Muskoka Antiques; The Art of The Label, and The Artists Who Created Them

Images from the 1980's Book, "The Canadian Heritage Label Collection"

THE ART OF THE LABEL - AND THE ARTISTS WHO CREATED THEM - AN IMPORTANT ASPECT OF CANADIAN ART HERITAGE

"THE CANADIAN HERITAGE LABEL COLLECTION," A HUGELY IMPORTANT REFERENCE BOOK - WISH I HAD SOME MORE TO SELL


     There are lots of times when weather alerts are really, really important. Potential natural occurrences like tornadoes and blizzards....even squalls, because it's pretty dangerous out there, especially if you're driving through the affected regions. But the wind-chill advisories strike me as a wee bit excessive, as warnings to the general public.....which pretty much suggest, at say minus twenty-one C., you will freeze to a standstill in several minutes of inactivity. Then what is recorded as minus twenty-one becomes somewhere in the vicinity of minus thirty something, and pee will freeze before it hits the snow. It seems to this survivor of many colder winters than this, that the weather folks like scaring the crap out of people....and make it seem that the best thing you can do on days like this, is well, curl up to the space heater, and pray the temperature doesn't drop any lower, freezing your dwelling into the crystal of a newly formed glacier.
    It used to be that this was balmy weather for January. I don't want to appear ancient, when I write this, but when I was a kid, we had the kind of frigid weather that really snapped the woodwork. So far, the snapping has been about as sharp and significant as a wet towel with a slight flick against the buttocks. The warnings seem a little sensationalist, and honestly, the way they're presented these days, it's as if you are putting your life on the line, just by walking a short block to the grocery store. I've done quite a few things outdoor, so far today, and son Robert, politely declined a drive to the grocery store, preferring the bright, brisk, several block hike north. Both of us survived our outdoor work-out, with energy and good health to spare. Outside of being damn cold, (such as to warrant bringing in the brass monkey) it is a sunny, cheerful, perfect winter day, here in God's country. But it seems a lot of folks are scared of the cold, with these enormous wind-chill figures being bandied about, and opt instead, to watch us moving-about outside instead. Really sucks for the retail community. No one wants to freeze to death while on an optional shopping excursion. So there goes a whack of business for the day. If we can show up, at work, without freezing, it can't be that bad....although I'm told, it was minus forty, if you found the wind to justify the "chill" hike.
      I never remember once, hearing about the wind-chill factor, as I got ready for the ten block walk to school, in my early days in Bracebridge; where by the way, the rest of the town could be wind-free, but there was always a strong breeze through the Muskoka River hollow. Crossing the Hunt's Hill bridge was like Winnipeg's famous "Portage and Main," so you didn't linger. Unless like the town fool, who stopped to taste the iron railing, finding out how many friends he didn't have. I remember it being damn cold back then, in those old-time Januaries, but we never once had school cancelled solely because of intense cold. Are we losing some of our Canadian grit? Are we becoming soft? If it is minus thirty at our house, and there isn't a lick of wind, in my estimation, there is not a subsequent "ten degree" imposition of wind-chill. So why is it necessary to scare the crap out of people? What we're getting, isn't all that wild and crazy? Especially if you look at the numbers most of us have had to live with....but somehow forgotten; partly due to some very light winters in the past decade. If you live in Muskoka, you have to be tough. If you live in Toronto? Fill in the blank.

