Newsletter - 2024-04-06

Saturday, 30th March 2024

Our first clue was part of the team name, “Edinburgh”, for that is where, in 1507, the first printing press in Scotland was set up by Walter Chepman and Andrew Myllar,. Often they are both described as merchants, but, actually, as we will find out later in the week Mr. Myllar was a bookseller, with interesting connections.

They were granted an official printing licence in September 1507. Their press was sited at a location called Cowgate, which had very humble beginnings, being simply the gap in the town wall where the herdsmen brought their cattle. However, once it started being redeveloped with more modern housing in the mid fourteenth century it started to attract the notice of the upper echelon, almost certainly aided by its closeness to the castle. And its lustre was forever glossed when Mary Queen of Scots stayed in a house there in the 1560s.

This set is listed in our original British Trade Index part I as :

FOOTBALL SERIES. Sm. 71 x 45. Nd. (10). Nos. 1/8 black or brown glossy photos. Nos. 9/10 halftones. No.3 is titled “Football Teams”

Card No. 3, by the way, is Bolton Wanderers - and it also has another strangeness about it, because it advertises on the bottom that card No. 4 would be West Ham United, and it never was - instead it was our card, Edinburgh Hibernian. We have been advised that you can see this at the Football Cartophilic Exchange / BOY-470 

The listing in the updated World Tobacco Issues Index is almost identical, but the date of issue has been inserted after the title instead of the “Sm.”

Sunday, 31st March 2024

Now the clue here is the player`s surname, the only word on the front of the card. For whilst Messrs. Chepman & Myllar started printing shortly after the press was set up, their first works, which were short stories and poems, produced as one or two sheets alone, none were dated.

All that changed in 1508, when they produced a collection of poems and stories bound in one cover. They were technically the works they had so far printed, simply joined up, but we will gloss over that. The poems and stories all had different titles, so they had to pick one to form a main title for the book - and what they picked was "The Complaint of the Black Knight" by the English writer John Lydgate who had been born in 1370 and died in 1451. 

This set was first listed in our original Wills reference book part III as part of a listing entitled “CRICKETERS – Australian Issues”. The section started by saying : “Under this heading it is proposed to group all the “Cricketers” series issued in Australia prior to 1918. Fig.41 contains illustrations of the front and one sample of the different backs of each issue.”  Our set is in that listing as :

B. 25 AUSTRALIAN AND ENGLISH CRICKETERS (adopted title). Numbered. See Fig. 41-B. Fronts lithographed in colour. Backs in blue. Issued 1903

None of these issues appeared in the lists of dates which were extracted from the Wills Works Magazine, the earliest one there being June 1905, the “Russo-Japanese Series”.

Our World Tobacco Issues Indexes also list this set as part of the main `Cricketers Series` grouping of seven different dated sets. The listing for our set reads :

2. 1903 issue. Untitled. Australian and English players. Nd. (25). Back in blue, inscribed “Wills`s Cigarettes”. See W/59.B

Monday, 1st April 2024

How can we speak of printing, of anything, without this man, William Caxton? 

He was born in Kent, some time between 1415 and 1424, and we also know not exactly where, though Tenterden claims him as their son.

We do know that in 1438 he became apprenticed to a silk merchant called Robert Large, for which he was required to move to London. After Mr. Large died, our man was sufficently expert at the trade to relocate to Bruges in Belgium, which was the centre of the silk trade in Medieval times, and to set up in business. He also became the governor of the Company of Merchant Adventurers of London, which was the main exporter of cloth, and a large imprter of all manner of other Foreign goods in exchange. They operated mainly in Northern Europe, especially in Germany, and it was on one of his trips to that area that he first saw printing taking place, in Cologne. 

He seems to have moved in high circles, including royalty. It was Edward IV`s sister who encouraged him in his writing, and was a sounding board for his translations of tales such as Homer`s Iliad, of which he was particularly fond. He he had already acquired and set up a printing press in Bruges, but on his return to England he set one up in Westminster, London, in 1476. 

