Latest acquisitions (Dec 2021)

Latest Acquisitions
Written By Richard A Roberts.

Brochure for Davies and Metcalfe, Romiley.

Davies and Metcalfe are railway equipment and locomotive manufacturers and had factory in Romiley, which has now been demolished. The company is now part of Sabwabco Davies & Metcalfe Ltd and is still based locally - in Sutton, Macclesfield. Read about their corporate history here.

The brochure is undated however it features articles and advertising for:

4-6-0 locomotive King George V, built 1927
4-6-0 locomotive 6100 Royal Scot, built in 1927
2-8-2 locomotive 2003 Lord President, built 1936
Coronation locomotive 6220, built 1937
Coronation locomotive 4490, entered service 1937

Hobbies Magazine.

The Hobbies series is a magazine was established in 1895 that catered for the home hobbyist, providing ideas and instruction for making all sorts of things in your home or garden shed.

We now have the following editions in our archive:

1932 Hobbies #1894
1932 Hobbies and Practical Wireless #1895-1926
1932 Hobbies and Wireless Supplement #1927-1971
1933 Hobbies - #1972-1980
1933 Hobbies Weekly - #1981-3648; New series #1-9
1966 Hobbies Magazine -New series #10-25

Alongside the weekly magazine they also published a Hobbies Annual aimed at the Christmas present market, and the Hobbies Handbook which was a catalogue of tools and plans for things to make.

Railway Magazine.

One of our volunteers, Dickie Grenfell, turned up the other day with a box of these lovely railway magazines. The box contained about one hundred copies from the 1930s to the 1950s. The magazine itself was founded in 1897 and is still going strong. These will fill a lot of gaps in our collection.

The Trader Handbook – Diary and Garage Reference Book.

I recently attended the auction of the late Michael Worthington-Williams Collection. Michael was one of the top motoring writers from the 1950s onwards and Michael’s regular column on Automobilia in the Automobile magazine was one I personally looked forward to reading each month.

The copy illustrated is one example from the lot of twenty-eight I bought dating from 1904 to 1940. Published annually these handbooks contained sections on useful information for the garage trade with information on taxation, associations, motoring law, garage planning and layout, technical data and the like. In addition, there is a weekly diary and a directory of products and suppliers. Of course, the special interest for the archive is the large number of advertisements dispersed throughout the publication.

Open evening.

We will have these items, and many more on view at our open evening on Monday 13th December 2021 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm.

If you have spotted anything from previous issues of Latest Acquisitions please do let us know. We are more than happy to pull items from the archive for you to view.

Richard A Roberts.

Richard is a mechanical engineer and former information technology project manager who first became interested in advertising of all kinds in the early 2000s.

His interest turned to a passion that has led to his founding of the Richard Roberts Archive – an important collection of magazines and their advertisements from the early years of the nineteenth century to the present day. The archive has been converted from Richard’s private collection to a publicly accessible research centre.

He is a director of the Society of Automotive Historians in Britain and is its archive consultant. He has owned several Rolls-Royce Silver Shadows and a rare 1956 James Young Silver Cloud saloon.

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Cafes and Restaurants - Hampshire and Isle of Wight Illustrated, 1905.
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The Changing Face of Advertising Artwork (Part Three)