Carr and Co Juvenile Biscuit Tin
1892? Carr & Cos Juvenile Box, a Biscuit Tin Featuring FC. Carlisle, GB. 3" square by 4⅝". £22 from wickedlady, Yorkshire, UK, through eBay, Nov., '05.
This cookie tin is highly corroded and so hard to read. The cover picture, first in the series, has a mother crow visiting a dairy to find food for her children. She then flies into a tree with a piece of cheese in her beak. The fifth and final scene may be the most dramatic: the fox runs away as the fox flies away. The art is nicely done, even through the darkening and discoloration. The Victoria and Albert Museum has a can much like this one. They offer some helpful history: “The British biscuit tin came about when the Licensed Grocer's Act of 1861 allowed groceries to be individually packaged and sold. Coinciding with the removal of the duty on paper for printed labels. It was only a short step to the idea of printing directly on to tinplate. The new process of offset lithography, patented in 1877 allowed multicoloured designs to be printed on to exotically shaped tins.” The inside of the top has a monochrome label featuring the fox and crow.
To a dairy a crow
Having ventured to go
Some food for her young ones to seek,
Flew up in a tree
With a large piece of cheese.
Which she joyfully
Held in her beak.
A fox who lived nigh
To the tree saw her fly.
And having just dined
For the cheese felt inclined.
So he went and
sat under the bough.
The voice must be fine
Of a bird so divine.
Pray let me hear it, pray do.
She scarce gave one squawl
When the cheese she let fall,
And the fox ran away with the prize.