1930's Mrs Stewart's Liquid Bluing Bottle

In the early 1880's Mrs. Stewart's Liquid Bluing appeared on the American market as a remedy to the common problem of laundry going yellow or gray with staining or age.

The blue colour cancels out the dingy look and clothes appear bright and white.

Liquid bluing, offered by one company or another, has been around commercially a lot longer than bleach to whiten clothes. Chlorine Bleach started to become a household product in the twenties.

This old fashioned "Liquid Bluing" got me thinking about fabric and the colour blue. Does this trick of adding blue to whites also support our love of blue jeans, which happened to appear in the 1880's as well? I know that red is a colour that fades quickly and is difficult to dye. Black also fades to a ho hum grey. Levis sold Brown Duck Denim, but the blue Denim sold much better.  

The industrial blue indigo dye was very common and worked well with cotton denim and so this is why blue jeans are blue. Green Jeans might have worked, but people like blue.

A bottle of Mrs. Stewarts Liquid Bluing from the 1930's

Mrs. Stewarts trade mark old woman

http://mrsstewart.com

Liquid Bluing. Manufactured by Luther Ford & Company, Winnipeg Manitoba

Bluing is necessary because white fabric turns yellow or gray with age.

Mrs Stewarts Fabric Bluing can be used as ink!

Red Wooden top with cork and wax

From the Mrs Stewart Website: 

"Around 1920, the embossing on the bottle face was discontinued and replaced with a similar embossment around the shoulder of the bottle. In the spring of 1933, Robert Ford’s newly designed machinery was used to apply hot wax around the rim of each bottle to prevent the liquid from running down the side of the bottle when dispensing the product. This soon became the patented “No-Drip” process. That summer, the words “No-Drip” also appeared in gold lettering on the MSB labels in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Ford/Stewart connection. Bottles were capped with imported Portuguese corks which were specially made for MSB and put into red wooden tops; the two parts of each closure were hand-glued together. The top of each bottle cork had the words “No-Drip Bluing” imprinted by hand."

Each bottle has "This Contains Mrs. Stewart's Bluing" on it. Presumably to combat counterfeiting. 

The price of 28 cents was stamped on the top

This is the same shot as above, but really out of focus. Pretty!

Bokeh of the Canon 100mm f2.8 Macro lens

Mrs Stewarts Liquid Bluing bottle: 6 inches tall, 2 1/2 inches diameter.

Allyn Ford, owner of Mrs Stewart's Bluing in the thirties and forties, had these humours stamps made.
Were they real stamps, or just collectibles?

Mrs. Stewart's 1939 stamps

Mrs Stewart's Bluing offered deals on cutlery and a handy kitchen Bill File, 1914 Home Laundry Hints Pamphlet

Philatelist Combines Business With Pleasure

By L. G. Brookman
(From THE AMERICAN PHILATELIST, December, 1944)

"By slyly poking fun at Uncle Sam's commemoratives, A. P. S. member Allyn Ford of Minneapolis has managed to put his philatelic knowledge to good use in his business, and has had a lot of fun to boot.  

When Uncle' Sam came out with the "Wash Line Stamp," Scott No. 858, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the admission of the states of Washington, Montana, North and South Dakota, that was right up Allyn's alley, because what he manufactures is bluing used in home washing.  So he got out a "souvenir sheet" showing those states hanging down from the 49th parallel like clothes on Monday's washline .

A year later during the centenary of the Penny Black, Ford conceived the idea of commemorating a group of "Famous Queens," including Victoria, Eve (Queen of Eden, who didn't even have a postage stamp!), the Queen of Hearts etc.

Collectors howled for more, so out came " Famous Blues," including the "Blue Eagle" (can we ever forget it?), the "Connecticut Blues" (a take-off on Connecticut's blue laws,) the "Rhapsody in Blue," and "the blue that drives away all other blues," according to Ford.

When the Kentucky stamp was announced last year, Ford managed to unearth four " rejected designs" for it, the reasons for rejection being obvious.  

And now he has produced " Ford's Follies of '44" which whacks the Railroad, Telegraph and Savannah stamps and their 75th, l00th and l25th anniversaries, by including another "commemorative" for the 61st anniversary of Mrs. Stewart's Bluing!

From all over the world collectors have written for these crazy stamps to mount in their albums on the same page as the real ones they caricature.  They certainly do liven up the page, and whenever the collection is shown they always bring a good laugh.  Ford may never get a trophy for serious philatelic research, but he has certainly made a real contribution by showing us that we needn't take philately too seriously."

Here are some of the interesting uses for Mrs Stewart's Liquid Bluing!

• Magic Salt Crystal Garden
• Brighten Swimming Pool Water
• Whiter Hair
• Whiter Pets
• Relieve the Pain of Insect Bites
• Make Glass and Crystal Sparkle
• Reduce Algae Growth in Fountains, Bird Baths and Fish Ponds
• Medical Laboratory and Drug Testing
• Podiatry Laboratories for Casting
• Pottery Glazing
• Detect Plumbing Leaks
• Fertilizer Research
• Coloring Flowers
• Marking Ski Racecourses