Those unsung masters of graphic art and the labels they inspired

     From childhood, I have been a silent admirer of the graphic arts, that have long companioned with commercial products, on the shelves of all the grocery stores known to me. My mother never once had to "drag" me with her, to go grocery shopping. To either sit in the grocery cart, as she pushed it around the shop, or when I was old enough to drive the cart on my own. It was never a chore or childhood imposition, to visit these amazing corner markets, and grocery stores, where we got our weekly groceries and related household supplies. Part of this experience, of course, was the packaging that attracted my attention then....and even today. Suzanne also has no problem getting me out of the armchair to go shopping, unless for underwear. I still adore a trip to the grocery store, because, even after all these years of modernization, they've pretty much kept up their marketing tradition, carried on from the former, smaller, general store.
    I am still hopelessly attracted by labels, just as I was then, and I make no apology for my commercial interests in how products are presented and promoted. I worked in a grocery store for a short period of time, until management decided I was too slow and plodding about my chores, to earn them any return on their investment. I agreed with their assessment. I was a shopper not a shelf-loader. I was an admirer of the tradition of the general store, and its advancement into groceterias, and today's mega stores, where they even have motorized carts for those with special needs. It's lucky they weren't available in my childhood. It was said, that I was one of very few children in Canada, who could over-turn a shopping cart mid-aisle. I was okay navigating corners. It was the straight-aways that did me in! I did it three times in the old Bracebridge A&P, and the manager, we only knew as "Earl," asked my mother to leave me at home the next time she visited. I think I led to Earl's premature retirement. I really did enjoy my grocery store adventures, and even today, if we don't need anything major, I still meander the aisles...and the slow walk around always seem so mindlessly pleasant. I don't know many people who find a trip to the grocery store, a respite, from the challenges of the day....but I can claim this distinction. So when I was writing the material below, I was most definitely feeling good about my old days, helping my mother load her cart.....although she often had to put most of it back....saying "We don't need three boxes of Honeycombs." "But there are prizes in them," I'd cry out, as if that was the most compelling reason to make the purchases. I like grocery stores. I liked them then....back in the 1960's, and I like them today. Staff lets me wander to my heart's content, and since 1967, I've never again, tipped-over a single grocery cart. My mother would be so pleased. I'd like to know where Earl is, so I could offer my sincere apology for making his life a misery.

