The shape of tins to come
Most of us have a few old metal boxes around the house, but some collections really take the biscuit
DRIVEN by the necessity to be both attractive and novel to make their products appeal over those of their competitors, manufacturers and retailers of such commodities as tea, spices, chocolate, biscuits, cigarettes, even medicine and much more created a mind-boggling array of lithographed tin boxes.
They can be found shaped like everything from miniature aeroplanes, ocean liners, motor cars, trains, to sailing ships, musical instruments, and even garden rollers and lawnmowers.
The invention of a method of keeping foods fresh is credited to a French “confiseur”, Nicholas Appert, who answered Napoleon’s call – and 12,000 francs reward – for an effective way to prevent his troops from perishing from the lack of vitamins.
Appert used glass and corks to avoid food rotting, but it was the Englishman, Peter Durand, who, in 1810, obtained royal permission to use metal to store food and eventually led the way to decorative tin packaging.
The first tins manufactured to hold biscuits followed the English 18th century tradition of manufacturing tinplate steel household wares, centred in Wales and Gloucestershire Decorated by hand in paint or lacquer, it became known as “Pontypool” or “Japanned” ware and was both popular and attractive.
Mass-produced tins for food containers appeared during the Industrial Revolution, but it was some time before gaily decorated, colourful novelty tins became the norm.
By about 1850, a lengthy process of direct printing using the lithographic process, produced dull tins decorated in a single colour.
The breakthrough came in 1861 when Benjamin George patented a method of transfer printing.
The earliest known British tin to use this method was Huntley & Palmers’ aptly named Ben George Tin, the design for which had been created by Owen Jones, a graphic artist who designed labels for the specialist printer Thomas de la Rue.
The process permitted the use of multi-colours for the first time and relied on the application of wet transfers to the sheet tin, which remained when the paper carrying them had dried and was removed.
The manufacturer Huntley, Bourne and Stevens (the Huntley was Joseph, whose ironmongers was situated conveniently across the road from his
YVETTE DARDENNE is, to coin a phrase, “une dame de fer blanc” – a tin lady, and she’s proud to prove it. Or to put it another way, the Belgian lady we met recently is a “buxidaferrophile” – a collector of Victorian and Edwardian tin boxes.
We were introduced to her by Maxime Weemans, our Belgium Tourism guide on a long-weekend exploration of antiques fairs he had arranged for us. He thought the diversion to her idyllic home in Grand-Hallet in Hannit, 30 miles outside Brussels, might offer some light relief. He was right.
Maxime had warned us Yvette owned a lot of tin boxes and a story for each one. Nothing could prepare us for what we found, it was truly was jaw-dropping.
Crammed inside the house, once the ruins of a 13th-century home of a miller, which has been converted into a villa, the now decommissioned watermill next door and several outbuildings were 60,000 of the things, everyone listed and numbered. And yes, she had as many stories. As fellow collectors, we were transfixed.
Yvette started collecting by chance. On a visit to a relative’s home, she was given a tin chocolate box full of old family photographs.
The lid of the tin was illustrated with a portrait of Queen Astrid as a child, a queen of hearts and much loved by the Belgians, who died tragically young aged 29.
She remembered the tin from her own childhood and subsequently saw and purchased the same box time and time again (one sits somewhere in every room), while some time later, she was offered a collection of 164 by a collector whose wife wanted them gone.
The urge to find more became a passion and the collection grew at an extraordinary rate. In 1992, she entered the Guinness Book of Records with 16,452 after just four years.
In 1997, she received
brother, Thomas’s bakery) then manufactured the transfer-decorated tins to Huntley & Palmers’ specification.
What lifted the lid on decorated biscuit tins, though, was the introduction of offset lithography to their manufacture.
It appears this process originated in France, but it was patented in Britain in 1875 by Robert Barclay, who used offset composition rubber rollers onto which the design had another Guinness certificate for 28,830.
Thankfully, her own husband was more forgiving than the other spouse. “He was not fond of travel and he encouraged me to collect and it became my been applied from the original on the litho stone.
The process was sold to Bryant and May in 1877 and licensed to Huntley, Bourne and Stevens, who were, until the patent expired in 1899, the only company legally allowed to use the process.
The big plus that offset litho printing allowed was the introduction of a huge variety of shaped tins to be decorated.
The majority were assembled by
A Rowntree’s chocolates tin sent to “all
York men who are serving their King and Country” by the Lord Mayor of York and the Sheriff, Oscar P. Rowntree at Christmas, 1914
passion,” Yvette explained as Maxime translated her French.
“It brought me so much happiness. Without travelling, I have been in touch with the whole world. Now it’s a lot of work, taking care of the collection, the buildings and the farm, but I will never give it up.”
And the collection continues to grow from the present 60,000, new pieces coming from flea markets, auctions and gifts from generous donors, amazingly from as far away as South America.
Born in 1938, Yvette married her husband, Joseph, in 1956, travelling with him to Rwanda in the Belgian Congo, where he taught.
Sweets and chocolate tins, from all over Europe
English
& Scottish
Joint
Co-operative
Wholesale Society novelty tea tin inscribed “Filling the Nation’s Teapot”
hand, with some comprising more than 30 different pieces.
Law’s Grovers’ Manual of 1896 listed more than 360 different types of decorative tins, with Huntley & Palmers being the leader in their design, although the competition was never far behind.
Macfarlane, Lang and Co.; Crawford & Sons; Peek, Frean & Co and Jacobs; the Co-operative Wholesale Society and Carr’s, the tins increasing in rarity, the smaller the
She studied Sciences at the Catholic University of Louvain in Léopoldville, now Kinshasa, before returning to the Walloon city of Hannut in 1963.
The couple were married for 56 years.
Now the home they restored and enlarged is a museum, visited only by those who know it exists, from as far away as the Americas.
Plan in advance if you want to visit La Musée de la Boite en Fer. Individuals or groups are welcome year-round, but by appointment only.
Entry is a modest €6 with a guided tour, which lasts from 90 minutes to 2 hours 30 minutes, depending on your stamina. Contact details are on the Belgium Tourism website.
size of the biscuit maker’s company.
Prices for today’s collectors are as diverse as the tins they are all chasing. Cheapest are probably those intended for cigarettes, with the proverbial tenner being enough to acquire most but the rare early examples.
Small tins with simple decoration and lift-off lids are in the £10-15 range, while the more elaborate are priced under £50, while the big money changes hands for rarities.