String Theory

This has recently arrived in the post, contradicting my previous assertion on here that there are no more eBay bargains to be had.

Admittedly it is not an outstanding piece of graphic design history (although I quite like it) and is rather battered round the edges too.   But it’s by Lander, which is always a good thing, and it’s also a rather intriguing bit of social history.  Because it’s a reminder of the days when things had brown labels and were tied up with string, or in this case cord.

Nobody does that any more, do they?  I have sometimes been known to wrap a parcel up in brown paper, but I don’t think I’ve ever tied it up with string.  This is something I’m sure that my mother could do though, coming as she does from an age before jiffy bags and sellotape.

Without all these modern parcel technologies, it was clearly possible to wrap a parcel very badly.  At least that’s the only conclusion I can arrive at from the sheer volume of posters that the GPO put out on the subjects.  Most of these are quite general, and I’ve written about the Properly Packed Parcels series on here before.  But there were plenty of other similar exhortations too, and here’s just one.

Actually, seeing as it’s Tom Eckersley, let’s have two.

Judging from the posters though, (these are all from between 1950 and 1953) there was a Post Office standard approved way of packing parcels carefully.

So that’s two pieces of string round the long side, one round the other, although I still have no idea how to knot it.   Hans Unger, meanwhile, is even more specific about rigid boxes and string in 1950.

This one, though, is the most instructional I have managed to find (it’s artwork by the way, artist not known).

I think even I could have had a go at the process now, although I still don’t know how to knot the string.

Of course (and you might have guessed that the whole post has been leading up to this) the real challenge that faced the Post Office was blackberries.  Sent in a non-approved fashion.

Did people really send them in a basket?  And expect them to get there?  I am boggled at that thought.  But the GPO weren’t, they produced more than one poster, which means that it must have happened at least twice…

The GPO weren’t alone though, British Railways also had problems with parcel packing and addressing.

The problems might have been similar but it has to be said, the GPO’s poster design was infinitely superior.

You also get the feeling from their posters that they don’t actually like parcels that much.  They’re just trouble really, when your main business is really running trains.

That, incidentally is apparently a late Frank Newbould from 1960,  It’s also quite mild in tone compared to some.

But nothing gave them an excuse like the war.  At last they could say what they really thought.

Can you even send a parcel by railway now?  Probably only if it is tied up with string.