Cries of “Ooh”, “Aah” and “I remember my grandmother with that” could be heard from members of our History of Design group when they visited London’s Museum of Brands in September. They found themselves on a nostalgic journey not only through the memories of their childhood, but more than 150 years of social change, culture and lifestyle. In other words, history seen from objects that generations of families, including their own, threw away.
The museum’s exhibition of thousands of common, branded household products, luxury goods and fashion begins in the Victorian era. The various displays show how their designs evolved over time, with the main impact coming through the use of electricity, the invention of radio, the progress of publishing and advertising, the demands of the First and Second World Wars plus the introduction of television and technology.
Long-forgotten product names prompted members to swap stories about their childhood while the number of brands that had stayed the course and were still on the market today was a surprise.
How many brands and products you can recall and what memories they conjure up for you?
Look at how we managed to extract morale-lifting humour from the threat of Hitler and the Nazis in the Second World War; what must be one of the earliest typewriters; an April 1917 edition of the Boys’ Own paper, costing 7d (old penny); and one of the early His Master’s Voice gramophones, complete with a model of Nipper, the dog, in the famous pose with his ear cocked into the horn.
Sue White
Photographs courtesy of Sue White.