Today is Day 15 of my 21 Day Family Connections Experiment.
And it's Treasure Chest Thursday.
Appropriate as today I'm writing about a few of my treasures - but likely for these ones my heirs are wondering "Why ever has she hung on to those old things?" Here's the answer.
An old taped together box - some weird thing that spins - and a REMINDER stamp?
The answer is first, that these are things I remember from my parents' office. And I didn't play with them then, but, second, I used to 'work' for my parents so these do hold special memories for me. I rescued them many years later, thinking... third, hey, I can use these for my scrapbooking. And there you go. All perfectly understandable.
All its letters and numbers and symbols accounted for. The stamp pad isn't original, I know. But somehow I couldn't turf it either. (Adding ink to stamp pads was one of my tasks.) I think Dad last used this set in the 1980s when he, Mum and I were selling stuff on weekends at a Vancouver flea market.
The spin around thing holds stamps with various size handles, and the REMINDER stamp originally was used to 'decorate' any overdue invoices that had to be sent out in the mail.
I don't know how old this set is, or if Dad bought if new or used. I hardly remember the first office on Broadway when I was really little, but I do know that they had to buy more furniture for the Cambie Street office they opened in the 1950s. Some of that was new, but much was not. And I may have mentioned before, I still have four chairs that were in the office. Two would likely have been dining room chairs. The other two may have been meant for home or office. (I should browse in some old catalogues or store ads to see if anything looks familiar.) My tiny Christmas tree was not always a 'Charlie Brown' tree. It was the office tree and had its own ornaments when it was in use there.
What I didn't know in the old days was that this stamp set was made by an historic Vancouver company -The Geo. H. Hewitt Co. Ltd. as it says on the seal design inside the box. Mr. Hewitt began his business in 1885 in San Francisco, but in 1898 he and his wife followed the Gold Rush trail not to the gold fields but to Vancouver, BC, where he set up shop. The company is still in business here.
Check out the old photographs on the Geo. H. Hewitt Co website, including a Con Jones "Don't Argue" token. (We could use some more of those!) And if you collect old vehicle plates, see Christopher John Garrish's website BCpl8s.ca: https://www.bcpl8s.ca/Bicycle.html Hewitt manufactured license plates for commercial trucks, bicycles and chauffeur badges too.
2 comments:
I really enjoyed the George H. Hewitt Co. Ltd site. Thank you.
Yes, I enjoyed looking at their photographs. Not so often do you see working spaces and employees.
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