Grecon Brooches - Part II

Regular readers might remember a blog I posted in October last year about Grecon brooches. (The blog can be found here.)

Grecon brooches from my own collection.

In it I featured these little badges which I believed to be Grecon, despite the obvious differences to Miss Cohn's better-known dolls' house dolls.

Well I'm very pleased to report that I now know for certain that they are Grecon!

I mentioned in my last post (A Day to Remember!) that there were a few post-WWII documents in with Miss Cohn's largely Pre-WWII archive and to my absolute delight, the design registration documents for these little figures were amongst them.

Whether or not they were being produced before the start of WWII I don't know, but certainly Miss Cohn was quick to register their design once the war had begun, because the registrations were dated 9th of October, 1939 - so just over a month later.

There were three registrations, each referring to a black and white photo of a single figure (unlike the doubles and triple shown above): an airman, a soldier and a grenadier guard, all exactly like those in my photo - although I can't, of course, be 100% sure of the uniform colours. 

The photos in the registrations were front- and back-views of the figures and the back-view did not include a safety pin. 

However, there were a further two items relating to these little characters in the archive.  One was a cutting from a 1939 edition of Woman's Weekly with an advert on it for a "little woolly hand-made brooch", available from Peter Robinson's in Oxford Street, London and including a drawing of a brooch featuring a pair of soldiers.

The second item was a Dickins & Jones catalogue from Christmas 1941 which included an entry for: "Service Favours. Wear a Mascot Brooch to show your preference for airmen, soldiers, jack tars, or naval officers." and featured a drawing of a pair each of soldiers, sailors and naval officers.

I found it very interesting to see Miss Cohn, who I have always thought of as quite proprietorial with her Grecon brand, allowing her brooches to be sold unbranded by these two companies. 

It was also interesting to note that the figures shown in the registrations did not have the side-ways looking eyes seen on the grenadier guard shown above, which I guessed to be slightly later brooch, so that theory is looking good (or at least it's yet to be disproved!)

So, another piece of the giant Grecon jigsaw is slotted into place - fab!

Until next time,

Zoe