Hornby Railway Co enamel lapel badge 1930s

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Here is a lovely enamel badge for the Hornby Railway Company. The front has a simplified and flat-colour steam loco. The slight curve of the track gives the design a kind of dynamic depth-of-field, in spite of the flat-colour enamel.

On the back. it’s got a crescent fitting to go through the buttonhole on the lapel of your jacket. These buttonholes have more-or-less disappeared from modern menswear…so this badge is slightly anachronistic…like albert, half-alberts and fobs.

I love these kinds of badges…lovely design, wonderful quality, and not expensive. That’s good for collecting. As you might expect, I have quite a few badges around the house, in little piles!

Every house should have a badge box. And a button box, and a family box of Christmas decorations passed down the generations…it’s part of proper family life.

Peter Blake was famous for having a denim jacket covered with badges…he pained himself wearing it in 1961…

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Art and fashion combined in the 1960s to produce a new visual language for young people in Britain…

I’m a bit shocked that there are so few badges at UAL.

This badge is posted for my friend, Alan Baines. He’ll love it.

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2 Responses to Hornby Railway Co enamel lapel badge 1930s

  1. Alan Baines says:

    Thanks Paul – lovely homage to Frank Hornby’s world of Meccano & Hornby trains.
    Alan

  2. ANDREW LEWIS says:

    This coloured enamel badge is from the 1950’s not the 1930’s. It succeeded a blue enamel badge that was issued in the 1940’s and possibly earlier.
    Kind regards
    Andrew Lewis
    Woking, Surrey UK

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