Victorian Design
The designers of this period are, in the main, anonymous. Owen Jones' is the name
which stands out he is credited with designing the transfer for the first printed
biscuit tin - a speciality tin - made for Huntley & Palmers in 1868 and known as
the Ben George Tin. His book The Grammar of Ornament, published in 1856 and also Christopher
Dresser's Studies in Design, published in 1876, seem to have been used as
pattern sources particularly by Huntley Boorne & Stevens.
It is thought that the people employed by the manufacturers to design the tins were
among the first generation of commercial designers, there is currently no evidence
that they were given a brief on what to design, but were left to their own devices.
There are many tins, however, that reflect occurrences of the times.
Jubilees, Coronations and Wars were well documented, also the trend towards Japanism,
in the 1880s and Art Nouveau in the early 1900s.
It is easy to see the diffusion of design
down through the classes in both these areas, the Japanese influence came from
France in the 1870s and there was an exhibition in London in 1885, Art Nouveau came
from North Europe generally in the early 1890s and a more rectilinear form from
Scotland and Vienna.
There was a fashion at the end of the 1890s for tins depicting baskets, and this period
saw the beginning of tins designed as specific objects.
By necessity tins of the 1870s and 1880s were of a simple shape, this was due to the
inaccuracy of the transfer printing method, Designs are often geometrical in nature,
with limited colour schemes. Towards the end of the period the offset technique was being
used by Huntley Boorne & Stevens, and by others, which enabled a wider choice
of pattern and form of tin. The 1890s saw highly complex tins being produced often
having more than 20 different pieces and all being assembled by hand (until the end of
the decade when the first machines were introduced).
Throughout the 1870s, 80s and 90s tin shapes were reused on consecutive years this kept
down costs of new stamping machines, sometimes the series would have a theme such as
scenes from a group of countries and later there were series of bags, baskets and books.
Sometimes tins of the same shape were reused in more ingenious ways for example
in the 1890s Huntley & Palmers issued a series including Midsummer
and Shamrock this shape was used in 1912 as
Egyptian with feet added.
Twentieth Century Design
After the 1st World War labour costs prohibited fancy shaped tins, there was also a
surge of nationalism which resulted in a fashion for "English" scenes on plain rectangular
tins. Representational tins still continued in a small way throughout the inter-war
period, historical events and new discoveries continued to influence design such as
the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922.