Seed Company Letterheads: Mostly 19th & Early 20th Century

Old letterheads let you know what was going on.  I like that.  You can tell what the company sold back then.  Names and artwork worked together to fill you in on what the business was up to.  

I'm collecting images of the ones that include engravings of the seed buildings. The pride in accomplishment at that level is charming.  The nice thing about following flower seed companies is that global domination is not the ultimate goal, unlike field crop seed.  That is just my observation.  Besides,  in the early days of seed production in the US what we were trying to do was make a more reliable and desirable seed than the imported seed from France, England and others.

Here is a collection of seed letterheads that I accumulated off eBay. 

   To see them full size, check out this folder.

I smile every time I see the happy dude hugging his cabbage!  (It is a cabbage?) 

Download a paper by Robert Biggert giving a very good grounding in the art of letterheads and how they reflect the history of the country and the attitude of the people.
"The Robert Biggert Collection of Architectural Vignettes on Commercial Stationery was donated to the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library by Robert Biggert in honor of Lisa Ann Riveaux. This unique collection of printed ephemera contains over 1,300 items with architectural imagery spanning the dates 1850 to 1920, in more than 350 cities and towns in forty-five states, as well as the District of Columbia and U.S. possessions. The collection's billheads, letterheads, envelopes, checks, and business cards document the rise of the United States as an industrial nation, in often elaborate vignettes of factories, warehouses, mines, offices, stores, banks, and hotels."

Links Too Good To Ignore; Bird Books

I keep bumping into nice things I want to share, seeds or no seeds.  
Think of them as "seeds of future interests".  :-)

According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, more than 55 million Americans spend upward of $3 billion a year on birdseed. I tried really hard to find some current birdseed industry figures  for this page but can't before bedtime.   BUT I found a nearby city of Cranston, Rhode Island passed an ordinance restricting homeowners to one bird feeder per property, with a penalty of $50 for each infraction. The ordinance is aimed at reducing the rat infestation affecting several wards in the community.

Rats are so 15th century sounding.  
But I know they are very "now"...I used to live next to a donut shop that was not a good neighbor (until the health department told them to keep their trash bin lids closed).  The rats were unreal!   They dug runs under ground and popped up all over our yard like a Whac-a-Mole game! 

Here is an absolutely charming article from Chambers Journal on pet birds.

Free, downloadable books:

Birds:

The Bird Book  - Written in 1905 it is a nice blend of scientific information and more casual observations.



There are pleasant little pen and ink illustrations scattered in the margin of the text that bring it alive.

Published a year after the last passenger pigeon died.  I assume that is why they got the place of honor.  By the way, 2014 marks the 100th anniversary of the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon, when “Martha,” died in captivity at the Cinncinnati Zoological Gardens.


Next, a book of 2 dozen lithos of the famous natural history illustrator Louis Aggasiz Fuertes bird paintings.  These would be nice for any child who likes birds.  The poses and "feel" of each plate give room for imaginings.

Three Misses From Minneapolis

To tidy up my posts about Minnesota seedswomen from around the turn of the 20th century, here are seed catalogs from the three from Minneapolis.

 The University of Minnesota has featured the three women's catalog art - Miss C. H. Lippincott,  Miss Jessie R, Prior  and  Miss Emma White.  I looked at Lippincott earlier this year.

Here are a few pages from the UM archive (above thumbs from their Pinterest page).
Visit the Andersen Horticultural Library's  Pinterest page for these and other worthwhile pins.

I am having an awful time finding out anything about Miss Jessie Prior.  Thanks to the University of Michigan we have a bit.

Check out that "finger spade" (above)!!  Is that cool, or what?!! 

 I wonder what people think it is when they find one at a flea market.

"The Andersen Horticultural Library collection is a rich resource for everyone from the weekend gardener planning a perennial border to the professional horticulturist. Its vast collection of nearly 20,000 books and 300 subscriptions to magazines, newsletters, and scientific journals provides information and inspiration—from the literature of horticulture, botany, landscape architecture, and local natural history to children's books and specialized horticultural research."                                 

