Monday, September 10, 2012

The A.P.W. Company





For those of us who love advertising paper dolls and toys, Pat Corte Rooney's display in Special Collections was a pip: The Albany Perforated Wrapping Company is credited with being the first company to produce toilet paper the way we know it today -- perforated and rolled around a cardboard cylinder -- in 1877. You can read more toilet paper history here. Corn cobs and catalog pages! Good grief. 

Pat collects all kinds of A.P.W. promotional ephemera -- and some of it is quite wonderful. The artist Tony Sarg created an A.P.W. marionette theater as a premium in 1926, shown in the last photo. A.P.W. also used the pattern of the crossword puzzle in its promotions in the 1920s,  when crosswords first captured the public's imagination and were something of a craze. Fun stuff. I saw a few of these items when I interviewed Pat for Paperdoll Review magazine a few years back. She has a great eye as an artist and collector.

1 comment:

  1. I know it's not paper, but I have several of these APW rag doll sheets. They were a giveaway in 1925. You had to send a label from any APW product and 10 cents to the company, and they sent you the DIY pattern.

    https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/15822889_10206658140085603_6784884778772612273_n.jpg?oh=1d194804bede5850d0cca0249c611fb3&oe=58EB788B

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