Indian Motocycle and the Logo

From the Indian Chief Motorcycle site: The original Indian motorcycle company was founded in 1901 in Springfield Massachusetts USA, by bicycle racer George Hendee and Swedish immigrant Oscar Hedstrom. Some people wonder why it was called the Indian Motocycle Company instead of Indian Motorcycle Company. In Italy, all motorcycles have names beginning with "moto" e.g. Moto-Guzzi, Moto-Ducati, Moto-Laverda, so perhaps Hedstrom was familiar with that. The earliest models looked like mopeds (bicycles with small single cylinder engines) and only 3 were made in 1901. Interestingly, Triumph began production the next year (1902) and Harley-Davidson the year after (1903). So the order was Indian, Triumph, Harley. This "Big Three" are still around a century later, while many other brands which started later died off years ago. Indian made 143 motorcycles in 1902.

Although it says on the logo that they have been built since 1901, what it fails to mention is that the Indian Motocycle was THE FIRST motorcycle produced in America.

I have more than one piece of Indian paper, but I intend to put motorcycles on them, much like I did in 2006, when my wife and I made the trip (in our SUV) to Sturgis, South Dakota, for the First Day Ceremony for the Motorcycle stamp issue. I've included the image of the finished cover for the issue, which pictures my brother-in-law, Tom Benson of Shelby, Montana. He restores Indian Motorcycles, and it was a perfect match as far as relevant art work for the stamps.

I know absolutely nothing about Curnow the Indian. I do know for certain that this piece of paper became irrelevant in 1913, when the company was renamed as the Indian Motorcycle Company. It will be interesting to see if there are any images from Butte, Montana, that include Curnow, or any of his customers!

Old Paper - Finally!

After a couple of months of devoting desk time to First Day Covers, I decided to do a piece of OLD PAPER ART, and this is the result of a week's worth of pencil-pushing.

A little bit about both of the companies involved with this nice piece of old paper:

The South Bend Toy Company was incorporated December 22, 1882, after being established in 1874. Frederick Badet, a grocery clerk, and John Teel, a woodworker, originally started the company, making croquet sets and other wooden toys. Croquet was that the time, the only acceptable game for women and children to play. About the turn of the century they began to build children's wagons and doll carriages.

The Studebaker Company was founded in 1852 and incorporated in 1868 under the the name of Studebaker Brothers Manufacturing Company. The company built wagons for farmers, miners and the military. Their factory was located in in South Bend, Indiana. Studebaker asked the South Bend Toy Company to build a number of small replicas of their full-sized wagons to place in dealer showrooms. The only problem they encountered was that the dealers couldn't keep them in the showroom, and Studebaker quickly realized that a smaller wagon for children would be a sales leader. South Bend produced the smaller wagons, and Studebaker sold them through their dealers. South Bend Toy also sold the wagons through the Sears & Roebuck catalog.

Included now in this post is a scan of the Sears & Roebuck catalog page from 1924 advertising the Studebaker Junior. The advertisement was provided to me by Gordon Westover, who builds upscale wagons and restores antique wagons, doing business on eBay as WagonMasterCoaster. If you have a moment and are interested, stop by his eBay store.

I have seen a number of real photo postcards picturing this wagon being pulled by a goat, and apparently photographers used the Studebaker Junior as a standard prop for children's photos.

I recently saw one of these wagons (not restored) at auction, and it sold for $3,300.

Ride on!

Memorial Day & the Flag - PFF #23

Forty years ago today I was where I didn't want to be. Twenty years ago when I created this cover, I was where I wanted to be, and just beginning to feel like I could become WHO I wanted to be. Following along with the theme for Postcard Friendly Friday, hosted by Beth Niquette at the Best Hearts are Crunchy, I decided to remember not only my flag, but also a man who symbolizes the greatness of our country under the worst of conditions. Be sure to stop by and see what others are posting for Postcard Friendly Friday.

For all those who gave their all,
Eternal Rest Grant unto them, O Lord,
And let Eternal Light shine upon them.
May they Rest in Peace. Amen.

Please take a moment to remember why we have a Memorial Day.

Monarch Butterfly - PFF #22

From Names on the Face of Montana by Roberta Carkeek Cheney - "Monarch (Cascade County) is an almost deserted mining town in the mountains at the junction where two gulches meet Belt Creek".

