Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Prop Luggage Labels

Considering how much I love ephemera from the 20's and 30's I'm surprised it's taken me this long to discover Dover's Old-Fashioned Luggage Labels (Stickers), a collection of reproduction stickers based on the advertising labels slapped on luggage during the golden age of travel. The book features four full-color plates filled with 53 vintage travel stickers from the 20's to the 50's, but with a few exceptions (like TWA and Intourist Leningrad) they're all appropriate for use during the "Call of Cthulhu" era.



There are a few airline and cruise ship logos scattered throughout, but most of the stickers feature hotels. Among the more notable ones are:

The Grand Hotel, Rome
Victoria Hotel, Amsterdam
Hotel Luna, Venice
Hotel Wildenmann, Lucern
Tarbet Hotel, Loch Lomond
Hotel Lido, Bucharest
The Continental Savoy, Cairo
Palace Hotel, Brussels
Grosvenor House, London
Hotel Mamounia, Marrakesh
Continental Palace, Saigon
Semiramis Hotel, Cairo
Hotel Fast, Jerusalem
Hotel Schwarzer Bock, Wiesbaden

The print quality is excellent, capturing the details of the masterful design work that went into all these images. The only thing I didn't like is that the stickers aren't reproduced full-size. Period stickers were 3" across or larger and most of these look like they were scaled down 80% or more. Since this book is aimed at scrapbooking enthusiasts it makes sense to shrink them so they don't overpower a page, but I wish the description on Amazon had been more forthright about the actual dimensions.

That said, I'm still happy with the book. For just $5.95 it's a great resource that features some wonderfully evocative artwork, particularly if you're running a globe-spanning campaign like "Masks of Nyarlathotep".

(Purchasing from the Amazon link above throws a couple of dimes in my account and helps support my book-buying addiction. I got a monkey on my back, bro.)

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