Simplex Sample Book for Home Buying. All Merchandise Sampled in this Book is Absolutely Guaranteed

Fall River, MA: R.A. McWhirr Co, [1928]. Oblong octavo (16cm x 23cm). Printed card wrappers; [16]pp. Mild external wear; offsetting to title page, likely from a laid-in price-list (now absent), else internally complete and clean, with samples present; Very Good.

Highly attractive trade catalog / sample book for this venerable New England department store, establilshed in 1878 in Fall River and in business until 1975. The "Simplex Sample Book" concept, which involved sophisticated color printing with embossed elements, silver and gold ink highlighting, and usually (as in the current example) original fabric samples, appears to have been a popular (truncated) pre-Depression marketing technique, as we've noted similar catalogs from this period for such retailers as the Gimbel Brothers of New York and S.L. Donaldson of Minneapolis. Our example advertises textile goods by Boott Mills, Cannon Towels, Fruit of the Loom, Kleinert's Sanitary Rubber Products, and others. The four tipped-in fabric samples are still present, including a finely-printed sample for Fruit of the Loom's fine-finished muslin for undergarments. Not separately catalogued in OCLC, though the Hagley Museum & Library holds a similar catalog (Gimbel Brothers) dated 1927. (Inventory #: 83541)