Collection by Louise Mothersdale

Tea Cards Brooke Bond Collection Issue 3 // March 2013 1

Art Director Brooke Bond

Editor Arthur Brooke

Writer Arthur Bond

Graphic Designer Louise Mothersdale

Web Designer Louise Mothersdale

Publisher Unilever

History 4

Famous People

Adventurers and Explorers

Features of the World

Coming Soon

contents 3

history

In 1869 Arthur Brooke opened his first shop with his £400 savings. Called ‘Brooke Bond & Company’ there was no ‘Mr Bond’: the name ‘seemed to him to sound well’. His shop opened at 29 Market Street, Manchester, England, selling tea, coffee and sugar only - for cash over the counter. His first cash book still exists, and shows that he made a profit in his first week by putting his own share back into the business. The story goes on, and we continue with how cards were introduced and how advertising and promoting of Brooke Bond built the company to where they are today.

With the ending of tea control in 1952, Brooke Bond in Britain entered a period of real challenge. In the preceding years, profits had been carefully husbanded so that at this moment the company was well balanced to take advantage of the situation. It was a question of who was awake and ready and who was still asleep on the day tea rationing ceased. The Brooke Bond sales team led by Vernon Blackwell and supported by all the firm’s reserves and manpower had in fact been ready and raring to go with all campaigns worked out for some considerable time. The moment coincided with the election of a new chairman John Brooke. With his deputy chairman, Thomas D Rutter, and the salesroom in the hands of two tried and experienced tea men, Leslie Gray and Cyril W Dudley; the company finances managed by Laurence Green and Conrad Warner; and the sales side under the direction of Vernon Blackwell assisted by Wilfred Payne and A D Dorrington, John Brooke had a staff that mingled tradition and imagination, innovation and reliability. In the next decade, the most striking developments were in the competitive fields of advertising and promotion. First a series of colour advertisements in magazines depicted tea cultivation and production and told ‘The Story of Tea’. For the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 it had been planned - as at previous

coronations - to produce appropriately decorated canisters of tea. At almost the last moment, metal shortages made this impossible. With customary Brooke Bond ingenuity, Vernon Blackwell inaugurated ‘coronation tea parties’. In exchange for thirty packet wrappers, the organisers of street tea parties throughout the country were given a contribution towards the cost of the festivities. (In 1969 there was no such shortage to prevent production of decorated canisters to commemorate the investiture of the Prince of Wales at Caernarvon.) Berkshire Printing produced a million Union jack paper hats, bearing the company name. It seemed that all the children in Britain were celebrating the new era. In 1954 another successful promotion was launched. Before the war, cigarette cards had been collected in their millions. They were small rectangles of coloured pasteboard inserted in cigarette packets. The tobacco manufacturers had not reintroduced the cards after the war. Now Brooke Bond inaugurated ‘picture cards’. Enquiries among leading printers produced no response. It seemed that British printers had lost the capacity or the wish to print such cards. So the job went to the Berkshire Printing Company who, starting from scratch, made a fine job of printing many millions of cards to the highest standards of colour work. Neville

Brooke and Phillips Engineering devised a mechanical method of inserting the cards in tea packets. The first series of picture cards, their subjects drawn from natural history, were produced with the assistance of the eminent naturalist and author Miss Frances Pitt and illustrated British birds. Further series followed, on such subjects as wild flowers, astronomy, fish, butterflies and African and Asian wild life. Later, transport, the motor car, and British costume were added. The Brooke Bond picture cards established themselves rapidly as collectors’ favourites and as educational aids, and by 1968 the annual distribution of the cards had topped 720 millions. Another major promotion was introduced in 1955. Following the success over many years of local schools competitions organized by Brooke Bond, a National Schools Competition of art and essay-writing was launched, with a judging panel of headmasters, and a first prize of a journey to the tea estates of East Africa, India or Ceylon. A most attractive series of advertisements illustrated in finely drawn pictures, the ‘little red vans’ round and about in the towns and cities of Britain, and also became collectors items. The pressure of space in the old Goulston Street headquarters had now become unendurable and in December

