This is not the same format as Opie's wonderful large-size scrapbooks but a smaller book covering two hundred years of commercial art, basically packaging and booklet covers. It was probably the mid-eighteenth century when color printing got into its stride and companies started to print eye-catching graphics. For example, pages fifty-four and five have a selection of French fabric and thread labels using color for illustrations, borders and type.
There are pages and pages of basically throw-away printed matter, which Mr Opie wisely collected: matchbox labels, cigarette packets, luggage labels, ice-lolly wrappers, can labels, tobacco wrappers and cigar labels, milk bottle tops (from the US 1930-1940s) sheet music covers, Russian drink labels, the list goes on and on. The contents run up to the turn of the century, though there is a spread of drink containers from 2023.
The book is all color (plus a ribbon bookmark) and I'm guessing that a lot of the material is in one of the Opie scrapbooks, which cover the decades from Victorian times up to the 1970s (surely time now 80s and 90s?) but the interesting thing is seeing so much printed matter from decades ago.
US
UK
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