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 World’s Most Usable Antique

QUESTION: I purchased an old trunk a while ago. It seems as if someone tried to “antique” it back in the 1960s, which makes it look ugly. I’ve seen trunks restored before and wondered if you can tell me something about this trunk and if it can be restored?

ANSWER: Old steamer trunks are one of the most useful of all antiques. They can still be used for storage after given a little TLC. This makes them more valuable because a person who isn’t necessarily an antique collector will buy one to use rather than a plastic bin.

Although trunks, themselves, date back to medieval times, it’s only the ones made in the 19th and early 20th centuries that people buy to reuse for storage. Trunks gained popularity with the coming of the railroads. And while people used them when traveling by stagecoach, they were more likely to use a “carpet” bag, one made of durable carpet material that could be carried by the owner.

People along the coasts of the United States traveled from one point on the coast to another by coastal steamer or, within the interior of the country, by steamboat. Larger trunks could be taken along because these vessels had porters to carry the heavy trunks onboard and off, thus the name “steamer” trunk.

From the later half of the 19th century to the first couple of decades of the 20th, trunks were flat on top. These usually had a smooth metal or canvas covering, and later an embossed metal cover. They also had wooden slats or metal banding to strengthen them, as well as to add a decorative touch. More elaborate trunks, especially those made by Frenchman Louis Vuitton, had rounded tops.

A typical 100 to 130-year-old antique trunk has a stale and musty odor from more than a century of collecting dust, mold, and mildew. Along with the deterioration of the outside canvas, leather and the inside paper lining, the glue, itself, will have decomposed over time. The original tray insert, made from a thin wood fiber or a compressed sawdust type of material, may have a deteriorated paper covering. Dry rot and mold can also be present. The purpose of the restoration process is to stop further deterioration and to remove the collection of dust, mildew, and mold which is causing the musty odor.

A basic restoration consists of first removing all canvas and paper coverings and leather straps and handles. Next the exposed wood must be washed in a special non-toxic solution to kill and remove dust, mold and mildew, then lightly sanded. Any broken hardware must be removed and replaced, as well as all of the leather. It’s important to make all repairs using the same types of tools, nails, tacks, and craftsmanship used when the trunk was first made. The next step is to restore and seal the wood using special non-toxic restorative oils and varnishes in a slow, repetitive manner to bring out the patina that only 100-year-old wood can achieve. The last step is to bring the hardware, fixtures, and any sheathing back to its original color. This includes removing any paint that may have been applied. The hardware, itself, can be painted a flat black if the original finish cannot be restored.

It’s important to use plastic gloves, eye protection, and a construction-grade face mask when removing the dust and old finishes. While there are lots of good non-toxic cleaners on the market today, some toxic ones may have to be used if the finish on the trunk is in bad condition.

Never use an old trunk without properly cleaning it both inside and outside. It’s especially important to scrub the inside and remove and old paper lining that can’t be saved. In fact, unless the paper lining in historically important to the trunk, it should be removed entirely, as should the glue holding it in place. Back in the 19th century, trunk makers used horse glue to attach the paper to the inside and canvas to the outside.. The trunk can then be lined with fabric or vinyl wallpaper.

Many people romanticize about old trunks—where they’ve been and who they belonged to.

Water, Water Everywhere

QUESTION: I discovered this unique water bottle at a local antiques co-op. While most antique water decanters are solid cut or pressed glass, this one comes apart into two pieces. A metal ring, with a rubber gasket to make the seal tight, screws onto the base. The mark on the bottom edge of the top section reads: Perfection Bottle Co., Wilkes-Barre, PA Pat March 30-97. What can you tell me about this type of water bottle?

ANSWER: You, indeed, have found a unique water bottle. Though a revolutionary idea, this type of water bottle appeared in stores for only a few years.

From the mid-19th century to the early 20th century, water bottles were standard items in many American Victorian households. They appeared on dinner tables either alone or with matching glasses and in bedrooms often with a glass that set upside down over the top of the bottle. They also could be found on the nightstands in hotel rooms and steamship cabins, and on tables in railroad lounge cars.

At first, manufacturers made them of elegant cut glass, but that was too expensive for the average person. Some turned to using pressed glass in a variety of patterns which lowered their cost.

However, cleaning these crystal beauties posed a serious problem with hygiene. The bottle’s narrow neck made it hard to get a brush down into it, making it almost impossible to clean the inside surface of the bottle’s bulbous interior. But that changed in 1896 when William B. Fenn came up with the idea of a separating water bottle—one with pieces that could unscrew for easy cleaning. On March 30 of the following year, he applied for and received a patent for it.

Fenn’s separating water bottle had an ingenious design. He made the neck and base two separate pieces, with the bottom edge of the neck fitting inside the top rim of the base. A rubber gasket formed a waterproof seal between the two parts and a metal ring screwed over the joint to lock the pieces in place.

Even though Fenn used glass for his original design, he stipulated in his patent that any material, including ceramics and porcelain, could be used for the bottle, itself, and any metal could be used for the joining ring as long it wouldn’t corrode.

It took nearly three years for Fenn's" bottle to be available to the public.,Priced at $4.50 each when they first came on the market in 1900, they were well beyond the means of the average person. Realizing he had to do something to increase sales, Fenn redesigned the pattern on the bottle so that it could be pressed instead of cut. Suddenly, the price per bottle dropped to 50 cents per bottle, or 34 cents each for a dozen, making the Fenn water bottle affordable for everyone.

Fenn’s invention was so successful that he decided to expand production. By October,1902, consumers could purchase a decanter and stopper in four sizes—half pint, and one, two and three-pint versions. And during 1903; He expanded the line further to include other glass containers, such as   syrup pitchers and cruets, as well as bitters, cologne, and barber bottles, each with a different pattern.

The separating water bottle came in three models—the Royal, with a delicate design imitating cut crystal, the Imperial, also sold in two and three-pint capacities but without a pattern, the Optic, with a succession of single, convex protruding, vertical panels with rounded tops and bottoms, and the Colonial, featuring nine rounded panels with flat bottoms around the base. Each came in two and three-pint sizes, except the Colonial which also came in a half-gallon size.

In 1903, the Perfection Water Bottle Co. and the Sterling Glass Co. combined to create the Perfection Glass.Co. of Washington, Pennsylvania, with William Fenn as one of the initial investors. But the new company was only to last until 1907 when it closed its doors for lack of sales.