Symbols of Worldliness

 

QUESTION: Back in the late 1960s, I made a road trip across the United States, stopping at numerous national parks and monuments. Early on, I noticed that on the desk in the visitor centers was a display of travel stickers for various national parks. So I decided to purchase one for each park and monument I visited, as well as other places like cities and museums. By the time my trip was over I had amassed quite a collection. Are these travel stickers collectible? 

ANSWER: While you collected travel stickers, their original use was to affix to luggage as a way of telling the world where a traveler had been. During the Golden Age of Travel during the second half of the 19th century, sticker labels like these appeared on  steamer trunks. Colorful mementos of foreign locales, luggage labels can take us back to a time of grand hotels, luxury trains, and elegant ships.

Originally, they were a way of identifying a guest’s luggage when they arrived at one of those posh resorts. Forerunners of baggage tags, travel labels became the hallmark of a world traveler—a symbol of worldliness.

Often designed in the artistic style of the time, many of luggage labels are exquisite examples of the Art Nouveau and Art Deco styles. However, even the best artists didn’t take such work too seriously. Prominent poster and graphic artists who affixed their name to larger works frequently left their luggage label commissions unsigned, but those which had been signed by the artist are the most valuable. 

By the mid-19th century, the Industrial Revolution's creation of wealth and more reliable modes of transportation, such as steamships, railroads, and passenger planes inaugurated an explosion in travel. A growing middle class, with access to more leisure time, joined businessmen, diplomats, explorers, and the rich on their travels to locales around the globe.

The earliest examples of hotel luggage labels date to the 1860s when printers produced them in small batches. But production really took off by the end of the 19th century. By that time, many more people were traveling, making the need to identify the hotel that would serve as the final destination for luggage coming off ships and trains a necessity.

To encourage this increased traffic, hotels and transportation companies turned to advertising. Newspaper and magazine ads increased in size and number. Many companies commissioned posters and luggage labels by noted graphic artists. Steamship companies, railroads, airlines, and bellhops at hotels around the world affixed labels to all sorts of luggage from small cases to trunks, proclaiming to all that the luggage’s owner was an adventurer at a time when travel was still not that fast, easy, or inexpensive. In those days, suitcases were rigid, making it easy for bellboys or concierges to stick their labels on.

Besides hotels, other businesses and organizations also employed luggage labels to promote themselves. Airlines like Pan Am began using them as soon as air travel became accessible to travelers around the 1920s. Even restaurants and national parks used them. 

Many of these labels simulated small travel posters but weren’t meant to be permanently preserved. Affixed with gum, it was extremely difficult to remove labels without damaging them, so some travelers would ask for an extra label or two to be tucked into their wallet or journal as a memento of their trip, and it is these specimens that most often turn up in the collectibles markets today. In fact, a piece of antique or vintage luggage covered with labels is often worth more than a comparable piece without.

Regarded by many as miniature works of art, most early labels were actually lithographed, and many bear the printer's imprint. Some travel companies commissioned important illustrators to produce their luggage labels. Dan Sweeney for instance was an American illustrator who contributed illustrations for books, posters, magazines, and luggage labels for the Hong Kong & Shanghai Hotel Group. Italian graphic designer Mario Borgoni was also renowned for his Art Nouveau labels and posters.

Nostalgia is one reason collectors love luggage labels. But even more so because they’re small, easy to store and display, and relatively inexpensive. Collectors have such a variety of designs to choose from that most focus on a particular style like Art Nouveau or Art Deco; a country or transportation company, hotels, a printer like Richter & Company, or a designer like Mario Borgoni. Original luggage labels can be found at flea markets and antique shows, and of course, online. 

The majority of labels sell for under $25, and depending on their rarity, condition, style, and the renown of the illustrator or the hotel or airline, can sell for several hundred. But with such reasonable prices, it pays to be aware of reproductions. A good jeweler's loupe will help distinguish the solid colors of an original lithographed label from the dots of a four-color-process reproduction or the lines of a scanned image. 

Travel stickers slowly started to lose their popularity by the 1960s as soft suitcases began to replace hard luggage, making it harder to stick labels on them.

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The Thrill of the Hunt

QUESTION: I’ve been buying most of my antiques at flea markets and in shops. I’d like to go to antique shows, but I’m afraid the prices will be too high. Can you give me some advice?

ANSWER: Though there are all sorts of antique shows out there, I divide them generally into three levels–the friendly firehouse or school show, the more elegant hotel show, and the high-end show.

You’ll find the first of these, the friendly firehouse or school show, held in a local fire company hall or the all-purpose room of an elementary school once or twice a year. Here, you’ll find lots of affordable antiques and collectibles. Prices range from as low as a few dollars up to perhaps three figures. Dealers, mostly from the surrounding region, tend to sell only at shows or out of their homes.

The more elegant hotel show comes around usually once a year and features finer items. Tables often display a myriad of small objects–Japanese Imari porcelains, Wedgewood, fine English majolica, and Staffordshire ware, along with small pieces of furniture, trunks, stained glass lamps, and so on. Dealers tend to come from a wider area, including surrounding states while prices range from two to four digits, with finer items selling for several thousand dollars.

High-end shows are extravagant affairs, both in goods and prices, and feature dealers from all over the country. For some patrons of these shows, nothing says they’ve made it better than bragging about how much they’ve spent on an antique, whether it be a piece of fine 18th-century furniture or a diamond necklace that once belonged to a princess. Just before the recession, patrons at these shows thought nothing of whipping out their checkbooks and writing checks for $30,000 to $40,000 for an Empire sofa or as much as a quarter million for an 18th-century Philadelphia secretary in the Chippendale style.

Many of these shows are vetted, which means the promoters guarantee everything sold there as authentic. Where’s the fun in that? Part of the thrill of the hunt is being able to tell for yourself if a piece is real or not by the knowledge you’ve amassed about it beforehand, especially when the dealer doesn’t have a clue.

And while you can attend high-end shows by paying the heft admission price–going to a good cause, of course–you’ll find the reception from other showgoers rather off-putting. Let’s face it. They have no idea from your worn jeans and casual top that you just inherited a cool million from daddy. The dealers, on the other hand, couldn’t be nicer. After all, they’ll gladly take money from anyone.

Give me the dealers at my neighborhood flea market and firehouse antique show any day. While things may not cost as much at these venues, the dealers love to bargain. And, for me, that’s part of the thrill of the hunt.