Old fag packets and beer mats – the art of Madeleine Marsh

Madeleine Marsh, social historian, marketing history expert and artist, framed by one of her mirrors decorated with found objects; Photograph Jennifer Griffiths

Art made from found objects tells a story about Britain’s social history

Madeleine Marsh is an artist who likes to make pieces that tell a story. At first glance the mirrors she is showing in the current Chiswick Calendar art exhibition at the Clayton hotel are bright and colourful, decorated with old cardboard beer mats and cigarette packets, but it is only when you really look at them and think about the provenance of each of the objects around the frames that you realise how much they tell the story of Britain’s social history.

The cigarette packet from the First World War when Britain’s male population first got hooked on cigarettes; the ones with the cigarettes for ladies which had red tips so they wouldn’t show the lipstick that came off on them, to try and entice women to take up the habit too; the beer mats that signalled the industrialisation of brewing by a few big operators to a mass market for the first time.

The two mirrors Madeleine has for sale in the current Chiswick Calendar Spring art exhibition at the Clayton hotel

Art born out of a love of things – vintage fashion, advertising packaging, antiques

Madeleine talked about her art – jewellery, sculptures, mirror frames – and her love of creating it from found objects. As a child she would always come away from the beach weighed down with pockets full of interesting shells and pebbles and a great deal of her art is made from bits and pieces she has mud-larked from the shore of the River Thames and canals.

She has talked before about the rich history to be gleaned by objects lost or thrown away in the river over the centuries.

READ ALSO: Mudlarking and making – artist Madeleine Marsh talks about her work

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This time, talking about her art to an audience at the Clayton hotel in Chiswick,  she concentrated on old fag packets and beer mats, the flotsam and jetsam of social history with which she has decorated the mirrors she is showing in the current Chiswick Calendar art exhibition.

Madeleine with one of her trademark mirrors; Clay pipes found on the shore of the River Thames

A collection built up from a lifetime of scavenging antiques markets

Even so, in amongst the items on the frame of the first mirror she demonstrated there were were two clay pipes mud-larked from the Thames foreshore – one dating back to c. 1580 with a tiny bowl from the early days of tobacco smoking in this country, when it was a scarce and expensive commodity, and the other one later, with a much bigger bowl from the days when pipe smoking had become more common and tobacco more available.

The beer mats and fag packets come from scavenging antique markets – another lifelong pleasure which led to her studying antiques at the V&A after she left Cambridge University. She set up her own research company and spent the next 30 years writing and broadcasting about antiques and objects.

“I was in my 50s when I had a ‘road to Damascus’ moment that I’d like to make things”, she said, and suddenly all those years of scavenging and hoarding paid off for those lucky recipients of her work – I have a brooch and a necklace made by Madeleine from pretty, flowery blue and white porcelain, the designs introduced to Europe from China in the 17th century and enthusiastically taken up by the Staffordshire potteries for the mass market in the UK.

Madeleine took the audience back to the pubs of the 1970s – almost exclusively male and reeking of smoke. London still had eight big breweries and two or three smaller ones in the 1970s, producing around seven million barrels of beer a year.

“The two drinks which define the British are tea and beer. The Romans came with their lovely Mediterranean wines and left again, taking their wine with them sadly”.

Double Diamond and Bass Charrington beer mats from Madeleine’s collection

Brewing for mass consumption – a by-product of the Industrial Revolution

From the Dark Ages onwards the British were brewing and it was a very local affair until the late 1700s when the big commercial brewers established themselves off the back of the industrial revolution.

“In 1700 the population of London was 600,000; by 1800 it was 1.4 million; and by 1900 it was 65.5 million”.

People flocked to the city from rural areas looking for work.

“They didn’t have the time or space to brew their own beer. Brewers in London led the world. London was the Silicone Valley of brewing and Samuel Whitbread was its Bill Gates”.

