Father's Box of Tools

Following on from my previous post I'm going to look at the almost parasitic relationship the E.L.P. Co. had with the McGill cards published by Pictorial in their E.S. series.

For example, E.S. published a series of cards by McGill titled 'Father's Box of Tools' documenting the new craze of do-it-yourself, of Edwardian men retiring to their shed to make something for the house or garden and the ensuing disasters. There are five, possibly six, cards in the series and E.L.P. copied every one of them. Here are a couple of examples:


Another example is the 'The Motorist's Trials' series of McGill cards published by E.S. These documented some of the dangers on the roads during the early days of motor cars. Again E.L.P. copied all six of the cards. However this time all the captions have been changed ... perhaps they didn't like the implicit digs about the upper classes and their contempt for the newly emerging middle classes! Again, here are a couple of examples:


Overall at first glance the copies are quite good. On closer inspection though the lines are not as precise as those drawn by McGill, the whole impression is cruder and the colours are not as subtle presumably due to cheaper printing methods.

Has it ever occurred to you?

It wasn't long after I starting collecting McGill cards that I began to come across cards that looked like his but weren't signed by him. Some of them looked almost exactly the same as a signed card I had in my collection often with the same caption although not always.

"Almost exactly the same" being the operative phrase. Closer inspection showed these were very clever copies. Some better than others.

Were they copies by other artists? Had McGill redrawn the same image but slightly differently for another publisher?

In some cases it's fairly obvious these are copies by another hand ... but there are some that keep you wondering!

E.S. 2007	I have two copies of this card. Neither has any publisher information. One is numbered "636 B",  the other just says "Printed in Germany"
E.S. 2019 (Postmarked 1908)	(Postmarked 1911) No publisher information. It just says "Printed in Germany"
E.S. 111 (Postmarked 1906) This is the earliest of three versions of this card produced by McGill	E.L.P. Co. Series (Postmarked 1913)
E.S. 86 (Postmarked 1906)	E.L.P. Co. Series

There does appear to be a pattern emerging here. It looks like the E.L.P Co. were copying the cards published by E.S. I have a number of other examples which I shall post at a later date. Was this some sort of contractual arrangement between the two companies or just a case of E.L.P. not bothering to be original and trying to take advantage of McGill's success?

Some of the above cards by McGill do say "Copyright" on the reverse but that doesn't seem to have stopped the blatant copying. It's obvious that copyright was not upheld very vigorously for postcards back in Edwardian times.

New Section - More about McGill

I've just added a new page called 'More about McGill'. It's a work in progress at the moment but lists various books and pamphlets about McGill that are available. Each entry will eventually have a short review about the publication.

In the future I hope to add magazine and newspaper articles as well. If you are aware of any please let me know.

The link to the 'More about McGill' page is in the Navigation bar just below the header picture.