S. Dodd & Sons Ltd. advert
Never has the Lancashire mill town of Ashton-under-Lyne looked so London Transport! More of that later. For six nights, commencing Monday, 11 March 1935, the town’s active Operatic Society staged their annual production; Rio Rita at the New Empire Theatre. As well as information as to the Society, the cast and plot, the souvenir programme includes a number of adverts for local concerns who were supporting the event. The Society’s first production had been in 1901 and, war years apart, a production had become an annual event.
The programme itself had a cover designed by John Albinson of neighbouring Oldham and the programme was also printed at the company’s Chapel Street Works in the town. Albinson’s had obviously availed themselves of typefaces from the Sheffield-based Stephenson Blake (SB) as many of the adverts are set in or use Granby typeface and indeed a few use the less common Granby Inlined.
I mentioned London Transport (LT) and that is because of the link between the capital’s transport undertaking, their Johnston typeface, and SB’s Granby; Granby was an effective copy of Johnston that was only available for LT’s use in wood block. The availablility of an effective Johnston “look-a-like” as a metal typeface was useful for LT and it was also available commercially. It was probably this utility for LT that allowed SB to issue it. It is also true that when issued in 1930, Granby was a useful competitor for SB to the new Gill Sans typeface.
This advert is for Dodd’s of neighbouring Oldham and is for cotton machinery; Oldham was one of the world’s biggest cotton towns amongst the many other Lancastrian boroughs whose wealth had been built on the textile trades. By 1935 the Lancashire industry was struggling for a variety of reasons and there would have been plenty of second-hand and reconditioned machinery for preparing, spinning and weaving cotton. Oldham was also noted for the various engineering companies such as Dodd’s who specialised in the textile machinery trade. The advert obviously uses old blocks, such as for the factory, as well as the newer Granby Inlined for the titling. Additional typefaces include Spartan, SB’s version of Copperplate Gothic; Winchester, their follower of Cheltenham; and Saint George a.k.a. Windsor Light.
