Pennant Fever
EXAMINING 20th CENTURY FELT NOVELTY COMPANIES AND THEIR PRODUCTS
Founded: 1908 Closed: 1935 Locations: 29 W. 34th St., Manhattan, NY (1908-11); 81 Prospect St., Brooklyn, NY (ca. 1911-17); 351 Jay St., Brooklyn, NY (ca. 1917-21); and 174 Duffield St., Brooklyn, NY (ca. 1921-35) Maker's marks: Primarily sewn labels featuring the company's name and/or registered trade mark, which by 1911 consisted of several variations of a tiger illustration. Occasional use of copyright marks beside certain works of art between 1909-15. *** Based upon your feedback since my last post, it’s apparent: very few of you value 1990s-era pennants—or have any interest in reading about anything made after 1969. Well, so be it. I made my case. As Coach Belichick would say, “We’re on to Cincinnati.” (Literally!) Let’s move on. This time, you’re in luck. In this post, we’re turning the clock back to the early 20th century; a time when the novelty pennant was in its infancy; and pennant makers were constantly searching for more innovative processes for making better, cheaper products. In this post, we’ll take a close look at a company that not only changed the way pennants were made; but, the way a whole lot of other goods were manufactured: everything from commercial advertisements to graphic t-shirts. Today, we refer to their process as “screen printing”; and the company responsible for successfully employing this novel method was none other than The Reproduction Company of New York, NY. |
Above: This 1907 rendering by F. Earl Christy depicts a young woman clutching a megaphone and oversized pennant cheering on her team. Note that every black/orange segment of this pennant had to be sewed together. Source: Library of Congress. | Sure, technological innovations, such as the dye cutter and the electric sewing machine, no doubt helped manufacturers produce more and more of these “sewed letter pennants,” as they were eventually called; but, they nevertheless remained a labor of love. Which meant: they couldn’t be sold cheaply. This is why, up until about 1908, the novelty pennant was largely restricted to college students. |
Well, before 1908, the way to do this involved the relief or letterpress printing method. In short, the process involved etching a negative of your design into a block of wood; coating it with ink; then stamping the design on to a felt substrate; and finally, coloring the resulting image using a paint brush or airbrush. There were of course limits to this process. The ink dispersion was extremely thin and superficial, resulting in only a faint outline of the desired image. To improve contrast, the ink utilized had to be dark; typically black. The felt substrate had to be light, usually white. This is also why many pennants from this era were of two-piece construction: the head-end of pennants made using the relief/letterpress method had to be a light color; otherwise the graphic illustration thereon would never show. This was the state of pennant making in America as President Theodore Roosevelt was wrapping up his second term in office. | Above: This ca. 1900s Univ. of Chicago pennant by unknown maker was made using the relief/letterpress method. Although it did produce a graphic illustration, the quality was poor; and the process did little to minimize production costs because everything else still had to be sewed on. Source: feltfootball.com. |
Above: Exterior of The Hispanic Society Museum and Library, located in the upper west side of Manhattan. Opened in 1908, a third floor was added in 1910 as part of an expansion designed by Charles Pratt Huntington, architect; and built by John Clark Udall as general contractor. The building stands today as one of the sole remaining projects built by Udall. Source: hispanicsociety.org. | As far I can tell, Udall was not involved in the pennant making business prior to 1907. Actually, he was listed as a builder by trade, and would go on to run a number of companies, including a successful construction firm and real estate company in the years ahead. What's more, two of the men he would task with running his pennant making companies had construction backgrounds; not any obvious printing experience, as you might imagine. And, by 1912 Udall was part of a select group of affluent Connecticut residents rich enough to own and register a motor vehicle with the state. |
Reproduction Co. So that takes us to 1908. Sometime that summer, a second company was formed. This one too was incorporated under the laws of the state of New York. Coincidentally, it was physically located at 29 W. 34th St. in Manhattan, NY—which, when it opened, was where Netograph was then located. This company was of course The Reproduction Co. Based on my latest research, it looks as if Repco occupied the third floor of this multi-story building. On that same block stood the famed Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, which was razed in the late 1920s to make room for the Empire State Building. | Above: 29 W. 34th St., in mid-town Manhattan, NY as it appeared in 1905. This slender 12-story building once housed both the Netograph Mfg. Co. and Reproduction Co. in the late 1900s. Source: chronobook.com. |
