I was digging around in a box lot of disparate items at auction when I spotted some small wooden blocks. I brushed aside red heart-shaped nesting boxes, a new Rolfs man’s wallet, a Gillette razor and a Tissot mint tin to get to them.
The dozen or so blocks were of various sizes and shapes, and were strewn haphazardly in the low-cut cardboard box. Picking one up, I saw that it was a stamp similar to the rubber ones used by crafters to create ink designs.
But these were different. The raised imprints were metal – most were copper – and the image on a few were not so easily identifiable in the spot where I stood away from bright lights in the auction house. The blocks had been inked before and needed a bit of cleaning.
Among them was an elongated block with a witch, the word “Halloween,” the name “Canada Dry” and the price, “15¢ PLUS DEP.” In fact, there were two Canada Dry blocks. The other promoted the soft drink as “A Labor Day Treat.”
I realized they were block prints advertising various companies: Jello, Gerber’s Baby Foods, Sunsweet prune juice, Sanka Coffee, Post Toasties. Two were for a food company I’d never heard of before: Montco, which seems to no longer exist. Its blocks were for canned green asparagus, butter and coffee.
These block prints were likely used by newspapers and other advertisers to produce print ads for the various companies. Googling, I found a number of them described as American advertisement blocks. Another site told a story of a couple who purchased boxes of block prints of old movie ads.
I’d never come across any of these at auction before and I decided that I wanted them. I won the bid and brought them home. Not sure what I’ll do with them, but I thought they were so novel.
Here’s what I found in the box. Neat, aren’t they?
