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