No Business Like Snow Business

Snowdrop Ice Cream. I have searched high and low using every term I can think of with the few clues that I have, and have turned up nothing about this product. Or company. Or the owner. The only information I have is that the address was being used by a butcher in 1906, as a notice appeared in the Ashburton Guardian that year- indicating that previously there had also been a butchery on the premises. It is really unusual to not be able to find a single thing out with information like the brand name, the owners name, and street address. I can’t ask for more leads than this, yet I have come up with zilch. Compared to my recent story on Dustin’s and Buttermaid it seems sort of ridiculous not to be able to produce anything at all. I have written to the Ashburton museum to see if they have any more information on this item which is in their collection . Anyway I’m guessing post 1945 for this item, I’d say between late 1940s and mid 1950s.

Photo of assembled Snowdrop box, courtesy of Ashburton Museum collection, object no. 4.99.124

There have been a lot of these turning up on the collectables market lately, and in fact you can get them at quite a reasonable price. A friend nabbed this one for me in Auckland for two dollars in a sale which was one of the best bargains ever. They must be ex-factory stock as they are all mint and still flat packed. I can only assume that they were found during a renovation probably at the address listed on the box which is 141 East Street Ashburton (the town is south of Christchurch). Who knows what the deal is.

141 East Street Ashburton premises, The Ashburton Guardian, 24 November 1906, Page 3

It’s probably rather like the story behind the amount of Peacock can labels that have been around for quite some time – in fact I can remember them being for sale when I had just started collecting as a child – I used to see them at swap meets and the like. Apparently they came out of the factory during demolition. I am fairly sure that I read the story somewhere recently told by an employee of the factory that there was some kind of a space in the rafters above the offices and rather than take label stock back to the store room, it was common practice to lazily throw them into the ceiling where they stayed until discovered during dismantling of the building – and thus they have been doing the rounds ever since.

I can’t remember where I’ve read this recounting but it was in the last couple of weeks, and probably in relation to some cursory research I did on the St George jam factory (both St George and Peacock were brands of Irvine & Stevenson).

Rather like the Snowdrop boxes the Peacock stuff has lost its cachet (well, to me anyway) because of the frequency with which they turn up for sale. In fact the price on both items is dropping drastically so now Peacock items are going for between $1.00 and $3.50 apiece (even less in multiple offerings), with St George dropping to around five dollars on average, and asking any more will generally result in it being passed in. Same situation with the Snowdrop boxes as people have an inability to move a common item. Although beautiful designs they don’t have much appeal for many dedicated collectors due to their lack of rarity. I’ll update if any additional info materialises.

 

Postscript, mid September 2012: Mystery no more. In the meantime someone with a lot of information as well as leads, has come forward regarding  Snowdrop, and I will be updating on this brand soon.