The Hoge Brush Company Files, Vol. 13

[Note: For background on the "Hoge Brush Company Files" series, click here; to see all the entries in the series so far, click here.]

Don't you hate it when there's a missing piece to a puzzle? That's the situation with our latest letter from the files of the Hoge Brush Company, which was sent in 1954 by the firm of A. Steiert & Son (which, judging by the letterhead design, appears to have been another company in the broom business).

The letter is a deliciously understated dig at Hoge executive Carl Werheim, as follows:

Your letter, Mr. Werheim -

… reveals an entirely different viewpoint in the purchasing of Bass Fibre than is prevalent or customary practice.

There are so many deviations in your thinking from the prevalent practice that I couldn't begin to write about all of them in this letter.

Old Man Steiert

Ouch! I love that the letter is from "Old Man Steiert" (presumably to distinguish him from "& Son"), and that he signed his name as "O.M.S."

Unfortunately, we don't know what Mr. Werheim wrote to provoke this note from Mr. Steiert, nor do we know how Mr. Werheim responded. Frustrating!

A. Steiert & Son is no longer in business. They were apparently still an ongoing concern in 1973, when they were the appellants in this Workmen's Compensation case, but I'm not sure when they ceased operations. If anyone knows more, feel free to be in touch.

(My continued thanks to Joanna and David Zwiep for sharing the Hoge Brush Company letters with me.)

The Hoge Brush Company Files, Vol. 12

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[Note: For background on the "Hoge Brush Company Files" series, click here; to see all the entries in the series so far, click here.]

I mentioned in our last entry that I'm a big fan of functional specificity, and that makes a good segue for our latest letter from the files of the Hoge Brush Company, which was sent in 1952 by a Massachusetts concern called Abel's Brush Center.

As you can see, the letter refers to a "tennis court brush," and a note at the end of the letter says there's an enclosed photo of the brush. Sure enough, there was a photo taped to the back of the letter:

Interesting — and very functionally specific! I'd never seen a broom or brush like this before, so I googled "tennis court broom" and found that the basic design concept hasn't changed much over the past 60-some years:

So there you go — tennis brushes. Who knew?

(My continued thanks to Joanna and David Zwiep for sharing the Hoge Brush Company letters with me.)

• • • • •

Update: In our last entry, I explored the topic of letterhead designs featuring architectural renderings. That prompted a comment from reader Will S, who brings the news that the Columbia University Library has a collection of over 1,300 letters written on stationery designs featuring architectural vignettes. Fantastic stuff — check it out here.

The Hoge Brush Company Files, Vol. 11

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[Note: For background on the "Hoge Brush Company Files" series, click here; to see all the entries in the series so far, click here.]

There are few things I like better than functional specificity, and it doesn't get much more functionally specific than a business called the Tubular Rivet and Stud Company. They sent the letter shown above, another treasure from our ongoing look into the Hoge Brush Company files.

The letter pretty well speaks for itself. What interests me is the letterhead design, which shows an aerial view of Tubular Rivet and Stud's vast factory complex. This was a common mid-century letterhead motif (we've seen it in one of the previous letters to Hoge Brush, and it appears on several other letters I'll eventually be presenting in this series), capturing the essence of America's smokestack-driven industrial might.

I've always believed, perhaps naively, that the factories shown in these illustrations were accurate representations of the companies on whose letterhead they appeared. So when I saw the sprawling complex depicted on the Tubular Rivet and Stud letter, I thought to myself, "Wow, they must have been making a lot of rivets!" But then I began to feel a creeping skepticism. Nobody needed that big a factory just to make rivets, right? What a sucker I'd been to believe that these letterhead illustrations were authentic representations — they were probably just stock renderings!

I wanted to know what Tubular Rivet and Stud's factory really looked like, so I started poking around on the web. The company no longer exists, but I quickly found an old promotional piece with another overhead factory shot (click to enlarge):

I initially thought this illustration showed a completely different factory complex than the one shown on the letterhead. Upon closer inspection, however, they do appear to be the same facility (click to enlarge):

Hmmmm, so does that mean this was truly the Tubular Rivet factory, or does it simply mean that they consistently used the same bogus representation? I poked around a bit more and found two photos that show very limited views of the company's plant in 1919 (click to enlarge):

At first I thought there was no way to match up these photos with the letterhead illustration, because the photos provided such tight views. But it turns out that one of them does appear to match a section of the illo. Check it out (click to enlarge):

Okay, I'm convinced — the factory shown on Tubular Rivet and Stud's letterhead was an accurate representation of their facility. But what about other companies? Did any of them use stock factory renderings, or were they all legit? If anyone knows more about this aspect of mid-century letterhead design, please feel free to enlighten me.