Presidential election of 1908 As I noted in my prologue, up until 1908, the felt novelty pennant was largely restricted to college students due to its high production costs, which generated retail prices anywhere between $2 and $5 a piece, depending on the intricacies of the design. And as I previously mentioned, J.C. Udall set out to change this. Using the patented stencil making processes he licensed from his business partner the previous fall, Netograph perfected a process for making high quality, polychromatic pennants, for a fraction of the costs their competitors were enduring. Which meant they were free to sell their pennants as souvenirs, advertisements, even promotional items for comparatively low retail prices. All they needed was a large gathering of travelers looking to bring home a cheap souvenir. | Above: Chicago Coliseum, June of 1908, host venue for the Republican National Convention. Source: Chicago Historical Society. |
Above: The sidewheeler City of Cincinnati is seen steaming down the Ohio River into her home port and namesake in this ca. 1910 photo--which is where our story heads next! Source: Univ. of Wisconsin Libraries - Digitized Collections. | What became of Pindikowsky? It appears he fled New York to avoid civil and possibly criminal liability. He soon settled in Cincinnati. (I told you we'd end up there!) There, in January of 1909, he set up a rival company specializing in reproductions of fine art, e.g., oil paintings. He named his new firm the Pindikowsky Art Mfg. Co., what else? In April of 1909, he even had the audacity of applying for copyrights under this trade name. |
Above: Excerpted renderings from J.C. Udall's patent application (with color enhancements by Pennant Fever). Figure #3 shows the back side of the plate, with mesh stretched over and pasted on to the plate's four edges; figure #2 shows the same plate from the top; and figure #1 shows the finished stencil once cut and peeled from the front side of the plate. Source: uspto.gov. | On December 26, 1908, J.C. Udall filed Letters Patent No. 929,730 with the US Patent Office “for certain new and useful improvements in the process of making stencils.” The Udall Process, as prescribed in his patent, involved: (1) stretching a mesh fabric against a polished metal plate and securing it around the edges of the back side of said plate with paste; (2) coating the open side of the mesh with coats of photo-sensitive emulsion; (3) once dry, placing a transparency of the desired image atop the dried emulsion (in a dark room); (4) exposing the transparency and dried emulsion to the action of light; (5) after removing the transparency, washing out the unexposed (and water soluble) portions of the emulsion coating, which were blocked from the light due to the transparency placed atop it during step #4; (6) allowing everything to dry while still adhering together; and (7) cutting the mesh from the backside of the plate, then gently peeling the resulting stencil off the polished plate. If you did all these steps correctly, you were left with a mesh-made stencil that was perfectly flat and capable of reproducing highly detailed images on a variety of different substrates when paint was applied through it. |
Above: This vintage stencil was developed and used by the Chicago Pennant Co. to "screen print" felt banners for the Univ. of Texas in the 1970s. Within a few years after the Udall Process was popularized, printers ditched the polished metal plate in exchange for a wooden frame. These screens offered considerable advantages, viz., more protection for the stencil. | Perhaps a brief digression on screen printing is necessary before proceeding further. Today, we call this process of ornamenting fabric “screen printing” because the stencils utilized are made on a proper screen, i.e., a silk or polyester meshing stretched tightly across a wooden or aluminum frame. In 1908, however, these stencils were not yet made on screens; they were just loosened pieces of mesh fabric hardened by the exposed portions of the developed stencil. Because a screen was not (yet) part of the process, pennant makers referred to and marketed these early pennants as “process pennants” or “art process pennants.” Eventually the metal plate was replaced by a proper screen, and that change would give rise to the term “screen printing,” which everyone today is familiar with. |
Almost immediately, Netograph—and its competitors—could see the tremendous benefits this process yielded. Not only did it cut down on the sewing needed to make a pennant, the printing quality was far superior than any of the other printing methods being used to make pennants in the early 1900s, like the aforementioned relief/letterpress method; and use of the open stencil; each of which had their drawbacks. | Above: This 1909-dated souvenir pennant commemorating the inauguration of President Wm. Howard Taft, by Rudolph Bros. of Philadelphia, PA, was made using an open stencil. Note the letter font used. This method required a stencil-friendly script to accommodate the "ties" that held the stencil in one piece. And the portrait? The only way to replicate it was to glue the photo directly on to the pennant. Until the Udall Process came out, no printing process could replicate detailed halftones on a medium like felt. |