1956 the head, office and salesroom moved into a new block Watling House, Cannon Street. Thus Brooke Bond returned to the City of London. That year also, the company made a new agreement with Bushells Pty Ltd., the largest tea and coffee distributors in Australia and New Zealand, to supply bulk tea. Brooke Bond also provided substantial new capital for the Australian Company and obtained a twenty per cent interest in it. With the inauguration of independent television in Britain in September 1955, Brooke Bond became one of the early companies successfully to exploit the advertising possibilities of the new medium. The company had already achieved a high reputation for the quality of its advertising films, mainly documentaries based on the growing of tea. It was Bill Barter of Spottiswoods the advertising agents - whose chairman was R G Morris - who suggested that chimpanzees might be employed to make an amusing and unusual television commercial. The first advertisements appeared in 1956 at Christmastime. Chimps were associated with tea: over many years the ‘chimps’ tea party at London Zoo had been an unfailing attraction for children. The first two television commercials for Brooke Bond - ‘Stately Homes’ and the ‘Chimps Tea Party’ - were made by the Marquis troop of chimps trained for cabaret by Gene Detroy.

A further series followed using chimps recruited from Billy Smart’s circus. These commercials became tremendously popular, with voices provided by Peter Sellers, Bruce Forsyth and Bob Monkhouse. Soon the Brooke Bond chimps were in demand for public appearances. George Cansdale of the London Zoo enabled the company to discover the chimps owned and trained by Miss Molly Badham, and these began to make merchandising tours round the country, drawing huge crowds as they ‘helped’ to open supermarkets and to launch new stores. The Brooke Bond chimps certainly sold more tea. Their television commercials were carefully linked with point-of sale promotions in shops and stores. By 1957 the advertising budget was £680000 but this was more than offset by increased sales: the company could claim that one in every four families in Britain was drinking Brooke Bond tea. The chimps appeared live at Saturday morning film shows staged by the company’s own projection units, which, during weekdays and evenings, showed documentaries to schools and women’s and other institutes all over Britain.

famous people Set consists of: Lord Shaftsbury Sir Edwin Landseer Alfred Lord Tennyson Charles Robert Darwin William Ewart Gladstone Benjamin Disraeli Charles Dickens David Livingstone Lord Lister William Booth Lewis Carroll General Charles George Gordon Sir William Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan Thomas John Barnado W.G. Grace Robert Louis Stevenson Cecil Rhodes George Bernard Shaw James Keir Hardie Lord Baden-Powell Sir Edward Elgar Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst David Lloyd George Edith Cavell Herbert George Wells

Robert Falcon Scott Sir Harry Lauder Ralph Vaughan-Williams Sir Winston Churchill Lord Nuffield Augustus John Sir Thomas Beecham Sir Alexander Fleming Baron Birkett of Ulverston Viscount Montgomery of Alamein John Logie Baird TE Lawrence aka Lawrence of Arabia Charles Spencer Chaplin Admiral of the Fleet The Earl Mountbattern Sir Francis Chister Amy Johnson Sir Laurence Olivier Sir Frank Whittle Dame Alicia Markova Kathleen Ferrier Benjamin Britten Sir Stanley Matthews Sir Alfred Ramsey Pat Smythe & Roger Gilbert Bannister

adventurers & explorers Set consists of: John de Plano Carpini c. 1180-1252 Marco Polo 1254-1324 Leif Ericsson Tenth Century A.D. Ibn Batuta 1304-1368 Francis Xavier 1506-1552 Christopher Columbus 1451-1506 Vasco da Gama c. 1460-1524 Ferdinand Magellan 1480-1521 Hernan Cortes 1485-1547 Francisco Pizarro c. 1474-1541 Francisco de Orellana c. 1511-1546 Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca1490-1557 Sir Francis Drake c. 1543-1596 John Davis c. 1550-1605 Jacques Cartier 1491-1557 Rene Robert Cavalier 1643-1687 Abel Janszoon Tasman 1603-1659 William Dampier 1652-1715 James Cook 1728-1779 Mungo Park 1771-1806 Rene Caillie 1799-1838 Sir Alexander Mackenzie 1764-1820 Meriwether Lewis 1774-1809 William Clark 1770-1838 Richard Burton 1821-1890 John Hanning Speke 1827-1864

