A Pair of Huntley & Palmers ‘Literature’ Novelty Biscuit Tins, 1901

A Pair of Huntley & Palmers ‘Literature’ Novelty Biscuit Tins, 1901

A wonderfully decorative pair of Huntley & Palmers ‘Literature’ biscuit tins, made in Reading, England, in 1901.

Each lithographed tinplate box is ingeniously designed to resemble a bundle of eight richly bound books, their spines decorated in jewel-like shades of red, green, ochre and brown with elaborate gilt-effect tooling.

The individual volumes are titled History of England, Pilgrim’s Progress, Burns, Pickwick Papers, Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver’s Travels, Self Help and Shakespeare.

The books are held together by a simulated green leather strap with buckle, creating a remarkably convincing trompe-l’œil effect.

Huntley & Palmers introduced their first book-form biscuit tin, the ‘Library’, in 1900, followed by the

‘Literature’ design in 1901. The book tins proved enormously successful and became one of the company’s most celebrated novelty designs. Reading Museum records that more than 650,000 book-shaped tins in ten different variations were produced between 1900 and 1924.

By the turn of the twentieth century, Huntley & Palmers was the world’s largest biscuit manufacturer and had become renowned for its extraordinarily inventive packaging. Advances in offset lithography allowed its associated tin manufacturer, Huntley, Boorne & Stevens, to produce increasingly elaborate containers disguised as everyday objects, intended to be retained and used decoratively long after their original contents had been consumed.

Height: 15 x 14 x 16