As a third addition to the de Majo archive’s story, I thought I would write a post about the more non-conventional items the archive holds. In my previous post I mentioned some of these items that did not go through the freezer process but I wanted to show you some more of the kinds of things which do not exactly fall under the ‘usual’ finds – at least not here in the Design Archives!

One of these is this collections of matchbooks. One of de Majo’s various commercial clients was Cronmatch. We have samples, documents and original designs from his work with the company, but presumably he collected these various matchbook samples for his own research purposes, as this particular collection consists of items not designed by him. The sorting process for these was interesting… Various copies of each matchbook were found and they needed to be joined up (I wanted to say matched…!) before cleaning and boxing them. Three copies of each matchbook design were kept. A lot of these particular matchbooks in the photo below did not have actual matchsticks attached to them, but I also came across various that do. This proposes the question of how to deal with this type of object, as they present a fire hazard. After discussions with our archivist Sue Breakell, our approach to them is to cut the igniting match ends off, but not before photographically documenting the item as it was found originally.

Another challenge was within some of the work de Majo did with the confectionary company Millar. The materials I came across while sorting varied from original artwork for designs for Millar vans to individual sweet wraps, of which there were many! The sorting process for the sweet wraps stepped up a gear and was rather more challenging than for the matchbooks, as there appeared to be what felt like hundreds of them in various packets and pockets.

It was one thing dealing with the wrappers as they were, empty and flat, but quite another when the wrappers actually contained the sweets within them! Obviously these could not be kept in the archive as they could raise the risk of pests and contamination of other items. After yet another discussion with our Archivist, I cut out the Millar Super Mints from their original packaging, disposed of the sweets and kept the original wrapper with the paperwork the packet came with.

While the mints actually looked like they could potentially be edible after all these years, the next example I wanted to share with you really did not. I came across this rather beautiful winter-themed gift box for Millar Chocolate Eclairs – again with original sweets still inside.

With this one, we obviously wanted to keep the gift box in the archive. As for the sweets, we carefully unwrapped and kept three of the wrappers while disposing of the rather hard and not-at-all-what-a-chocolate-eclair-should-be -looking sweets inside….

Another, and to me the most surprising, item to show you as an example is from the work Willy de Majo did with and for the drinks company Clayton. Obviously liquids in any archive is a no-no, so what can you do with archive objects which hold liquid within them?

Glass in itself is not a problem when packaged properly, but obviously the liquids had to go. It was a rather interesting experience to open these bottles. Amazingly the Peppermint Cordial still smelt very much of peppermint, but I can report to you that the lemonade had lost all of its lemon smell over the decades, despite being in a sealed, unopened bottle. Amazingly though, the lemonade still had a little bit of life left in it as it let out a little fizzy sigh when opened. The liquids were decanted and the bottles washed and dried thoroughly. As Sue and I were contemplating the process, the thought did cross our minds whether these liquids could have perhaps been of interest to someone in science and I still ponder on what these might have tasted like had someone dared to try them…

Last but not least, I mentioned before about the various photographic materials within the archive. These were separated from the papers and sorted by client and/or kept in the original packets in which de Majo had them. I wanted to share with you one of the more deteriorated (but strangely beautiful) items I came across. This was within the materials in relation to Biro – one of de Majo’s clients for which we have a lot of related photographic material. It is a 5×4 black and white negative of a Biro pen pack (we also have a print version). Not having much knowledge of photographic conservation and the various issues relating to it, I do not have a clue about what has caused the negative to deteriorate in this manner. If anyone can shed any light on this, I would very much appreciate it!

The verso of the negative has this ‘bobbly effect’ to it when looked at closely:

While the recto looks like this:

One of the reasons I wanted to share with you this deteriorated negative was that at the time I came across this photograph of the frozen sea outside Helsinki. The effect looks remarkably similar to the surface of the negative – wouldn’t you agree?

On that note, I will just let you know that the fourth and final part of the de Majo story should be coming along soon, so do look out for the conclusive ‘chapter’!