He died in 1491

This set first appears in our original Wills reference book part III, in a group with the export versions. The description reads : 

74. 50 HISTORIC EVENTS. lyn Davey. Fronts lithographed in colour; backs in grey, with descriptive text. Issued, 1912. 
HOME ISSUE :-
A. With I.T.C. Clause
AUSTRALIAN ISSUES :-
A. With “Wills`s Specialities” advertisement on backs.
B. With “Havelock” advertisement on backs.
Similar series issued by Frank

By the way, that Franklyn Davey set was not issued until 1924.

When the Wills booklets were combined beneath a hard cover, dates were added courtesy of Wills` Works magazine, which is where we get the month above for our set, and it also tells us that the Havelock and Specialities versions were issued in April 1913

In our World Tobacco Issues Indexes the set is split up, the Australian issues now appearing as a pair under W675-354 in the updated World Tobacco Issues Index and W62-226 in the original volume. That means that our home version appears all on its own, with a simple text that just reads : 

HISTORIC EVENTS. Sm. Nd. (50) See H.464. 

By the way H.464 is the Handbook, and it simply tells us that a version was issued at home before 1919 by W.D. & H.O. Wills, who also issued two sets overseas, and by Franklyn Davey between 1920 and 1940. 

Tuesday, 2nd April 2024

So you may be wondering why the windmill?

Well the answer is that the printers used a windmill for their trademark. It is often said that this denoted the fact that the press and printing materials had come from France, but I find that rather odd, because surely the windmill is more a Netherlands theme than a French one. Personally I think the reason is far simpler, just being a little play on words about the name of one of our men, Mr. Myllar, which would have been pronounced Miller. And I have just discovered that he did indeed use it as his personal symbol.

Now in official papers, King James IV called Messrs Chepman and Myllar "his beloved servants" and it is plain that he trusted them, because he stated that they were to "acquire and bring home a press, with all accessories, and skilled men required to use it". Not an easy task, when printing was in its infancy, and remember this was to be the first printing press in Scotland.

So how did he know these men? The answer is that he did not know Mr. Chepman too well, though he had sold textiles to the Royal Court, but Mr. Myllar had frequently supplied him books, of quality, and so he presumed, obviously rightly, that he would understand the way that such books were produced. In fact Mr. Myllar had also had books published for him, these being printed in France, by contacts, the sort of contacts who would sell him a printing press, and more importantly, who would know he knew his stuff, he would not buy something unsuitable. 

Now the King stressed that he alone would set the prices of the books produced, but that there would be no competition, that Messrs Chepman and Myllar would remain the only press in Scotland, and, also, that any breaching of this would be heavily penalised. He even went so far as banning the importation of printed books from any other country 

Sadly we do not know the later story of the press, but it seems to have closed around 1510.

Now "Old Masters" was a title also used for seven sets of silks, but these are cards. They first appear in our original Godfrey Phillips reference book, RB.13, published in 1949, described as :

107. 36. Old Masters. Medium cards, size 60 x 53 m/m. Fronts printed by offset process in colour. Backs in brown, with descriptive text. Issued 1939.

In our World Tobacco Issues Indexes the set appears under section 5.C, which are "General issues 1932-39. Cards with backs bearing reference to Associated Companies." The listing is scant though, just :

OLD MASTERS. Md. Nd. (36)

Wednesday, 3rd April 2024

So why do we have Chaucer?

The answer to that is because for some time our book was thought to have been by him. I cannot find out why this was, but it seems that it was rather closely modelled on his work, the "Book of the Duchess", as far as it was a love story set in a paradise garden, and was a story of one person`s life, recounted by another, in a heightened, dream-like state. Perhaps this is why our book has two titles, "The Complaynte of a Lover`s Life" and "The Complaynte of the Black Knight".

We do also know that William Caxton printed Chaucer`s Canterbury tales, in England, in 1478 - and that it was reprinted in 1483. So perhaps it was that people who had not encountered, or imagined the possibility of any other printer, presumed he was the only author, of everything.