David Livingstone 1813-1873 Sir Henry Morton Stanley 1841-1904 John McDouall Stuart 1815-1866 Alexander von Humboldt 1769-1859 Henry Walter Bates 1825-1892 Baron Nils Adolf Nordenskiold 18321901 Fridtjof Nansen 1860-1930 Robert Edwin Peary 1856-1920 Roald Amundsen 1872-1928 Robert Falcon Scott 1863-1912 Ernest Henry Shackleton 1874-1922 Sir John William Alcock 1892-1919 Sir Arthur Whitten Brown 1886-1948 Charles Lindbergh 1902 Amy Johnson 1903-1941 Thor Heyerdahl 1914 Alain Bombard 1924Sir Edmund Percival Hilary 1919 Norgay Tenzing 1914Joshua Slocum 1844-c.1910 Sir Francis Chichester 1901-1972 Wilfrid Patrick Thesiger 1910 Walter William Herbert 1934 Piccard 1884-1962 Jacques Cousteau 1910

Here’s an interesting fact, Red Rose “borrowed” a series or two from England. Brooke Bond had been putting tea cards in the tea long before Red Rose considered it. I believe it was the success of the British premium promotion that encouraged it be tried in the Americas. There were many successful British series to choose from but a lot were geared solely toward the British interest. Trees in Britain, British Butterflies, British Costume and the like would have a limited interest in the Americas. Red Rose did adapt some of the concepts though. Tropical Birds was a British set that Red Rose did as well. Not a picture is alike although a lot of the names of the birds are duplicated It kinda makes sense, doesn’t it. There are only so many different tropical birds. Wildlife in Danger is the same. Not a matching picture. There are a couple of near exact matches. One is the African Animals series. Both British and Red Rose match on almost all paintings and the texts are similar. Another near match is the Transport(ation) Through the Ages series. That is an interesting one to dive into. Brooke Bond sold Red Rose a long time ago (‘85 for Canada and ‘90 for the US) but they issued cards in England up until 1999. In South Africa, three sets were issued. Some count a variation in the first series as a second series making the total four.

world features Set consists of: Thomson Falls - Kenya Abu Simbel - Egypt Table Mountian - South Africa The Saudi Arabian Desert The Giza Pyramids - Egypt Ol Doinyo Lengai - Tanzania Kilimanjaro - Tanzania Mount Rushmore - Dakota Mesa Verde Ruins - Colorado The Niagra Falls Iguassu Falls - Argentina/Brazil Border Garden of the Gods - Arizona Looking Glass Rock - Utah Devils Tower - Wyoming The Grand Canyon - Colorado Bryce Canyon - Utah Dead Horse Point - Utah Norris Geyser - Wyoming Yellowstone Hot Springs - Wyoming Crater Lake - Oregon Luray Caverns - Virginia The Pyramid of Kukulcan - Mexico The Andes Mountains - South America The Taj Mahal - India Cave of the Winds - Sarawak

Mount Everest - Nepal Mount Fujiyama - Japan Angkor - Kampuchea The Great Wall of China Seven Sisters - Sussex Forth Suspension Bridge - Scotland Giants Causeway - Northern Ireland Fingals Cave - Isle of Staffa. Scotland Stonehenge - Wiltshire Parthenon - Greece The River Rhine The Rhine Waterfalls - Switzerland Mont Blanc - French/Italian Border The Matterhorn - Switzerland The Dolomites - Italy Venice - The Sinking City The Leaning Tower of Pisa - Italy Durdle Dor - Dorset Logan Stone - Dartmoor Ofaerufoss Eldgja - Iceland An Old Iceberg - Greenland Iceland Floating Offshore - Greenland Antartic Glacier Ayers Rock - Australia & Rotorua Pohutu Geyser - New Zealand.Cecil Rhodes

