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.