Street Jewellery - Enamelled Posters and Collecting Interest in Denmark

In Denmark, enamelled posters made their appearance somewhat later than in Britain. The earliest mass produced enamelled advertising poster in Denmark dates from 1893. But it was not until after the year 1900 that enamelled posters gained a real foothold. Their breakthrough came with the British firm of Reckitt & Colman, which in 1901 established a Danish agency for its brands Brasso, Reckitt and Zebra. The firm supplied thousands of flat enamelled posters to Danish retailers. Before the First World War it were mostly foreign manufacturers of proprietary articles that supplied enamelled posters to Denmark, particularly for chocolate and technical products such as bicycles.

During the First World War Danish companies began in earnest to exploit advertising by enamelled posters. It started with enamelled posters for breweries. The majority of the posters were manufactured in Germany, and the British enamel works never succeeded in conquering the Danish market. The German influence also meant that convex posters were the most common. After 1932 the convex enamelled posters were superseded by flat posters with turned-in edges. Most of the enamelled posters manufactured were of moderate size; thus only 20 per cent of the grand total of all different signs are larger than 80 x 50 centimetres.

Picture captions:

Picture 1.

Denmark’s oldest enamelled advertising poster from 1893. In 1881, the Carlsberg Breweries had the Swastika registered as its trade mark. It is an old Nordic peace symbol which in 1933 was sullied as a symbol for Nazi-Germany and all it stood for with the “Aryan race”, “Lebensraum” and anti-Semitism.

Picture 2.

Glud & Marstrand’s advertisement for their own enamelled posters, doubling as an advertisement for enamelled kitchenware.

Picture 3.

In 1928, the Tuborg Brewery launched Boy Beer, a special beer for sale in the tropical parts of Latin America and Africa. Today, it would be politically very un-correct to name a product after a black person who was a servant and whose life was spent in seeing to the needs of the symbol of contemporary colonial power, a white person.

Picture 4.

The best known of all Danish enamelled posters, Adamas Cigarettes from 1927. In the inter-war years, products in Denmark were often given English-sounding names. Today, this is a classic enamelled poster, known all over Europe.

Picture 5.

The Cunard White Star Line carried many Danes to the United States and Canada. When the company placed the Queen Mary in service in 1936, this enamelled poster was made and displayed at 100 Danish agencies.

Picture 6.

Two enamelled posters which 75 years ago were regarded as most indecent by evangelical circles. A lady dressed in a corset only and a gentleman in a bathroom with dangling bracers advertising razor blades. In 1937, the latter advertisement was stigmatized by a Conservative politician in the Danish Parliament as “nature pornography”.