These days Laurie Elks is celebrated in Hackney as the custodian of St Augustine’s Tower, but before he arose to these lofty heights he practised the art of stewardship by amassing this magnificent collection of bottle labels, organised with loving care in a scrap book that he has cherished through the years.
“When I was a boy I collected all sorts of things and I think I acquired my bottle label collection when I was eleven or twelve, so the labels come from early sixties. I wrote off in my schoolboy handwriting to all the breweries I could think of, telling them I was collecting beer bottle labels and most of them wrote back with a little packet of labels which I stuck in my album with Gloy gum. I doubt whether they would write back today. I must have looked up the addresses of the breweries in the London phone book as I cannot think of any other search strategies that would have been available to me at the time.” – Laurie Elks
If any other readers have ephemera collections I could publish please get in touch
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You may also like to take a look at
John Gillman’s Bus Ticket Collection
Ken Sequin’s Badge Collection
Click here to buy a copy of HACKNEY: PORTRAIT OF A COMMUNITY 1967-2017 edited by Laurie Elks and published by the Hackney Society
This post first appeared on Spitalfields Life | In The Midst Of Life I Woke To, please read the originial post: here
