These are a few of my Favourite Things

100 objects and images and the stories behind them

Happy New Year! I sincerely hope it is kind to you all. Now that the Christmas decorations are packed away for another year, I am back to being inspired by the various “objets’ around my home and thought it was time to write to you about some of them

They say every picture tells a story. I am inclined to think that every object also tells a story – they certainly do in my home and garden. I’ve been collecting ‘stuff’ for years – from markets, fairs, charity and junk shops and skips. Each one of these items triggers a memory - where I was and what was happening when I bought it, the friend who gave it to me, the person who made it etc. Then there are the interesting things I see and photograph when I’m out and about – a shop sign I like, a poster, an interesting building, a view, a plant, a flower. When I look back at these images, they too trigger memories. All of this together, makes up a life well lived. This series is about those objects, images and their stories. 

#06 Decorative tins from France

I’ve always loved old tins and I have many of them on display around my home. They are of another time, pre-plastic, when tins proliferated as a way of selling and storing foodstuffs and a variety of other household items. Among my antique tins are those for matches, tobacco, starch, oxo cubes, salt, sugar, cocktail biscuits and even a mending kit for waterproofs.

There is something very pleasing about the action of clicking open the lid of a tin box as opposed to cutting open, often unrecylable, plastic packaging. Although the original contents of my old tins are long gone, in some, the faint aroma of what they once contained remains. Like all old things, there is the thought about how many pairs of hands they have passed through in the years since they were new and before coming into my possession. I wonder about where they were originally acquired and by whom and their journey before they reached me. Their main attraction is the design and the patina they have acquired over the years: the different typefaces and images, the colours and the composition of all these are often indicative of what period they originate from.

The first biscuit tin produced in Britain was made by Huntley and Palmers in the mid 1800s and as methods of production became more sophisticated, the designs became more and more inventive and intricate, and in some cases outlandish. The Victoria and Albert museum has a wonderful collection of over 800 biscuit tins that includes a lifeboat, a bed, a globe and even the coronation coach. All were produced between 1868 and 1939 and the collection was gifted to the museum by one Michael J. Franklin in 1983. In an introduction to the collection they say:

“The Licensed Grocer's Act of 1861 first allowed groceries to be individually packaged and sold. Around this time Britain also became a leading world supplier of tin plate, which was produced by coating sheets of steel in tin to prevent rusting. Tins offered a hygienic solution to keeping biscuits fresh and protected, while the surface of the tin – which could be bent into various novelty shapes and sizes – offered great creative potential for advertising and decoration”.

It is much harder to find interesting modern-day tins although I did buy one for my brother in recent years that mimicked a vintage radio. I rather wish now that I’d bought myself one at the same time - it was fun! The tins I have chosen to picture here are a couple of examples of contemporary designs that I find as lovely as many of the old ones in my possession.

They are both French, bought in airports before catching my flight home and both contained biscuits. I purchased them for two reasons, the main one being that I was Editor of British Country Living magazine at the time and it was customary, when any of us went on holiday, to bring back some local treat or delicacy for the team, usually sweets or biscuits. I also, of course, bought these tins because I liked the design and asked everyone if, when the contents had been consumed, I could keep them.

The first, at the top of the page, celebrates the Cote D’Azure and the design is, I imagine, a reproduction of an old travel poster. The style of image, the colours and the typefaces all suggest it dates from the 1920s or early ‘30s, the golden age of the poster, when illustration was commonly used before being replaced in the 1960s by photographic images. I love everything about it except the modern logo in the top left hand corner which, although it’s fairly faint, rather interferes with the charm of the picture.

The item sitting next to the tin, a calendar, is also French but this time it is vintage, probably from the 1950s judging by the design. I picked it up at a market years ago. It is, as you can see a “Souvenir de Nice” and depicts the curving coastline of the fashionable resort. The plastic domed cover is framed by a silvered, scalloped edge and the month and date can be changed by twiddling knobs on the back. It is typical of the sort of memento a tourist would have brought home from a visit to the chic French Riviera.

The image on the second tin (above) is very different, a modern montage made up of a series of motifs that give it the feel of a scrapbook. I just loved the pretty colours and design and found it rather charming.

Both these tins sit as part of a larger display of decorative things both new and old. I shall share more with you and the stories behind them in the months to come.

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