Out Damn Blot

Always good to study the other reasons you would keep a blotter on the desk

This selection draws on the wonderful AH Collection. 

Reminders of significant events

This busy blotter is advertising self-raising flour and pates alimentaries (pasta).  (Bert Hinkler was a world famous pilot born in Bundaberg in 1892 and lost in Italy in January 1933 during a flight between England and Australia. For further information about Hinkler read his entry in the Australian dictionary of biography.)

This is a blotter with so many visual references – local aboriginal people on the bank and another in the boat with the Batman and the other European explorers; a view of the city of Melbourne in 1934 including the Anglican cathedral and the Forum Theatre.

Shopping locally

This is one in a series of local shopping strip advertising blotters. They provide interesting contemporary language about the businesses.

We like especially:

• the handy shop that can sell ice cream and school books;
• the laundry’s advice ‘don’t kill the wife-let us do the dirty work’ – does this mean blotters are more likely to be on the husband’s desk? and
• the ‘Le Rendezvous book club’; sounds like a way to meet fellow readers for more than discussions about new books;

A quick search found no advertising in newspapers for the shops, so this might be a useful source of information for a local historian. Note the instruction to use the other side to blot.

We had more joy with this blotter dating this blotter: the auctioneer, Edward G. Sutton, advertised in newspapers from 1943 to 1954. So we have a broad but firmer time frame for the production of these large blotters.

More uses than blotting

This blotter doubles as a business card with the details of a planned call from a salesman typed into the blotter.

This smaller blotter was produced by the Commonwealth Oil Refineries Ltd and was designed to be useful with its calendar and ruler. But it is only so useful.