Q: I'm a curator with my state's historical society and have been trying to identify a lapel stud made by Baldwin & Gleason. Can you tell me anything about it?
A: Baldwin & Gleason Co., Ltd. was a manufacturer of political and advertising buttons, lapel studs, and novelty items in the late 1800s. The company was located in New York City. Although we don't know the history of the company, we've seen campaign items from 1862 to 1900 offered for sale. "The World" might have been a ride at an amusement park or World's Fair. Maybe one of our readers can identify the place.
4 comments:
Orange and blue were the "official" colors of the 1939 New York World's Fair, so it seems quite possible the pin relates to that.
This is most likely a turn-of-the-last-century Schwinn Bicycles button. The brand at that time was known as "The World". See:
http://www.trfindley.com/flschwinn_1893_1940/1899_17.html
To better fit the button maker's time period, perhaps "The World" referred to the NY newspaper of that name. Maybe it was part of this publicity effort: (from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_World)
The World was a relatively unsuccessful New York newspaper from 1860 to 1883. It was purchased by Joseph Pulitzer in 1883 and a new, aggressive era of circulation building began. Reporter Nellie Bly became one of America's first investigative journalists, often working undercover. As a publicity stunt for the paper inspired by the Jules Verne novel Around the World in Eighty Days, she travelled around the planet in 72 days in 1889-90.
I had a Christmas present of a Schwinn "Roadmaster Delux" in 1940 and the identifying badge on the front frame was this logo minus the slogan. The colors may have been the same as the 1939 World's Fair but that wasn't their logo nor their slogan.
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