Miss Emma White is easier to find full catalogs for and the catalogs give you starters for looking things up.  Below she mentions she bought out E. Nagel & Co.  Cashing in wisely on the popular conception at the time that women were more careful and honest seed dealers, Miss Emma emphatically emphasizes she is a woman. You go, girl!!

Link to UM Pinterest page...really full of fantastic, lush catalog covers.

This is the PDF download for the 1896 catalog below.

1898 catalog issued by Miss Emma White (PDF download) was pixie filled and had no color.

By 1899 she had a marvelous color lithographed front and back cover.  Download PDF.

Below is the 1900 catalog cover.

I am confused on how little info pops up about these 3 seedswomen in business journals.  I have done an immense amount of focused research for two other projects over the last 10 years.  One project is all about antique outboard motors from the same period this blog focuses on - 1890s to 1920.  There is tons of mentions of the 50 or more companies I follow in trade mags, exhibition coverage, patents, magazines that cover new consumer goods, racing sports, commercial fishing,  and a weird assortment of other stuff, all in addition to the company catalogs.   Why Miss Lippincott is the only one I have so far found an article written about her business seems to say I just haven't stumbled on the right searches yet. Google Books is being more opaque than usual!  Burpee  was a great self promoter with books and articles, but what I like is third party mentions of business deals, expanisions, buy-outs, managers acquired from other companies; all the nitty gritty which is probably so boring to most people.  Over the years I found that there are always people that like what you do (which feels so very, very nice!) so it is worth documenting what calls to you.

My other projects are done for my husband who collects American  turn of the 20th century outboard motor ephemera and the motors themselves!  I have caught the bug insofar as my interest in documenting the European motors of the same period lets me weasel around the internet with a focus.   The sites are:

             • Jack Craib's Rowboat Motor Information Site

             • Jack Craib's Caille Outboard Motor Information Pages

Most of my interest is on the rowboat motors.  The Caille site is a research site to help people identify what model they have plus learn about the company.  The rowboat site is more interesting as it includes period articles (of which there were many), plus the many models of early motors are interesting if you are a gearhead :-)   

Call Me Butter - I'm On a Roll...

This fell in my lap, again from cruising eBay.

Like the fabric, the idea of first day covers for seed packets hadn't entered my mind.   I first saw some nice, but "normal" covers.  Then I scrolled down further.  There they were...artist covers!  I love artist covers.  (I think fruitcake withdrawal has messed up my memory; I should have thought of them.  Less brandy on it next year perhaps.)

These covers by John V. Colasanti are wonderful.  Enjoy.  And if you like, visit John's eBay Store, The Purveyor of Needful Things. 

Which is your favorite?  I would pick Stan Laurel with his digitalis thumb!  He was born in 1890...to think he was on TV all the time when I was a kid.   Lincoln is cool, too.  I was NOT around then.

The more staid covers are very nice... here is one.

Who Knew?! - Sew a Seed :-)

I sure as heck didn't think seed packet fabric was a popular item!!!

The fact there is seed packet themed fabric was an eye opener. When I bumped into one on eBay in a seed packet search I thought, "Wow - cool!".  Then I queried eBay for more and the place is crawling with them. Spooky.  My "Wow - cool" has been replaced by a funny feeling that maybe we don't need so many.

I could live with this one, I think, if I had a porch with chairs that needed cushions...and the Freedonia Seeds one....but the rest aren't  my cup of tea.  Maybe the faded pinkish one in the last row...no...don't like the words in it.  I realize after reading more on eBay that quilters use these in smaller pieces.  

"Little Dewdrops of Celestial Melody"

Such is the legend printed on the cover of Holden's Book of Birds.

