Petering Out

I’m going to have to reign myself in for a few months I think. I have been pretty obsessed with my new baby to the point I have prepared material for at least three months of posts. Which is lucky because I really need to be focussed on another project – a coffee table book and exhibition I have been working on for a long time. Things are really running behind and I’ve had the hard word put on me to start finalising things. So I need to train my concentration on that and bring it to fruition.

Because I’ve known that this was coming I’ve been studiouslyworking my way through recreating a bunch of Wattie’s can labels as far back as the 1930’s, Sunshine product packaging from the 1950s and 1960s, and – I mentioned this a while ago when I posted the article “Neverbland” on Denne Brothers’s ice cream back in April – on a series of Peter Pan product posters that seem to be circa mid to end 1960s.

a

So here’s the first two I put back together from photos. They are kind of  kitsch, lurid and a bit naive – but that’s what appeals to me about them. These were the days when you had four screens and bright colours to make do with and get your message across as effectively as possible, and keeping that in mind lends them a real charm.

a

I’ve messaged the seller a couple of times about the provenance but she doesn’t seem to be interested in answering me given that I am not handing over actual cash money for anything, so I do not have any back story on the ten or so designs.I can make an educated guess that they came from a storage area- perhaps a cupboard or attic space of an old dairy. I can’t see why anyone else would keep them. It’s clear they were all created by the same artist. However if it had been an archive from a marketing manager or commercial designer I conject there would have been a lot more material and a less random selection.

So who knows, but sometimes not having the answer is more interesting. Click on the Peter Pan tag to go to the original story on the company I posted a few weeks back.

(Note: hmmm, neither the category or tag systems I set up seem to work which is really annoying after spending a lot of time on it. Admittedly I am still getting the hang of the way the WordPress system operates. In the meantime go here for the previous Peter Pan article https://longwhitekid.wordpress.com/2011/04/11/neverbland/)

Advertisement