Hall's STATE Toffee Tin / Inkwell and Stationery Box

This delightful 1930s toffee tin looks from the outside like a faux-timber box, with each end decorated with a little girl and a little boy holding a Hall's Toffee (English).

When you open the lid, there is a metal tray, with an indent for your pen, and two brown ceramic inkwells (one for blue/black, one for red ink).

Lift out the tray and you can store your writing paper, envelopes and stamps in the box below.  I am guessing these were a novelty Christmas item, probably sold full of toffees but with a practical use for Daddy after the toffees were eaten.
I am sure when it was new the outside tin really did look like fine marquetry timbers.

 Just another inkwell from our collection, 

the fun of collecting inkwells is the diversity of the objects.

2011 Australian National Antique Bottle & Collectables Show / Bendigo Vic.

Every year the Australian Antique Bottle and Collectables collectors gather for their National Competitive Exhibition and swap and sell weekend.  This year's host club was BENDIGO, in Victoria, and collectors travelled from all over Australia (including a large group from W.A.), and another group from New Zealand to exhibit their collections.

The Competition is grouped into 'Categories' and my husband Vic and I always enter some of our Inkwells in that category.  This year I showed my Collection of 'Travel Inks', small wells produced in a variety of novelty shapes.

Vic decided this year to show some of our Stoneware Inkwells, dating from 1830 to 1910.
Part of the fun is making up a display (you are only allowed to show TEN ITEMS for judging), and adding a few interesting, but not too many, go-with items.  When you have over a hundred to choose from, picking just 10 is very difficult.

Vic's display was given a 1st prize, based on rarity, variety, condition, display and information.

We had a great weekend in Bendigo, met up with many friends we have made over the years, collectors from all over Australia, and I even managed to come home WITHOUT buying any more inkwells.

There are not many now we would be interested in acquiring, 20+ years of collecting them means we really have all we set out to collect.

from RUSSIA with LOVE ~ The Czar Bell Inkwell

This is an inkwell from our collection with a little story behind it.

At the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games Russian walker, George Klimov, became acquainted with local Aussie athlete Ray Smith, they trained together and exchanged ideas on training and technique.  After his return to Moscow Klimov sent Ray an inkwell resembling the Czar Bell, which weighed 200 tons and was rated as the largest bell in the world.  

The Bell  was cast in the mid-1700s and was intended for the belfry of Ivan The Great, but during a fire in the Kremlin in May of 1737  the bell cracked when the fire was extinguished.

It remained at the foundry for more than 100 years, in 1836 it was lifted, and an 11 ton piece broke off.  

The surface of the original bell is decorated with convex images, ornaments, pictures and inscriptions, including the names of the casters, Ivan Motorin and his son Michail.

This small inkwell replica of that broken bell arrived in Melbourne in 1957.

It was obviously then a popular Moscow Souvenir, as it came in its own decorated cardboard box with a small leaflet in 4 languages.

We were very fortunate, several years ago, to purchase this from Ray Smith's estate.  A piece of Melbourne Olympic history.

Bulldogs -- that don't bite

Another favourite Inkwell in the collection is this American double well.  It is in the style commonly referred to as Snail inks, where the glass well can be rotated open in the metal stand to reveal the ink, and then rotated closed to seal it and keep the ink from evaporating.

As you can see, the glass part does resemble a 'snail'.  These are found in single, double and triple wells for various ink colours.

Our American Inkwell has the two glass 'snails' represented in white (milkglass), in the form of two Bull Dog Heads,  One for blue ink, one for red ink, on a metal frame with provision for a penrest.

Florence Barlow DOULTON Lambeth Isobath Inkwell

One of my favourite inkwells in the collection is this stoneware inkwell from Doulton, Lambeth UK ca. 1880 decorated by their renowned Bird artist Miss Florence Barlow.

The overall inkwell design is a patented fountain well called an ISOBATH, exclusive to the Thomas De La Rue company. There is an internal float that ensure that just the right amount of ink is in the little opening at any time. 

The whole thing is mounted on an oak wood inkstand, with grooves for the pens to rest.

The delicate detail of the birds and the leaves is remarkable when you realize that they are drawn, in reverse, with wet coloured clay into the mould before the item is fired.  This shows every brush stroke for the 'feathers'
Florence Barlow was an expert at this type of decoration, known as 'pate-sur-pate'