Thursday 30 January 2020

Postcard of the Day No. 96 - Kentish Hop Pickers


The Kentish Hop Pickers formed a migrant labour force who travelled south from London to gather the seasonal crop every summer. Special trains run by the London, Chatham and Dover Railway would deliver entire families to the hop fields and the event was a major milestone in the working class Londoner’s calendar. Others would make the journey on the back of a lorry, piled high with bundles of bedding, pots and pans, and associated paraphernalia for survival in the Kent countryside. For many it was their only experience of rural life and a rare exposure to unpolluted air. Newspapers and magazines would record the event in a tone of sentimental familiarity, portraying the hop pickers as cheery ruffians, stout of heart and spirit, and always ready with a Cockney quip. Some typical press coverage can be seen here on the British Library blog. Postcards were produced in great numbers and presented a rare opportunity for the workers to be in front of the camera and see their likenesses mass produced for sale to the public. Pathé News cameras were often on hand to record the great exodus and the heartwarming spectacle of the labouring classes doing their bit for the nation’s beer drinkers.


In the postcards we see the full age range of the workforce from grizzled grandparents to babes in arms. Only a handful of children and young women defy tradition and go bare-headed - every man of working age shelters under a flat cap, a sun hat, or a bowler. The only collars and ties to be seen are worn by the Tallyman and his assistant whose job was checking and weighing the hop baskets. Some groups are posed with great solemnity, their faces frozen and devoid of expression - elsewhere, in less formal groupings, we get a sense of individual character and personality, some look exhausted while others look relaxed and cheerful. Most surviving participants, by now well past middle age, look back with fondness, recalling an exhilarating sense of exchanging the routines of city life for weeks of adventure in the great outdoors. These are the voices of those who took part as children - the views of those who laboured in the fields may well have been different. 








Wednesday 22 January 2020

Galeries Lafayette Summer 1932


Parisian department stores have a long tradition of the pursuit of extravagance and opulence in terms of display and product range. Galeries Lafayette had been trading on Boulevard Haussmann since 1912 and was famous for its central circular atrium capped by a spectacular Art Nouveau glass dome. This catalogue dates from 1932 just as the Great Depression was making itself felt in France - unemployment soared as economic growth stagnated. Fertile ground for the extreme Right, which surged on a rising tide of xenophobia and Anti-Semitism. The point of a department store was to cater to every conceivable customer desire and the 1932 offer extended to over 180 pages of hand drawn illustrations and blocks of descriptive text. Customers based in provincial France could keep pace with Parisian taste using the mail order form to bring sophistication to their doorsteps. Production values were modest with colour confined to the cover and letterpress printing on cheap paper. The range of goods is still impressive with clothing and footwear to the fore - but space was also found for the more obscure items such as communion dresses, baby carriages and reliquaries. The receptive reader would be engulfed by this avalanche of delights, an oceanic vision of plenty, poised to shower its blessings in return for the most modest of financial outlays.