Name/Title
Branding, Packaging: Country Store Gift Box, Matching Towel and Tile SetDescription
A 1960’s Country Prints “Country Store” towel and tile gift box, a two-color offset printed rigid box in brown cardboard with two dye-cut windows to display a matching tile and towel set. Text on box face reads, “COUNTRY PRINTS BY robert darr wert AND neighbors BY HAND ON PURE LINEN”. The interior of the box bottom is printed with authentic 19th century advertisements from Godey’s Ladies’ Book, an influential women’s’ service publication of the time; see images.
Box art includes a smiling sun, rooster and pointing hands typical of early American advertising art, as well as hearts repeated in vertical rows between stripes. Hearts, suns and roosters are repeated themes in Wert’s work.
This “Country Store” gift box appears in the brochure “Country Prints by Robert Darr Wert and Neighbors”, c.1963. The brochure states that this box design won a design award for Country Prints and its box manufacturer, The United Paper Box Co., Inc., of Holyoke, Massachusetts. The 1963 Rigid Paper Box Competition was sponsored by The National Paper Box Manufacturers Association of Philadelphia. See brochure page text, and images of 1963 telegram and press release below.
This box was one of a set of three matching packages used by Country Prints from c.1962-66. A matching product brochure was also produced; see images.
Multiples of this gift box are pictured in a c.1965 promotional postcard for Bromley & Co. of Boston, Massachusetts, Country Prints’ New England representative to the wholesale gift trade.Made/Created
Artist Information
Artist
Robert Darr WertRole
ArtistManufacturer
United Paper Box Co., Inc.Date made
circa 1962Time Period
20th CenturyPlace
* Untyped Place
Holyoke, MassachusettsDimensions
Dimension Description
AproximateHeight
1/2 inWidth
9 inDepth
18 inColors
Color
Red, Dark Charcoal Gray, BrownColor Notes
Dark charcoal gray and red ink on brown chipboard.
