Back in nineteen-seventy-when? a young me wrote to the Astra Fireworks Company for some samples of their firework labels – the examples here are from the collectionette I received by return. Within a few years, the postwar explosion of richly decorated British firework packaging had suddenly fizzled out and most firework production had reverted to its original source, China.
Now our fireworks are designed to appeal to the Michael Bay generation, named ‘Street Legal’, ‘Air Strike’, ‘Big Bad Dangerez’ (whatever that means) and so on, their packaging fit only to be viewed in the dark. UK ‘Bonfire Night’ never went away but got transformed into two weeks of shock & awe nervously monitored by the Noise Abatement and Dead Pets’ Societies. Thanks to Health & Safety we must now ‘stand well back and be well amazed’. As if looking at the TV, watching Baghdad burn.
Remember Remember is a wonderful exhibition in conjunction with The Museum of British Folklore at stately Warwickshire art gallery Compton Verney (past events include The Tulse Luper Suitcases) that vividly reminded me of what we have lost. Revisiting fire festivals going back centuries, the exhibition also focuses in delightful detail on post-war packaging & presentation of fireworks in Britain. Names like ‘Martian Ray’, ‘Barrel of Imps’ and ‘Mine of Serpents’ evoke a more innocent time. Simple designs, largely by semi-skilled employees rather than designers, printed in limited colour have all the character, wit and fun of what used to be a thrilling, intimate and accessible celebration of darkness, fire & sausage rolls.
Bonfire accidents did of course happen, leading to our modern, more nervous appreciation of the explosive arts. The old packages themselves are rich in the happier accidents of misregistration and other side-effects of simple printing. Such charms seem lost to our designer age and its cold digital print and web reproduction technologies.
If you are within day-trip distance of the Fosse Way, ‘Remember Remember’ at Compton Verney continues until early December 2011. Well worth a look and the book-of-the-show is good too.
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