Card of the Day - 2022-07-05

 

I have to admit that the sundial here is not very visible, but I do know the Church, St. Mary`s in Perivale, one of the earliest in London, though little remains of its first build. The sundial is on the southern side of the tower, actually the West Tower, built, of wood in the 16th century, but the main church is of stone, and parts of it date from much earlier, the 13th century. At the time of this card the sundial carried the date of 1818, and in my girlhood too, but it has since been replaced and is now dated for 1990. Possibly the 1818 was a replacement too. 

Fry has several claims to fame - the invention of the solid chocolate bar in 1847, which was accomplished by putting the fat back into chocolate and experimenting with sugar in a range of shaped moulds – and the so called production of the first ever chocolate Easter Egg in 1873. There is a great site at Companies House with lots of documents.

Now we are sorry to burst your chocolate bubble, but this was not the first ever chocolate Easter Egg, for such were well known in Europe, especially Germany, and had been for almost seventy years. However what made Fry`s egg unusual was that it was made in England, and that it was moulded, like the chocolate bars, but better than that, it was made of very thin chocolate that coated the inside of the mould only and left the interior hollow.  This made it more fragile, but lighter, and better tasting as well

Our British Trade Index Part One tells us that Fry were established in 1728 and at the time of publication (1962) were based in Bristol and London. This information is not entirely correct because J. S. Fry is Joseph Storr Fry, the son of the original maker Joseph Fry, who only started making chocolate in 1759, but perhaps the 1728 date is chocolate for drinking. However Joseph Storr Fry was the one who industrialised the process of chocolate making, by using steam driven machines.  

The first cards listed in British Trade Index Part One were issued between 1908 and 1917 and this does not include our set, “Ancient Sundials” which was issued between 1924 and 1933 and so forms part of group two. It also tells us that the cards are slightly smaller than standard at 65 x 36 m/m

By the time of British Trade Index Part Two, in 1969, there had been a discovery, and it was now known that there were two printings of this set. The first was A, ours, having the series title, number and text on the back, but there was also now a B, plain back cards, numbered on the front, with no series title. 

British Trade Index Part Three is chiefly noted for including many of the advertising postcards and showcards issued by Fry, including their own, and those commercially issued as replicas of famous adverts by the firms of Causton, Matthews and Mansell. And more postcards appear in British Trade Index Part Four. However many of these were removed for our updated version, published in 2006.