(My continued thanks to Joanna and David Zwiep for sharing the Hoge Brush Company letters with me.)

The Hoge Brush Company Files, Vol. 10

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[Note: For background on the "Hoge Brush Company Files" series, click here; to see all the entries in the series so far, click here.]

I like curling — the funny sport with the rocks and the brooms. Several years ago I wrote an article about my first curling experience, and I've continued to play now that curling is available in Brooklyn, where I live. (Our local curling club even has its own pin.) So I was really pleased to see that the Hoge Brush Company files included a letter from a Saskatchewan producer of curling brooms, called the Broom-Craft Co.

Unfortunately, the letter is a sad one, as it concerns the death of one of Broom-Craft's sales representatives. Still, the letter reads almost like a testimonial to curling instead of a death notification:

He passed away last evening in a Curling Game. Cliff had a very bad heart and was told not to over-exercise, but it was his game. His two boys were with him and I guess Cliff just swept too furiously. He fell on the ice and died immediately. I don't think Cliff would have asked to leave in any other way.

It's not clear if Cliff was using the Skipper — the Broom-Craft product touted at the bottom of the letterhead — when he "swept too furiously," although that seems like a reasonable assumption.

The letter's second paragraph has an odd, dreamy tone — "Will get them shipped some day, I guess." Unusual for a business letter, but rather charming.

As it happens, the Hoge Brush Company files include a second letter from Broom-Craft, this one dated about a year and a half after the first one. They had redesigned their letterhead to promote several broom models in addition to the Skipper (click to enlarge):

Both letters are signed "Jim," so I'm assuming they're from the same person. Jim's tone remains somewhat breezy (it appears to have been his nature), although the underlined "fifteen minute" reference in the first sentence is a bit pointed. Can't tell if that was meant to poke fun at himself, or at Hoge exec Carl Werheim (the addressee), or if Jim was genuinely pissed off that he didn't get to have a longer visit.

As far as I can tell, the Broom-Craft Co. is no longer in business. By odd coincidence, the town in which they operated — Regina, Saskatchewan — is currently home to a "witchcraft supply shop" called the Broom Closet, which makes for some interesting search results when one tries to Google "Broom-Craft Regina." It's not clear whether the Skipper or any other curling brooms can double as witches' brooms, but I'd like to think that Jim would have taken a characteristically affable approach to such a client.

(My continued thanks to Joanna and David Zwiep for sharing the Hoge Brush Company letters with me.)

The Hoge Brush Company Files, Vol. 9

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[Note: For background on the "Hoge Brush Company Files" series, click here; to see all the entries in the series so far, click here.]

We recently saw a letter from the Hoge Brush Company files that was typed on a sheet of letterhead with a rather tasteless design. The same can be said, unfortunately, for this latest entry, which was sent by the Indian River Yacht Basin of Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, in 1949.

In case you can't make out the graphic in the top-left corner, here's a closer look:

Seriously?

That isn't just tasteless. It's embarrassing.

If you can look past the letterhead design, there's one item of interest here: The last line of the handwritten note toward the bottom appears to say, "They have the dex." I suspect "dex" was slang for "deck brushes," which were referenced in the letter. I like the idea that brush companies had little phonetic shorthand terms like "dex." It's a lot like journalism, where a headline is a "hed," a paragraph is a "graf," and so on.

The Indian River Yacht Basin does not appear to be in business, although Rehoboth Beach does have an Indian River Marina, which may be essentially the same thing with a slightly revised name. I did find several Indian River Yacht Basin postcards, however. Judging from the cars shown on this one, it probably dates from the 1940s, which was when the letter to Hoge Brush was sent (for all of these, you can click to enlarge):

Then there's this one (it doesn't say "Yacht Basin" on the front, but it does on the back):

And finally there's this one (I'm showing the text from the back so you can see the Indian River connection, which wouldn't otherwise be apparent):

It's nice to see that none of these postcards had any imagery like the illustration on the letterhead.

(My continued thanks to Joanna and David Zwiep for sharing the Hoge Brush Company letters with me.)