03 March 2008

Possibly the best thing I've ever found

I know, it doesn't look much here, mainly because I had 0.3 seconds to take a photo as it's some ridiculous hour and I should be in bed.

But trust me, this is really exciting - it's an original set of rubber stamps from Clarks in Leeds. A whole alphabet (in fact, two whole alphabets, in large and small sizes), a shedful of numbers, and some rather natty "finest quality", "special value", "per tin" and "per bottle" stamps.

I don't often fall in love with things in shops, but this leaped out at me when I was wandering round RE in Corbridge, shouting "buy me, buy me" extremely loudly.

I had no choice - I love lettering and fonts, so my credit card was in my hand before you could say Helvetica. Sadly, these are Times Roman, rather than my usual choice of sans serif, but you can't have everything. I'm guessing from the box that the set is probably 1950s/60s (it has to be pre-decimalisation), but if anyone can shed any light on the matter, or share some typesetting tips, do pipe up.

2 comments:

Louche said...

What a fantastic collection. What will you do with it?

rach said...

Aside from the inevitable birthday/Christmas type cards and suchlike, I have a yearning to do some proper artwork - I've messed about with abstract oils before, but quite fancy having a go at something with rather more lettering...

And "finest quality" is just begging to be used somewhere.