{"id":14575,"date":"2022-09-13T09:30:49","date_gmt":"2022-09-13T07:30:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.homesandantiques.com\/?p=34519"},"modified":"2022-09-13T09:50:10","modified_gmt":"2022-09-13T07:50:10","slug":"collecting-fireworks-ephemera","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/homesantiques\/rss_feed\/collecting-fireworks-ephemera\/","title":{"rendered":"Collecting fireworks ephemera"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>

By Luke Honey\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Tuesday, 13 September 2022 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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Bonfire Night is very much part of the British psyche. Every year, just before the State Opening of Parliament, the Yeomen of the Guard search the cellars beneath the Palace of Westminster. It\u2019s a ceremonial tradition that goes back to the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 and Guy Fawkes\u2019 failed attempt to blow up James I and all parliament with him.<\/p>\n

From 1606 to 1859, the Thanksgiving Act made it obligatory to celebrate \u2018the deliverance of the King of England\u2019 on the 5th November. Until the end of the last century, children used to make their own \u2018Guys\u2019 from old rags and stuffing, and drag them around on makeshift sledges, asking for \u2018Penny for the Guy\u2019.<\/p>\n

The traditional Bonfire Night celebration (now in decline due to a renewed enthusiasm for Halloween<\/a>), was very much a family affair. A delightful advertising poster for Brock\u2019s fireworks shows a typical party in a suburban back garden of the 1950s: excited children, parents in trilby, Mackintosh, headscarf and beret, the night sky alight with rockets, bangers and Catherine Wheels.<\/p>\n

\"""\"<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>
A 1950s poster for Brock\u2019s fireworks.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n

Many years on, I\u2019ve fond memories of my poor, long-suffering father running around the front lawn, lighting one precarious rocket after another from a series of empty milk bottles, as we watched from the safety of an upstairs window. Which brings me to the wonderful world of antique<\/a> fireworks: posters, Chinese firecrackers, firework labels and pyrotechnic ephemera. It never ceases to amaze me what people collect<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 2012, a packet of Balfour\u2019s Supercharged Flashlight crackers fetched a staggering $3,835 at Morphy Auctions in the United States \u2013 a highlight from a \u2018spectacular array of vintage<\/a> firecrackers and pyrotechnic rarities\u2019, the hoard of George Moyer, an American fireman, collected over 40 years.<\/p>\n

\"""\"<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>
This packet of Balfour\u2019s Supercharged Flashlight crackers made $3,835 at auction in 2012.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n

It\u2019s thought that fireworks originated in ancient China in the second century, when somebody threw a bamboo stick into a fire and invented firecrackers by mistake. In the spring of 1749, Handel\u2019s Music for the Royal Fireworks<\/a> accompanied a dazzling display in London\u2019s Green Park to celebrate the end of the War of the Austrian Succession. The event ended in chaos when a stray rocket hit the wooden Temple of Peace, where 10,000 fireworks were stored. The temple exploded, killing three people.<\/p>\n

By the 19th century, European scientists had finally worked out how to create intense colour in fireworks by the miracle of oxidation. For, of course, it\u2019s the vibrant nature of fireworks that gave the 19th and 20th-century manufacturers the excuse to use the chromolithographic (and, later, off-set) printing process to its full glory.<\/p>\n

Occasionally old fireworks posters come up at auction, often featuring British brands of years gone by: Pain\u2019s, Wessex, Brock\u2019s, Standard and Wilder\u2019s. Standard Fireworks of Huddersfield produced a marvellous range of colourful advertising posters over the years. I\u2019m also a sucker for the graphics of Chinese firecracker labels. These are eminently collectable, especially in America.<\/p>\n

From the 1910s, Chinese manufacturers began to package their fireworks with imaginative and highly decorative lithographed labels. The earliest designs featured exotic beasts from mythology and legend: dragons, tigers, giraffes, camels and black cats for luck. As the century progressed, images from American pop culture and the Space Age began to appear.<\/p>\n

Intact fireworks packages are, of course, rare. Manufacturers designed their fireworks to be blown up, rather than collected. And genuine rarity is the reason why collectors will pay seemingly crazy prices for prized items: a point worth thinking about if you\u2019re a novice collector.<\/p><\/body><\/html>\n

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