About the set Brooke Bond of England was the parent company of Red Rose for all 17 of the card series. This parent company also issued tea cards in its tea in Ireland, South Africa, Rhodesia and of course, England. In England, fifty-six different sets (along with many variations) were issued. All of the wonderful, interesting things that can be collected in Red Rose have counterparts in the British series. There are of course, the cards and their variations. Brooke Bond was Red Roseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s parent company back when the tea cards were issued. Brooke Bond sold tea and issued cards in Great Britain, Ireland, Canada, the US, South Africa and Rhodesia. The only two Red Rose / Brooke Bond holdings were in Canada and the US. Other Brooke Bond companies are listed here as well as many other non Brooke Bond card issuers. Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not forget the dairy issues, sweets, cereal and cigarette cards too. Meat? Yes, meat! Single Cards Measure 69mm x 37mm coloured numbered series of 50 issued in 1984, backs printed in green. Double Cards Measure 69mm x 74mm coloured numbered series of 25 issued in 1994, 2 pictures per card numbered 1-5, 2-6, 3-7, 4-8, 9-13, 10-14, 11-15, 12-16, 17-21, 18-22, 19-23, 20-24, 25-50, 26-30, 27-31, 28-32, 2933, 34-38, 35-39, 36-40, 37-41, 42-46, 43-47, 44-48 & 45-49. The card backs are printed in green.

Small Wonders Featuring: Cactus, Stinging Nettle, Sundew, Fern Frond, Magnolia Leaf, Flower, Beech Leaf, Horse Chestnut, Fern, Dandelion Seeds, Honeybee, Butterfly, Earthworm, Spider, Moth, Daddy Long Legs, Honeycomb, Tree Hopper, Butterfly, The Caterpillar, Cuckoo Spit, Horsefly, Silkworm, Wasp, Aphids, Starfish, Mussels, Frog Spawn, Water Flea, Fish Scales, Fox, Hedgehog, Chameleon, Human Skin, Toad, Soap Bubbles, Snow Flake, Domestic Sugar, Mould & Wheat.

The History of the Motor Car Featuring: 1770 Cugnotâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 3-Wheel Steam Tractor, 1885 Benz 3-Wheeler 1.7 Litres, 1895 Panhard Et Levassor 4HP 1.3 Litres, 1898 Renault 1.5 HP 240 CC, 1899 La Jamais Contente Electric Car, 1901 Mercedes 35 HP 6 Litres, 1902 Napier 35 HP Gordon Bennett Racing Car 6.4 Litres, 1903 Lanchester 12 HP 4 Litres, 1903 Oldsmobile 5 HP Curved Dash 1.5 Litres, 1907 Rolls-Royce 40/50 HP Silver Ghost 7/7.4 Litres, 1908 Ford Model T.2.9 Litres, 1911 Fiat S.74.

History of Aviation Featuring: Montgolfier Baloon, Pilcher Hang-glider, Lebaudy Airship, Wright Flyer, Cornu Helicopter, Maurice Farman Biplane, Bleriot Monoplane, Sikorsky Bolshoi Airliner, Avro 504, Fokker D.VII, Handley Page 0/400, Junkers F-13, Cierva Autogiro, de Havilland Moth, Hawker Hart, Kronfeldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Wien Sailplane, Handley Page HP.42, Supermarine S.6B, Douglas DC-3, Hindenburg Airship, Short Empire Flying Boat, Boeing Stratoliner, Heinkel 178, Gloster-Whittle E.28/39, de Havilland Mosquito, Supermarine Spitfire, Sikorsky R-4 Helicopter, Avro Lancaster, Messerschmitt 262, Airspeed Horsa, Messerschmitt 163 Komet, Grumman Avenger, Mig-15, Vickers Viscount, Avro Vulcan, de Havilland Comet I, Short S.C.1, de Havilland Canada Otter, McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom, Hawker Siddeley 125, Boeing Chinook, North American X-15, Wallis WA-120 Autogyro, Canadair CL-84, BAC/Brequet Jaguar, BAC/Aerospatiale Concorde, Hawker Siddeley Harrier, General Dynamics F-111, Lockheed Tristar & Northrop HL-10.

coming soon

The Brooke Bond Tea Card Collection // 123 Book Street, London, L12 3DN www.thebrookebondcollection.com // hello@thebrookebondcollection.com // 01234 567890