were printed with blank or colored bars on them, so that the typewriter model for which the ribbon was designed could be stamped in black or a contrasting color right on the tin.
As with most advertising art, the designs on antique and vintage typewriter tins reflected the aesthetic of the day. During the turn of the century, for example, tins were decorated in the manner of Art Nouveau, while tins produced immediately after World War I were crammed with slogans and patent numbers to assure would-be customers of their quality.
Today, most collectors of these modest artifacts of the office gravitate to typewriter tins featuring bold, colorful, Art Deco and Streamline Moderne fonts and designs. Many of these ribbons boasted brand names that didn't seem to have much to do with the world of the office—Empress and Black Hawk come to mind—while other ribbons made by companies such as Underwood and Curtis Young touted their products as "secretarial ribbon." A few brands, Codo Super-Fiber and Commercial among them, even included a profile of a female secretary at work at her typewriter. Other popular typewriter-tin brands included KeeLox, office-equipment giant Burroughs, Philco, Webster, and Carter's.
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