Here we have blue, courtesy of the Australian Blue Wren. Blue is another color with ancient origins, right back to ancient Egypt, when a piece of mineral, called azurite, was shattered and revealed of a brilliant blue tone. Azurite, as you might have guessed, is the source of the word azure. However it was centuries later that artists discovered that if you crushed the mineral and ground it down to a powder you could use it for painting. And they called that ultramarine. It remains one of the most popular colours and yet the most elusive, and the hardest of all to make in combination, too strong to combine well with most.
The name "blue wren", might have been the universal term for this lovely creature then, but it seems to have gone out of fashion, and we now call them by the name of Superb Fairywren - though a clue to the original name still remains in its Latin form, which is Malurus Cyaneus. The Malurus bit is the family name, and there are almost thirty different species who are under that umbrella, all songbirds, though a few of them, curiously, seem to be regarded as part of the warblers.
The odd thing about our bird is that for most of the year you would not recognise him - this is the breeding plumage, or, more correctly, the showing off stage, the brighter the blue, or so they believe, the more lady wrens they will be able to snuggle up with.
Now this is a set of many parts, for it was issued by Cavanders as "Feathered Friends" and as Foreign Birds", and also by Godfrey Phillips as "Feathered Friends". All this is explained on the home page for this group, which is our Card of the Day for the 3rd of September 2024 - that card being Cavanders` "Foreign Birds".
Our version appears in our Abdulla reference book, RB.5, which is shared with Adkin and with Anstie. It is described as :
1935. FEATHERED FRIENDS (titled series). Size 2 1/2" x 1 1/2". Numbered 1-25. Fronts lithographed in full colours, and gold and silver. Gold borders and subjects titled. Backs, printed in green, with descriptions. Similar to Cavander`s and Godfrey Phillips` sets. Printed by Wass, Pritchard & Co. Ltd., London.
The sets are identical from the front, so it is fairly certain that Wass. Pritchard & Co. Ltd. printed them all - however, intriguingly, their name only appears in this reference book, not the Godfrey Phillips one. And Cavanders never had a reference book, their cards only appear in our World Tobacco Issues Index. There is something odd though, and that is that the Godfrey Phillips reference book tells us that their cards were produced by letterpress, not lithography. Now letterpress involves a raised design being inked and pressed to the card, rather then the more laborious, and some may say old fashioned, process of lithography, where the design is drawn flat and made to stay in place by a combination of chemicals.
Sadly I cannot find much about Wass, Pritchard & Co. Ltd., but I did discover that they also printed books, and, intriguingly,that they made lantern slides for early film displays.
This text is much shortened in our original World Tobacco Issues Index - to simply :
FEATHERED FRIENDS. Sm. 63 x 38. Nd. (25) See Ha. 516 ... A5-14
whilst in our updated version it says :
FEATHERED FRIENDS. Sm. 63 x 38. Nd. (25) See RB.113/70 ... A065-440
RB.113, by the way, is the newly updated Godfrey Phillips book. This is because Abdulla & Co. had been associated with Godfrey Phillips Ltd. since 1926, when the latter bought up the ordinary share capital of the former.