Card of the Day - 2024-10-20

Wills Garden Flowers Sudell 1st large
W.D & H.O Wills [tobacco : UK - Bristol] "Garden Flowers New Varieties" 1st Series (January 1938) 12/40 - W675-179 : W62-41.1 : W/223

Here we have Dianthus, otherwise known as pinks. This is a very colourful card, though mostly shades of red and pink. And that reminds us that a garden can be made of many colours, but they harmonise together, and complement each other beautifully. 

To an artist, pink is made by mixing red with white, and that is all - the more white they add, the lighter the pink results. However the more salmony hues are accomplished with yellow, not white, and the purply end of the spectrum would involve the participation of some blue. 

Our flower has many names, starting with Carophyllaceae, which is its Latin family name. Whilst the name of Dianthus comes from a Greek botanist called Theophrastus, born about 371 B.C., and it means divine flower.  More normally you will hear it called a Sweet William or Carnation, but its most common name is "Pinks", not for the colour, but for the fact that its frilled edge appears to have been created by using pinking shears, which are a cross between a saw and a pair of scissors and are today much used in crafting, though their original purpose was for either making a decorative hem on clothing, especially childrens, or for cutting certain types of cloth which fray easily when cut straight across with normal scissors. However I have also found reference to the thought that the scissors were named after the edge of the flowers. Further research then told me that the shears were invented in the 1860s and the plant named in the seventeenth century, definitely first. 

This set appears in our original W.D. & H.O. Wills reference book part IV as : 

GARDEN FLOWERS - New Varieties. By Richard Sudell. Large cards, size 79 x 62 m/m. Fronts printed by letterpress in colour. Backs in grey, with descriptive text. Home issues

      223. 40. "A Series of 40". Issued 1938
      224. 40. "2nd Series of 40". Issued 1939. 

That is shortened in our World Tobacco Issues Indexes, to : 

GARDEN FLOWERS - NEW VARIETIES. Lg. Nd. 
     1.. "A Series of 40". 
     2. "2nd Series of 40"

The problem with this shortening is that it also removes the reference to Richard Sudell and so there is often confusion with a standard sized set called "Garden Flowers by Richard Sudell" in 1939.