Above: 344 Fairmount Ave., Jamestown, NY as seen in 2023. 113 years earlier, this building stood as H.A. West's home/office situated in western New York. This was the patent lawyer's command post for three years while skillfully litigating the case of Udall, et al. v. Pindikowsky, et al., a.k.a., Reproduction Co. v. Kosmos Art Co. Source: GoogleMaps.com. | For better or worse, this is where the topic of patent infringement enters our story. Thankfully for Repco, they had a good lawyer on retainer named H. Albertus West, a.k.a., H.A. West. H.A. West was an established patent lawyer from Jamestown, NY. In fact, he was the same attorney that prepared J.C. Udall’s application for Letters Patent No. 929,730 back in December of 1908. And, earlier that summer, he was the one that made inquiries with the US Patent Office in search of Alexander Pindikowsky’s three patents supposedly on file. On that note, please allow me to re-introduce the villain of our story. After fleeing Netograph, you’ll recall, Alexander Pindikowsky fled New York City for Cincinnati where he launched the rival Pindikowsky Art Mfg. Co. in January of 1909. Immediately, he began making pennants. All indications are these pennants were made using Udall’s process—whose patent application still remained pending in Washington at the time. By May of 1909, however, Pindikowsky’s new firm ran out of cash; and the business went into receivership. It looked like the end of the line for the con-man…. |
Above: 29 W. 34th St., Manhattan, NY as it appeared in 1946, well after Repco vacated the premises. In December of 1910, defendant W.H. Boone traveled here from Cincinnati to meet with J.C. Udall, James Baker, and complainants' counsel, H.A. West in an effort to resolve the lawsuit. Source: chronobook.com. | By December of 1909 efforts immediately commenced to resolve the suit. In mid-December W.H. Boone boarded a train and traveled to Repco’s Manhattan office on 34th St. There, he met with J.C. Udall, James E. Baker, and of course their lawyer, H.A. West. According to West’s sworn affidavit, Boone freely admitted that Kosmos had been making pennants using Udall’s recently patented process; however, Boone at all times believed this was totally lawful based on his partner’s (false) representations that he/they/Kosmos controlled the patents to these methods. Boone then added that Pindikowsky split town after receiving his subpoena; but not before absconding with “considerable sums of money” intended for Kosmos’ employee payroll. Finally, Boone claimed Kosmos had not been profitable in its first six months in business. |
You can only imagine complainants’ shock upon learning of Boone’s apparent deception. After no doubt learning of Boone’s new patent, H.A. West visited Cincinnati on July 15, 1910 to confront Boone. There, he found that Kosmos Art Co. had relocated to a new site elsewhere in town: 120 E. 6th St. Inside, he observed that Kosmos had been at work producing highly detailed pictorial pennants the likes of which could only have been made using a process identical (or substantially similar) to Udall’s. H.A. West now knew he and his clients had been duped! With this deception in mind, complainants decided to pivot: their lawsuit versus Boone/Kosmos for patent infringement would continue; but now, they would seek both injunctive relief and monetary damages against them. It would be a full court press. | Above: 120 E. 6th St., Cin'ti in July of 2022. The building was once owned by W.H. Boone’s wealthy uncle, Wm. A. Boone, who not only loaned his nephew the necessary funds to start Kosmos Art Co.; but, a comfortable place to make pennants on the top floor. Source: GoogleMaps.com. |
Above: Hon. Howard C. Hollister, District Judge, US Circuit Court, Southern District of Ohio (1910-19). Appointed to the bench by fellow Cincinnatian Wm. Howard Taft, the two lawyers were very familiar with each other. Source: ballotpedia.org | Judge Hollister was appointed to the US Circuit Court, Southern District of Ohio on February 24, 1910. He was assigned to this case shortly thereafter. Who appointed Judge Hollister to the federal bench? Answer: President William Howard Taft. Like Judge Hollister, President Taft spent much of his legal career practicing law in Cincinnati in the late 19th century. There’s no question Judge Hollister had profound admiration for the 27th president. H.A. West, counsel for complainants, surely realized this. I don’t believe it was a coincidence he entered a Taft souvenir pennant into evidence to convince the judge of the superiority behind Repco’s pennant making process. |
Above: 1914 advertisement in The Rotarian for Kosmos Art Co. The young company had to overcome some rather insurmountable obstacles in its first five years in business: Pindikowsky's desertion; Pindikowsky's fraud; a three year legal battle with Repco, et al. ending in an injunction to cease all further use of their own patent; and yet, come 1914, they were still in business; and still making pennants, as indicated in this ad. | Kosmos apparently never stopped making pennants, even while defending the lawsuit. According to the Special Master, they continued making process pennants after March of 1911 by transitioning to what was known as the Raymond Process, an English printing technique, which required no metal plate whatsoever. By the early 1920s, they were still listed in multiple trade journals as a pennant maker, and still working out of the same factory on 6th St. in Cincinnati. It’s not clear when they ceased making pennants, but the company remained in business through the mid-1940s, with W.H. Boone still listed as proprietor. |
Now, patenting your printing process was not exactly unique to Repco. By 1915, other pennant makers, like Langrock Bros., Prudential Art Co., and Annin all unveiled screen printed pennant lines of their own; and whatever novel improvements they made to make their stencils, they also patented. But copyrighting artwork, however, was much less common. Evidently, the value of this artwork wasn’t nearly as valuable as the process that generated it. By the 1920s, the practice of copyrighting one's art fell out of favor, and you almost never saw copyright marks on pennants again until the 1970s, and thereafter, when it became ubiquitous. | Above: Prudential Art Co. was the official pennant vendor of the Pan Pacific Int'l Exposition, held in San Francisco, CA in 1915. Like Repco, their "PROCESS PENNANTS" were similarly made; and, they also copyrighted their art with a "©PACO" mark. |