I find the reverse of these cards very interesting because they tell us where the signature used on them is actually from - in this case it is "on a bill for the issue of a Commission under the Great Seal to Hugh Swayn to purvey builders materials etc, dated 1389" - which is all explained, with additional information, at the Masonic Encyclopaedia.

Now at the time this set was issued the text tells us that this item was held at the Public Record Office, but, according to something I tried to read at JStor - but my chromebook is too old to be given access - the signature, and many of those documents have now disappeared.

Our original World Tobacco Issues Index tells us that this is a set of many permutations,.  The listing of just our section is 

4. Nos. 76-100 (25)
Size (A) small (B) large

The entire listing of all the cards will be found as the Card of the Day for 26th June 2023,  which is when we featured the first part of the set, numbers one to twenty five cards

Thursday, 4th April 2024

Now this was a bit of a wild card clue because it refers to the fact that when James VI wanted a printing press, he was not entirely thinking of poems and prose. No, his intention was to draw up, and have printed, official, legal documents and laws, which would eventually entirely replace the ones that were currently used in Scotland.

To this day, Scottish law, and government, is different. It incorporates a much better blend of what is needed for success and what is wanted for fairness. It started out by being developed all alone, as an offshoot of Roman laws, but unfortunately this was much altered once The Kingdom of Great Britain began on the 1st of May, 1707.

It was not until 1998 that some of those powers were reduced.

Hence we have this card. Now I don`t know anything about this set, but it is most unusual, and also rather creepy.

Our World Tobacco Issues Indexes tell us that it actually comes in two sizes, and list them as :

THE "SMILER" SERIES. Caricatures, mouths inscribed "Nut Brown Cigarettes".
A. Small, 67-68 x 37. Back with series title, inscribed "This Series Consists of 24 cards." Nos. 1/12 only issued.
B. Large, 82 x 56, rounded corners. Backs with caricature of "Nut Flake" smoker only, no series title. Nd. (12)

Now some time I will use a large card, because it is quite different. They use the same characters as on our cards, but the verse from our reverse is below that on the front of the large cards instead of "What`s the Joke?", and also the number is at the top of the front of those. I am not entirely sure why, because the reverse is entirely filled with a caricature of a besuited man, smoking a cigarette, and "Nut Flake Pure Virginia Cigarettes" is in white within his mouth.

Now I have seen that I can report that actually this five word wording is within the mouths of the small cards too, despite the heading of the set in the World Tobacco Issues Index saying it only says "Nut Brown Cigarettes". It is rather light though, so perhaps they missed it.

Friday, 5th April 2024

So, having spent the week talking about things relating to the Black Knight, and his complaint, it is time to talk about him – and to show that he is still a figure relevant to popular culture. And also, that he is still represented in a very similar way to how he was, chain mail, gauntlets, and a helmet, though those Cylon-inspired eyes are a new addition.

Best of all, it is definitely true to say that if this card was to fall through a portal into the fourteenth century, whomsoever discovered it would instantly know he was the Black Knight, and that is extraordinarily thrilling to me.

Originally his blackness was as a counterfoil to the White Knight, in the time honoured good vs evil way, though there was always a suspicion that the Black Knight was not really evil, that he had been wronged, or suffered a life changing loss. Indeed in our poem he is discovered melancholic beneath a hedge, and freely tells his tales of woe to the narrator, not something that an evil man would do.

Now I am going to be honest, I know nothing of Fortnite, but I looked it up, because the truth is that being introduced to new pleasures and experiences is what I enjoy most of all about writing the newsletters – and, perhaps, you do too, in their reading. So Fortnite is a computer game, first released in 2017, and available for most of the popular formats. The idea is that your character does battle against the other players, to a maximum of a hundred players, and the last character standing alive wins. There is also a sub theme in that along the way you can pick up items that help in your quests, extra armour, weapons, etc.

I imagine I would not get too far with this, but if you want to know everything about the game just nip off to Fortnite-Wiki-Fandom where almost 100,000 articles and files are continuously updated.