The Tee-Square Magazine Christmas 1918 [and] Christmas 1919.

£3,750 · Offered by Shapero Rare Books

rare in-house publication A remarkable survival, two issues of a magazine created in-house by staff of the Vickers Airship Drawing Office at Barrow-in-Furness to celebrate Christmas 1918 and 1919. Charmingly, and appropriate for a technical drawing office, the contents have been reproduced entirely as mimeographs, technical drawings, and even a blueprint. Both issues are signed H.P. Joyce on the covers, though we have been unable to locate anyone by that name in historical records online. The issue for 1919 is described as the fourth annual effort, so there were at least four produced, though they are extremely rare. We can locate no copies in institutional holdings and these are the only two listed in auction records. The contents of these magazines were submitted by staff, mainly identified by their initials, and they include poems and songs, short stories, satirical articles, fake advertisements, cartoons and caricatures. Most are related to airship work and refer to staff and office in-jokes, including 'memorials' to former colleagues, some seemingly real and others potentially comedic. Accomplished cartoons depict airships and planes with monstrous faces; one compares a manager's command of 'silence!' with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk; and 'Other Gods' depicts a Greek god on a chariot in the clouds, with an airplane and an airship flying above. There is a lengthy piece satirising scientific household management ('the only object of matrimony being to make money by cheapen

• Binding: Hardcover

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