I landed on that book in a search for birdseed.  The snowy weather and feeding the birds got me started down that rabbit hole.  Something tells me this blog's trail is going to look like Winnie the Pooh's as he circled around and around in the snow after the Woozle...except I hopefully will have some straight bits in between the circling around tangents.   Digressing, the biggest animal holes I ever saw were woodchuck holes. When I was 7, exploring the edges of a bare bare Pennsylvania cornfield,  I came across what looked to me like the Grand Canyon!  I guess a woodchuck's underground palace had collapsed.

Back to Holden... It is a good read, believe it or not.  I got sucked into it quickly.  He writes about what he really knows, filling us in on gossip about Reiche family, first importers of canaries to the US.

 While starting their business in Boston and New York,  the younger brother, Henry, thought he'd take a load of canaries out to wild California in about 1852. The older brother thought the kid was nuts - however, he went....and made a fortune which allowed the brothers to really expand their business!  

 Using this wonderful page to calculate the simple purchasing power of the amount mentioned in the book, the kid brought home $163,000 to his older brother Charles. Don't you love stories like that?!






Charles wrote a nice book, really a catalog,  to puff their place in the bird biz later on that year that you can download here from Google Books.

In it is this ad :-)



Birdseed....for pets, was a more iffy thing in the early 1800s and before.  I get the impression most pet birds were natives and people fed them what was locally thought to be their native seeds.  Weed seeds were often the byproduct of various sorts of threshing activities...maybe they were gathered and sold or used locally.  I also get the impression bird seed in some old ads is not referring to pet birds. Chambers (below) must have sold it since city people would not have access to gleanings.

I am having trouble finding birdseed history.  Do I want to find more or not?...maybe it is time for a coffee break.  Here is one of my favorite paintings.  My Gram gave me a cage like that but someone (a Philadelphia landlord, I think) stole it.  William Merritt Chase is the New England artist. This painting done in 1886.

Get them while you can...seed packet postal stamps are still available!

I never saw these stamps when they came out last April...but they are still available online from the USPS store. $9.20 I think they are.
Check out this article at the USPS site...VINTAGE SEED ART: AN INTERVIEW WITH DR. IRWIN RICHMAN
"Dr. Irwin Richman wrote the book—literally—on the art of vintage seed packets and catalogs. Seed Art: The Package Made Me Buy It offers an intriguing glimpse at the history of the art that so entices buyers to dream of ideal gardens. Dr. Richman begins his book with a telling anecdote: “The story is told of a young woman who answered a newspaper advertisement for a commercial artist placed by a prominent seed company. During her interview she was asked about her major qualification for the job. ‘Well,’ she answered, ‘I used to illustrate children’s fairy tales.’ We hope the applicant got the job; she was obviously qualified.”"

Any reminder of spring and the promise of flowers to come is welcome tonight. A minor nor'easter is expected to roar on through in the dark and be gone before late morning. I am sitting here feeling the living room get colder and colder as the temperature drops outside and the wind picks up.   We have 4 more windows to replace in this house.  All four are in the living room!  Big old windows from 1945, one is replaced, 3 are covered with that shrink plastic and the one by my chair is just its plain old leaky Moretited self.  If I covered it I wouldn't clearly see the birds at the feeder!  The other good window is full of feeders as well...the squirrel proof feeder is there as the big rhodie lets the squirrels launch themselves onto any normal feeder.

I found a new picture archive tonight you can poke around in.  The good old USDA assembled it.

PS Next morning-   The storm was 1/2 of what was predicted. But the birds are very active this morning on the birdseed.  I have my camera here now to snap a pic and there isn't a bird near the windows!!! Before, every perch was taken. Last night when I was writing I took a picture of the porch.  That is the bird seed can.  When raccoon population peaks in our area I have to put weights on the top to keep out midnight snackers.  Rabies wiped them out a few years ago  so I rarely see one now.  The pink light is from a candy cane holiday display plugged into where the porch light should be. (Eeek!  My border spade is still out there!!)