Simpson's celebrated 2/- fish dinner : absolutely the best : menu: turbot, stewed eels, fried sole, smelts, whitebait, haunch of mutton, vegetables, cheese & bread : dinner in London : Three Tuns, Billingsgate Market, E.C. / proprietor Charles Best.

  • Best, Charley.
Date:
[between 1920 and 1929?]
  • Ephemera

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About this work

Description

Circular card advertising fish dinners at the Three Tuns public house, Billingsgate Fish Market, London, E.C. The menu included turbot, stewed eels, fried sole, smelts, whitebait, haunch of mutton, vegetables, cheese & bread at two shillings a meal (10p in current decimal currency). The card was issued by the pub’s proprietor, Charles Best, possibly in the 1920s. Generally advertising cards were rectangular in shape (meaning no wastage from a sheet of card cut to the required shape and size). A circular card like this would have required a specially shaped blade to cut out the circle, resulting in subsequent card wastage and was thus more expensive, however, such an unusual item would have attracted attention in a way a more pedestrian one would have failed to, offsetting the extra expense. Additionally it was attractively designed to look like a small, red fish on an actual plate, further increasing the chance of the person it was given to reading it and not simply throwing it away. The blue on white willow pattern design of the plate was very popular in the 19th and early 20th centuries and is believed to be originated by Josiah Spode in 1790, inspired by Chinese porcelain designs.

Publication/Creation

London : Charles Best, [between 1920 and 1929?]

Physical description

1 card : illustrations ; 9 cm

Type/Technique

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Where to find it

  • LocationStatusAccess
    Closed stores
    EPH/47/8

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