London’s thick, dark beer was called ‘Porter’ after the London street porters, who carried goods and luggage. The recent TV series House of Guinness showed how the Guinness family built their empire from the 1770s onwards. Meanwhile Michael Bass was developing a very different beer which was light and fizzy, made from the water in Burton on Trent, which was very different to that of London.

“He thought it would go down well in India – and so India Pale Ale, IPA was born. It was hugely successful”.

When the Trade Marks Registration Act was passed in August 1875 Michael Bass slept on the steps overnight to be first in the queue to register his products. The red triangle replicated on Bass beer mats represented the first trademark in Britain, “some say in the whole world”.

Babycham mat

Here’s one for the ladies

Babycham was the first mass market drink targeted at women:

“A Champagne perry which was the grandmother of alcopops. The past always tells you about the present”, said Madeleine.

Reflecting the overt sexism of the age, Madeleine demonstrated a beer mat modelled on a road sign – ‘Give Way’ with the slogan ‘She might with a Merrydown Cider’.

Imagine marketing a drink for women, targeted at men, with the express intention of persuading them that plying women with a particular brand of brand of cider would get them drunk enough to comply with having sex with them.

Old cigarette packets are harder to find. They are designed to be disposable, so it shows some determination to have put together the collection Madeleine showed the audience at the Clayton hotel. They are rare items.

British soldiers first saw the Turks rolling cigarettes in the Crimea in the late 19th century. Before that they smoked pipes. Cigarettes came into their own in the trenches in the First World War. Pipes were too difficult to light out in the wind and rain and a glowing pipe bowl presented too much of a target to enemy gunners in the dark. Cigarettes could be cupped in the hand so the glowing tip did not show.

Wills Woodbines – ‘Woodies’ – were five for a penny and came in a pretty box. The brand which really stands out as representing the war years is Players Navy Cut. The image of the sailor, trademarked in the 1890s, captured the idea that ‘Britannia rules the waves’.

Players Navy Cut; Craven A brands

The First World War turned Britain into a nation of cigarette smokers

“World War One turned British men into smokers”, said Madeleine, and not long afterwards the manufactures had women in their sights, doubling their market. The 1920a flappers with their short, straight dresses and bobbed hair scandalised their parents’ generation by wearing makeup in public and taking up smoking.

She showed a 1920s powder compact with separate sections for powder, lipstick and cigarettes. Craven A were the first cigarettes marketed at women.

“They had a little cat on the packet and became ‘Black Cat’ cigarettes”.

Cork tipped cigarettes were advertised for women: “specially designed not to hurt the throat”, but it was cigarette cards which got the next generation of children hooked, in the days when adults thought nothing of sending children to the corner store to buy their cigarettes for them.

Marlboro advertisements: (L) Marlboro Oral History and Documentation Project, Archives Center, National Museum of American History; (R) Tin advertising sign

Take the Piccadilly Line to Marlboro country

American Marlboros were the best selling cigarettes of the ’70s. ‘Come to Marlboro country’ was the slogan, with an image of a cowboy, but the Marlboro in question was a reference to Marlborough Street in London where Philip Morris tobacco started out.

“I think it’s hilarious that you can get to Marlboro country on the Piccadilly line!”.

Gitanes and Gauloises had very strong brand recognition and the attractive packaging lasted much longer as designs than their English and American counterparts. When tobacco companies were forced to acknowledge the lethal impact of their product the designs of the packets became more abstract.

But, said Madeleine, “Manufacturers will always find a way to fill the vacuum. Disposable vapes are now in those same bright colours. They are the alcopops of smoking”.

You can see Madeleine’s work at the Clayton hotel, 626 Chiswick High Road, where she is one of 16 local artists taking part in The Chiswick Calendar’s spring art exhibition. Nearest tube – Gunnersbury station on the District Line.

As the exhibition is in the atrium of the hotel it is available to see 24/7 until Saturday 18 April.

Madeleine Marsh demonstrating her love of vintage fashion

Photographs ny Jennifer Griffiths, whose work is also for sale in The Chiswick Calendar Spring art exhibition.

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