     "It was not, indeed, until after the turn of the century, that the applications of the graphic arts to industrial design and the development of advertising illustration, began to be at all noticeable. Prior to this period, such publications as the "Canadian Magazine," revived in 1893, and "Massey's Magazine," with which it was subsequently merged, also the "Canadian Illustrated News," "The Dominion Illustrated Monthly," the weekly "Globe," and the Toronto "Saturday Night," gave employment to our artists and commercial designers."
     The paragraph above, was written by well known Canadian artist, and part-time author, William Colgate, in his book, "Canadian Art, Its Origin & Development," published in 1943, by The Ryerson Press. This is taken from the first edition, that I purchased locally several years ago, to add to my collection of Canadian art reference books. Colgate goes on to explain, that "From the magazines and newspapers, to the advertising pages of these publications, was but a brief transition, and with the growing use of advertising, the services of the artist became progressively enlarged, until today, the combined earnings of the artist and the commercial illustrator, usually attached to an engraving house or, as often happens, working on his own, represent an expenditure of many thousands of dollars yearly. Naturally, with the constant employment of the artist, has come a greater mastery of his mediums, and an enhanced skill for surpassing in both quality, and execution, the sometimes crude and often mediocre work of the eighties (1880's), and nineties. Canadian graphic art, it will be seen, has come into its own, and need not shrink from comparison with similar work elsewhere."
     In our Gravenhurst antique and vintage music shop, we like to keep special reference books on hand, just in case we find ourselves in a discussion, that requires a little support from the cavalry....which in our case, is a small collection of our favorite books on the subjects we're most interested in....and have examples in our own collection. One of my most-called-upon reference books, is entitled "The Canadian Heritage Label Collection," written by Ted Herriott, and published in 1982, by Purpleville Publishing, of Mississauga, Ontario. It includes a highly significant introduction by Canadian Group of Seven Artist, A.J. Casson, who was one of the artists that provided the graphics for the paper can-labels, in the early period of the 1900's. Casson was amongst many other talented artists, who couldn't make enough money selling their own art work initially, and who had to work, to gain experience, at commercial art establishments, in order to pay the bills. Having the collection of labels preserved is amazing, considering how many billions were destroyed, when the cans were typically discarded. Yet there is so much art history contained within, and they have become coveted pieces of art on their own. Many art patrons aren't aware that these labels were the ground floor, in the art industry, for some of this country's best known and accomplished painters. It gave them an opportunity to progress in their field, with subtle but important mentorships between senior graphic artists, and those just starting out.
     In his introduction, A.J. Casson writes, that "When Ted (Herriott) first showed me the labels, that were to become the Canadian Heritage Label Collection, in May of 1978, I was astonished at the beautiful condition of these priceless relics of an era, when, free from government regulation, the designer knew no bounds to his own creativity. Most of the labels are over 100 years old and the hand lithography, the colours, and the embossing on so many of the labels, reflect the effort and the expense to which the cannery owners went, to bring their product to the attention of the public."
     He notes, "The artists were obviously influenced by the social aspects of their time - Queen Victoria, the Boer War, Art Nouveau and the Gibson Girl. Their habit of using so many different colours and styles of lettering on the labels, looks very strange today. Unfortunately, it is next to impossible to trace these artists. They were never known to the buyers of the products, it being forbidden for them to put their names to their work - although some artists, used little marks to identify their designs. Even firms still in existence would be unlikely to have records of the people in their art departments, earning, at the most, ten or twelve dollars a week."
     "When I worked at Commercial Engravers in 1914, a number of labels were designed by myself, Frank Nairn or Ed Regan. I recall that some of my own contemporaries - Jim MacDonald, Carmichael, Tom Thomson, A.Y. Jackson, Frank Johnston and Lismer - all worked for lithographing houses at one time or another, and I well remember, myself when I was around sixteen years old, sitting on James Street, in Hamilton, copying Hebrew script from a store window for butter labels for a Jewish Dairy. I also remember, sitting in front of a Chinese dry-goods store carefully copying Chinese characters for a letterhead design I was preparing."
     Casson concludes by writing, "These grand old labels immortalize the old canneries, most long gone, but they are as much a tribute to the unknown artists who designed them, as they are to the growth of an industry of major importance to the economy today."
     Now consider what William Colgate wrote of Casson, following the artist's departure from the graphic arts business. A man who designed advertising for commercial products, went on to earn the praise, summed up in the following quotation, qualified after a 1937  exhibition of contemporary Canadian art work: "One willingly surrenders, for instance, to the magical lure of A.J. Casson's 'Clearing After Rain,' now owned by the National Gallery, in which trees and sky and river form an exquisite harmony of tender colour and moving form. It expresses a delicate, dreamy mood, as befits a springtime theme; and yet, withal, it is virile and robust in handling, as one feels, or seems to feel, the urgent breeze upon his face and savours the clean, sweet smell of growing things." I would love to own one of the labels Mr. Casson created. I'd love to own one of his art panels. Both unlikely scenarios.
     Ted Herriott, author of "The Canadian Heritage Label Collection," notes, "Until the middle of the last century (1800's), the packaging of consumer products was almost non-existent. The first labels were probably brown paper bags with 'flour,' or 'salt' scrawled on them, the contents having been measured out of a barrel by a storekeeper."
      "As the world became more and more industrialized, packaging became a necessity. The label was the sales vehicle for the product. Its role in the market-place was as important then as it is now. It had to draw attention to the product, convey the use of, give personality to the product, and of course, win consumer acceptance. These objectives are still the basis of marketing today. Modern day product promotion, however, has the advantage of the visual impact of the television screen and magazine market to draw attention to the product," writes Ted Harriott.
     The book offers quite a wide variety of commercial labels for a huge array of products, that would have been available in the general stores of the day. In tomorrow's blog, I'd like to revisit another fascinating little book we keep at the counter, highlighting general store collectables, which has a huge antique-collector following. These books weren't produced to be price guides, but rather, reference texts for art admirers, graphics collectors, and vintage products, from tins to glass. These books are getting pretty worn from counter use, because we get a lot of customers with interests, accurately covered in their pages. If you would like either book, you can check on their availability through the collective, of online, out of print book dealers, by looking up the Advanced Book Exchange, and typing in the respective author and title.
     Thanks very much for joining with me today. Please visit tomorrow for a glimpse back at general store advertising. I'm ready for another chilly night. I can't sleep for more than two hours at a time, because my biggest worry, is that the water pipes might freeze. No that would irritate me. It has happened before, at about minus 30, and I found out why they call it a crawl space. Stay warm. But get out there and enjoy the winter at its brightest. Fake fur-lined underwear.