[Trade catalogue – Packaging; Milprint Products (Milwaukee, Wisc.)]

Famous Milprint Products, Milwaukee [title from cover].

[Milwaukee: the company, circa 1915-1925].

Trade catalogue bound with three brass fasteners (28 x 22.5 cm.), forty-two original color-printed cellophane or polyethylene food wrappers, mostly for meat (bacon or sausage) or candy products. Brand names and designs vary greatly. Some of the samples bare the Milprint Protecto-Pack or Millprint Econo-Wrap slug. "Milprint, Inc., was founded by the brothers Max T. ("Popsy") Heller and William ("Billy") Heller as the Milwaukee Printing Company in 1899. Beginning in 1908, they succeeded in developing printing techniques for flexible media used in commercial packaging, at first glassine paper, and then cellophane, foil and polyethylene. The Heller brothers were able to get in at the beginnings of the mass marketing of consumer goods, when individually sealed wrappings implied safety and purity. Their paper wrappings practically made the individual nickel candy bar possible, and the firm dominated the candy wrapper market at an early date. Its in-house artists and designers advised clients on the most effective way to package their products. The Heller brothers also developed "Trans-Vision," a means of depicting complex objects in peel-away layers on transparent film, whose most common use was probably depicting the anatomy of the human body in textbooks. William Heller sold Milprint to Philip Morris Incorporated in 1957" (Hagley Museum, Finding aid for the Leonard Walton collection of Milprint materials). Some leaves at the rear show signs that some samples were removed, and some adhesive corner marks to leaves, otherwise in remarkable condition for a collection of cellophane meat and candy wrappers, with all samples bright and clean. Rare. [OCLC locates no copies, and the Hagley finding aid was (for us), unclear on the presence of this catalogue].

Price: $350.00