In 1889 when the settlement of Monarch was granted a post office with Charles Martin as postmaster, there were three mining claims being actively worked in the immediate vicinity with the names of 'King', 'Czar' and 'Emperor'. This may account for the name of the town, but the specifics are lost in the past. There was a railroad (Great Northern) which terminated in Monarch, and then it went further to the mining town of Niehart with passenger service on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday according to Opal Mayte, whom I spoke to for quite awhile this Monday past.

Opal was the postmaster in Monarch for thirty years, then her son became postmaster, at which time he fired his wife Grace as she had been a postal clerk for Opal previously.

Monarch literally came alive on Monday at about 11:30 when a brief ceremony was held for the issuance of the new Monarch Butterfly postage stamp. Without going into a lot of details on the marvelous job the current postmaster Kally Permann did to make the occasion so memorable, it was one of the nicest First Day Ceremonies I've ever had the pleasure of attending.

I designed the cancel for the postmaster, and she had prepared two hundred cacheted envelopes. She had ordered a thousand stamps, which amounted to fifty panes of twenty stamps to a pane. All of the stamps were gone by noon. The cacheted envelopes were also gone. They had mail requests from Europe as well as all over the United States already, and I'm certain that with the mention of the pictorial postmark in Linn's Stamp News the previous week, she'll be getting a lot more of them.

I am making the covers as I did with the Montana State Flag issue, so once I was through placing the stamps on the paper and canceling them, I was asked to sign my name under the cancel on the cacheted covers for those folks who purchased them when they bought the stamps, which meant I signed about two hundred covers as well.

Quite a day!

If you are interested in what others may be doing for Postcard Friendly Friday, hop on over to The Best Hearts Are Crunchy to see any number of posters with the theme this week of the Power of One Voice!

Flag Waving - PFF#21

Last Friday the USPS put the fourth in a series of six Flags of Our Nation stamps on sale. Montana is among the states to get a stamp in this series, and the post office asked me to design a cancel for them. I was honored. I decided to combine my love of map envelopes (read that MAIL ART) with my cachet business, and I was really happy to get the opportunity to offer my subscribers a nice cover to add to their collections.

I used a territorial map of Montana to create the envelopes from archival #70 paper, and then utilize the image from the Great Seal and flag of Montana to produce these little pieces of art.

The history part of how the flag came to be goes back to the Spanish American War when a unit of the Montana National Guard carried this flag into battle - not as it appears today, but the seal and flag were developed from the unit flag itself. The seal reflects the heritage of this great state - a pick and shovel (mining), a plow (agriculture), the Great Falls of the Missouri (first recorded by Lewis & Clark in 1805), and the majestic mountains for which Montana was named. The words on the scroll, ORO -Y-PLATA , mean Gold and Silver.

Oh yes, and Beth Niquette over at The Best Hearts are Crunchy is hosting Postcard Friendship Friday, if you're interested in looking at more great 'mail art'!

The Tom Mix Circus

What have I been doing for the past month??? I have to feed my Old Paper habit by continuing to produce First Day Covers, and also I've been asked to design two First Day Cancels for the Postal Service within the past month as well. The cancel are a lot of fun, and I will post the one I produced for the Montana Flag stamp (which came out yesterday) for next week's Postcard Friendly Friday. But just so you know...

The USPS released its Cowboys of the Silver Screen issue on Saturday, and I deliberately avoided the more common themes for the art work. Not only that, but I also purchased and canceled the stamps in the little berg of Ringling, Montana, named for one of the Ringling Brothers who at one time not only had a rail spur built to accommodate the railroad cars for his traveling circus, but also he heavily invested in the cattle market and owned a great deal of property surrounding the town.

Tom Mix made numerous movies, but documenting them all is a difficult task at best, since most of them have long since deteriorated to the point that they are not viewable.

His Circus involvement is easily documented, and he worked for not only some rather large Wild West shows, but circus and rodeo performances were also a big thing with Tom. He had a Wild West show as early as 1909, but he did not have his own circus until 1935, when he purchased the Sam Dill Circus and renamed it. He employed 150, and kept 75 trucks on the road for 3 years.

After posting on Saturday, I received a nice email from a lady by the name of Marianne Dow. I don't know what she doesn't collect, but I know both of the images, the one of what appears to be a comic book cover and the other a board game, come from her personal collection.

This one was pure fun!