The clue here was mortar, for "Mortar Board", which may, as the card says, be "a flat board, as shown ... useful for mixing", but is also a very curious hat indeed, being a kind of skull cap with a square board stuck horizontally on the top of it. This has several names, academic cap, college cap, graduate cap, and an Oxford.
Now W.D. & H.O. Wills devoted an entire set to the "University Cap and Gown", in a large sized set of twenty-five cards issued in May 1926.
But here we have the real thing, on which academia modelled its own version, and it does please me to think that such a humble item should be so immortalised.
Now we have featured this set before, but not in this version - last time, which was on the 22nd of March 2023, we showed you the Channel Islands version, which looks decidedly bare around the edges when compared to this one.
In our original Wills Book the variations are described as:
A) Home Issue. Album clause "at one penny each" and I.T.C. Clause
B) Irish Issue. Album clause without price and I.T.C. Clause
C) Channel Islands Issue. No album clause or I.T.C. Clause
That was the last time that all three sets were listed together. For in our World Tobacco Issues Indexes only the Home and Irish Issues are mentioned in the same breath, whilst the Channel Islands are shunted off to Section 5D in the original 1956 version, and to 6D in the modern update.
The text for our set in these World Tobacco Indexes is rather confusing too, for it lumps the earlier 1920s sets in along with it. The whole reads :
HOUSEHOLD HINTS. Sm. Nd.
1. "Wills`s Cigarettes" at top of back. See W/234-5
(i) "A Series of 50"
(ii) "2nd Series of 50".
2. Album wording at top of back. (50). See W/236
A. Home issue - album clause with price - "one penny each"
B. Irish Issue - album clause without price.
There is one very curious fact and that is that whilst our set was issued in July 1936, the Home issue was not issued until September 1936. And I have no date for the Irish issue, which presumably means it was also issued in the September?