ARTICLE - SAND PAILS
The majority of the very early sand toys were produced in Europe. Commercially made examples appeared as early as the middle of the nineteenth century at the London Exhibition of 1851, where there were reportedly a few such novelties decorated with dogs and other animals, and at around the same time William Tower and other members of the Tower Guild co-operative workshop were crafting relatively elaborate sand-powered action toys in the United States. Moving sand activated the intricate Leotard Acrobat produced An offshoot of the popularity of the seaside resort was the demand for outdoor swimming pools, known as lidos. Swimming had been a popular sport ever since Captain Webb swam across the Channel in 1875, but it really grabbed the public’s attention in the late 1920s after Miss Gertrude Ederle beat the male record for swimming the Channel in 1926 by two hours. In 1929 a new style of swimwear was released with the slogan, ‘The suit that changed bathing into swimming,’ and it became apparent that if seaside resorts wanted to attract the summer holiday-makers they needed to provide a lido alongside the beach. One of the first British resorts to build an outdoor pool was Blackpool, where an astonishing $135,000 was spent on the construction of a lido in 1923. It was so enormous that its width was greater than the length of an Olympic pool. It could hold 1500 swimmers, with room for 8000 spectators and changing facilities for 600. But why would people swim in a lido rather than in the sea – especially when most outdoor pools were built on the beach itself? In a word: Money. Although the use of the bathing machine had tapered out before the First World War, there were still many restrictions and charges on bathers wishing to use the beach. It was common for councils to insist that the public paid for the use of regulation council bathing huts or cubicles, and at some beaches there were even charges for anyone who erected their own bathing tent. ‘Free bathing’ was available, but it was restricted to certain times of the day and certain places. In the 1930s, ‘Macintosh bathing’ became quite popular; this involved the bather changing into their swimwear in their hotel or resort, and then making the short walk down to the beach wearing a Macintosh cost which was then taken off. Technically you could be fined for doing this. The summer holiday also advanced the concept of a suntan, which in Victorian times was considered quite vulgar, mainly because of its association with manual labour. By the 1920s, however, the sun was considered both medically beneficial and fashionable, and its appearance was used extensively to sell the summer holiday. Resorts frequently quoted UV counts and sunshine statistics (surely exaggerated when in the UK!), and in 1931 The Health and Nature Cure Handbook published advice on the best ways of exposing the body to solar rays. But the real thrill of being beside the seaside, for children at least, was to be found in the art of building sandcastles; all that was needed was a bucket and spade and some damp sand. These days those early buckets - or pails - can cost anything from $30 to $1000 for a highly sought example in excellent condition, which is why their days in the sand and sun are over! One of the reasons behind their collectability – apart from The designs themselves were often taken from popular cartoons, especially Mickey Mouse and other Walt Disney characters, as well as holiday scenes, the circus, familiar fairytale stories, flags, boats and patriotic themes. Some pails were even decorated with marketing themes. They were often marked by the manufacturer and therefore can usually be identified, but dating a sand pail can be a tricky business. The makers hardly ever dated their products, and because the technology in production remained the same from the early 1930s to the early 1960s, there is a range of thirty years in which you could reasonably assume a tin-plated bucket was made. Sometimes dating can be done using old advertising publications and company brochures, and as a general rule if a pail features the name of a beach written on the side, or displays a line such as, ‘A present from the seashore,’ it will be an older example. If people are part of the graphics, their fashion can also help in working out a probable period of production. Like so many other things, now that they are gone collectors are looking for them. Today the sand pails, shovels, sifters, cranes, mills and other wonderfully lithographed sand-related devices are treasured by a growing number of enthusiasts all year around. This information first appeared in Issue 35 of Antiques and Collectables for Pleasure & Profit.
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during the 1890s by Brown, Blondin and Company of
London, England, and various firms also offered attractively decorated sand pails by the end of the nineteenth century, with scenes ranging from children at play to great ships at sea, but it was the inter-war years before the summer holiday beside the sea
became accessible to the general public. What was once the realm of the privileged few in Edwardian times became the joy of the masses; by the end of the 1930s, fifteen million Brits were holidaying by the coast every year. And no other nation has taken the
notion of the holiday by the sea to heart quite like the English, who remained steadfastly undeterred by freezing waters, beaches full of pebbles and the worst fish and chips in the world.
the strength of nostalgic memories of holidays past – is in the
quality of the graphics used on the tin-plated buckets. Almost always colourful and charming, they were applied using the chromolithography process that revolutionised the toy industry in the early 1930s. Before this development, a method called offset lithography
was employed in which a rubber composition roller was used to print a design onto tin-plated sheets. Two-colour designs were common on pictures that were applied as separate vignettes to the front and back. In the early 1930s the process was developed using
machines that lithograph more than fifty sheets per minute. New colours and a variation in shades were created using overlapping hues, with the end result being a much brighter, more colourful pail, with a design that stretched all around the bucket.
