Art deco- watches and beyond

allwoundup

i.e., rotating the crown slightly to the 1:30 position and attaching simple wire lugs to the case.

Peemacgee

Wyndham Lewis

queriver

One can only speculate why the toy was designed in this style since it would have in no way resembled the real delivery vans of the time (nor now).

Professor

My speculation would be that it was loosely based on futuristic air foil designs for vehicles that showed up as show cars and experimental autos and trucks in the late 30's and early 40's.

JimInOz

A bit later I happened to look outside to see how the weather was shaping up, and noticed one of my most loved AD structures in Melbourne, the beautiful Manchester Unity Building.

allwoundup

Following on the Ingraham watch Professor posted above, here are a couple other "dollar" watches of mine from the same period. The U.S.-based Ingersoll Watch Co. is perhaps the best known and prolific of the dollar watch manufacturers. Over a twenty year period, Ingersoll sold nearly forty million dollar watches. The company's slogan was, "The watch that made the dollar famous!" In the early years of the 20th century Ingersoll began manufacturing watches in England (Ingersoll Ltd.), and sold them for five shillings -- the equivalent of one dollar. Ingersoll went bankrupt in 1921, and was bought out the following year by the Waterbury Clock Company (of Connecticut), which had initially produced its watches. The company changed its name to Ingersoll-Waterbury. It was the first company to produce Mickey Mouse watches, selling over five million in the first fifteen years. The Waterbury Clock Company went on to be renamed the U.S. Time Corporation....now known as the Timex Group U.S..

The second dollar watch, having an octagonal case, was made by the New Haven Clock Company (also of Connecticut) and was commonly sold under the brand name Tip-Top. This particular watch is a promotional item of the Poll-Parrot Shoe Company. The watch represents an interesting, and low cost, means of adapting a pocket watch movement to a wristwatch -- i.e., rotating the crown slightly to the 1:30 position and attaching simple wire lugs to the case.

Professor

My speculation would be that it was loosely based on futuristic air foil designs for vehicles that showed up as show cars and experimental autos and trucks in the late 30's and early 40's.

Its also not unlikely that rather than being purpose made blocks of wood the body was made from a by product of some industry. Cut off end pieces of milled lumber intended for some sort of structure.
In our town the factory my dad worked at in 1943 had switched from peacetime furniture manufacture to manufacturing air craft seats and other parts. One by product was scrap plywood in a quarter moon shape. Workmen took the scrap home and made nicely finished wall decorations from these, a moon with Romeo & Juliet balconies connected by a staircase also made from scrap wood. I still have one.

Syrte

Art deco in Krakow Poland comes in strange and bitter packages.
Below:
1/ pictures of a famous art deco building in the city with bold last attic floor the nazis found so decadent they had it transformed into a more traditional beaux arts style (photos courtesy of the Oskar Schindler Factory Museum);
2/ large and famous art deco building whose name I don’t know - postcards at the same museum showed it with a large nazi flag flying at the top;
3/ at an antique dealer a box presented to me as “polish art deco from the 1920s or 1930s”- too bad the side showed an inscription “Krakow 1941”- that had kind of a chilling effect;
4/ a beautiful clock bearing the name “Casimir” in Polish on the dial.
5/ first aid kit marked in German (“erste Hilfe”).
6/ armoire.