Although Repco had a sales catalogue of its own, they also partnered with retail giants Sears, Roebuck & Co. and A.G. Spalding &. Bros., two of the biggest retailers of the day. These companies each circulated mail-in catalogues of their own to millions of their customers situated all throughout the nation. And because their work was in such demand, Repco’s pennants were prominently showcased on these pages. In some instances, these Repco-made pennants either bore the label of the retailer; or, in most cases, no label at all. These national distribution platforms represented a financial windfall for Repco. In the 1910s, the Sears catalogue was like the Amazon.com of its day. If your merch was being sold there, you could bet on your sales going through the roof. | Top: 1915 excerpt from a Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalogue. Shows “Fraternal Pennants,” among others, by Repco. Once available for $0.40 each, when adjusted for inflation, this equates to about $12 in 2023 dollars. Below: Surviving AF & AM fraternal order pennant, bearing a Repco label on reverse, once available via Sears’ catalogue. |
Above: September 8, 1921 advertisement in The Printer’s Ink, by Repco, seeking sales agents with ties to the indoor advertising industry. | There’s no question Repco 2.0’s business focused on indoor advertising, as had been the case in the latter half of the 1910s. Indeed, by 1922, the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce listed the company as an advertising firm—not a manufacturer of novelty items. That being the case, the 1924 edition of the American Stationer did still associate the company with the sale of felt pennants and emblems. |
Label #2 (ca. 1911), 81 Prospect St., Brooklyn, NY Perhaps the worst label of all time. For one thing, there's no mention of the maker's name anywhere on it. Nor is there any mention of the company's address. There is, however, a rather sub-par rendering of a tiger on it ... which the company apparently tried to trade mark (unsuccessfully?); along with more definitive legalese declaring "PROCESS PATENTED." As you can imagine, this label causes the most confusion today among collectors. |
Label #3 (ca. 1911-12), 81 Prospect St., Brooklyn, NY Okay, apparently I wasn't the only one complaining about label #2 above. This one's better inasmuch as it identified the company by name; and, it did include New York City; but it would've been nice if it had specified what borough: Manhattan or Brooklyn. This added detail would help us better date the item since we know they moved to Brooklyn in April of 1911. |
Label #4 (ca. 1912-15), 81 Prospect St., Brooklyn, NY This was the final label used by Repco as a maker's mark. By 1913, someone in the art department realized that lame tiger profile drawing wasn't impressing anyone. This tiger head presented much more detail; and looked far more ferocious. In some instances, Repco even cut the label into a circle before sewing it on. |
Label #5 (ca. 1910s) - Salesman's sample Most likely, this label adorned a salesman's sample. Repco, as with other pennant makers of the day, used a network of independent sales agents across the country to sell their wares. Each was supplied with a trunk full of sample pennants exemplifying the many styles available. |
Concessionaire's mark #1 - A.G. Spalding & Bros. (ca. 1910) Spalding did not make pennants; but they sure sold them via their sales catalogue. Many of Spalding's collegiate and professional baseball pennants were supplied by Repco. Look for some obviously Repco-made pennants bearing this label on the reverse--a sign that the customer likely ordered it through Spalding's mail-in business. Of course, Sears Roebuck & Co. also sold Repco-made pennants via their catalogue, too. Although I have seen pennants with a Sears label on them, I have yet to find one attached to a pennant resembling anything like Repco's pennants. I suspect any Repco pennants distributed via Sears were sold void of any label at all. |
Concessionaire's mark #2 - Henry Schwartz (ca. 1910) Henry Schwartz was a retailer located in downtown Manhattan. As far as I can tell, he made no pennants; just sold them. Apparently, he purchased so many pennants, Repco agreed to sew his label on their pennants. Look for pennants bearing this label and Repco's "Track racer" artwork; a sign that Schwartz may have run concessions at automotive races situated around the country. |
I collect vintage pennants and banners. Soon after getting into this hobby, I became curious about the companies responsible for their production. I had to look hard, but eventually found a lot of interesting information on many of them, and their products. This site is my repository for that research. Periodically, I will dedicate a post to one of these featured manufacturers. I hope other collectors will find this information useful.
-KRB
All
Advertising Flag Co.
ASCO Inc.
Chicago Pennant Co.
Collegiate Mfg. Co.
Historical Background
Jim Goke Interview
Keezer Mfg. Co.
PENNANT FACTORY
Reproduction Co.
Salem Screen Printers
Tom Storm Interview
Trench Mfg. Co.
WGN Flag Co.
November 2023
August 2022
November 2020
September 2020
June 2020
July 2019
February 2019
January 2019
October 2018
June 2018
April 2018
March 2018
February 2018