Purpose of B18 Blankets

[cubman1941]

This is from Issue 003 of Shoeless Notes, the email newsletter for the Shoeless Joe Jackson Museum and Baseball Library in Greenville, South Carolina. Maybe others knew this but I sure didn't.

"When we do find out something we never knew before, it’s such an exciting thing! To be able to share it with you, to be able to make that history come alive, it makes the hours and hours of digging through old newspaper clippings and searching through digital archives worth it. On June 11, John Thorn learned something new.

John is the Official Historian of Major League Baseball, and, without hyperbole, he probably knows more about baseball than anyone who has ever lived on this planet. The fact that even John is still learning new things proves my earlier point: it’s impossible for anyone to know everything. But John didn’t just learn something that he didn’t know… he learned something that possibly less than 10 people currently living knew. He learned what the 1914 B18 Blankets were originally intended to be.

Which takes us back to John Thorn, who was doing some reading on June 11, and came across an entry on NYHistory.org which very casually told him precisely what he didn’t even know he was looking to learn that day:
A white cotton felt cloth pen wipe, printed with a central image of a baseball player marked "Jackson", surrounded by pennants marked "Cleveland" and "A.L." for American League, with green borders decorated with purple corner blocks resembling bases, with baseball items in each block including a ball, a mitt, crossed bats and a catcher's mask. Part of a collectible series of baseball team felts given as a premium by cigar stores and manufacturers for blotting the ink from a nib pen.

So there we have it! 106 years after their creation, the world knows once again what these “blankets” were originally intended to be: pen wipes."

[jjp3rd]

Very cool. Thanks for sharing this. OK to share with others?


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[cubman1941]

Originally Posted by jjp3rd

Very cool. Thanks for sharing this. OK to share with others?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Absolutely, and you might want to go to the Shoeless Joe Jackson Museum and Baseball Library website and join to get the newsletter. NO cost.

[jjp3rd]

Thank you!


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[swarmee]

Fountain pen blotters? Why would you use felt/fabric for that instead of the heavy cardboard normally used. You'd just have ink running through it onto whatever the felt was sitting on.

When I first opened it, I expected the answer "doll house rug" or "fabric square for quilting pillows or blankets."

[Vintagecatcher]

Christie's had an important group of documents in a lot that ended 4/5/2018, which revealed that Mercantile Novelty Co., Inc. made the B18s for American Tobacco Company.

Patrick

[buymycards]

At first I didn't think it made sense that they were pen wipers, but then I looked up a definition of pen wiper:

Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.

noun A piece of rag, chamois leather, or other material used for wiping or cleaning pens after use. Pen-wipers are often made up into ornaments more or less elaborate.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
noun A cloth, or other material, for wiping off or cleaning ink from a pen.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
noun A cloth or other material for wiping off or cleaning ink from a pen.

[nolemmings]

Odd in that I don't recall ever seeing one with much if any ink stains or blots. You'd think the school kids among others would have used them freely. I guess those could have been tossed as garbage, but the cynic in me makes me wonder if they were just collectibles and somebody, pressed to come up with a more useful explanation, chose ink wipers. Better that than snot rags.

[Clutch-Hitter]

Originally Posted by buymycards

At first I didn't think it made sense that they were pen wipers, but then I looked up a definition of pen wiper:

Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.

noun A piece of rag, chamois leather, or other material used for wiping or cleaning pens after use. Pen-wipers are often made up into ornaments more or less elaborate.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
noun A cloth, or other material, for wiping off or cleaning ink from a pen.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
noun A cloth or other material for wiping off or cleaning ink from a pen.

Thought of the leather cards reading this

[Clutch-Hitter]

Leather cards perhaps used to assist in opening jars and the like

[BuzzD]

Here is my blanket with an ink blot.

[chlankf]

1st one I've ever seen. Thanks Buzz

[Hankphenom]

Originally Posted by BuzzD

Here is my blanket with an ink blot.

Maybe that one was used for that, but how many T206s and other old cards have we seen with ink spots? I don't think anybody would claim those cards were made for that purpose, and I don't think B-18s were, either. I'm with Orioles54, if they were invented with a particular purpose in mind, it was to be sewn together for a blanket, pillowcase, or throw. Or maybe the inventor had this diamond in mind for the nine players on each team:

[ThomasL]

for what it is worth...which is nothing...

I would argue there was no intended purpose for the "blankets" other than to help sell tobacco products and in particularly sell to younger demographics.

Im sure a few used them as ink blotters as I think blotters were in high demand especially in school settings (at least reading some news articles I saw from 1914).

I saw no mention of "ink" or "blotter" for the Flag "Blankets" in 1914 ads or articles.

Seems to me the B18s would be made for the same reasons and logically it would be simply as a collectible/incentive in order to boost sales.

I will add I love the Shoeless Notes and see nothing wrong with their twist/take playing off John Thorn's insight. Keep up the good work over there guys if yall are reading this.

[Hankphenom]

Originally Posted by ThomasL

for what it is worth...which is nothing...

I would argue there was no intended purpose for the "blankets" other than to help sell tobacco products and in particularly sell to younger demographics.

Im sure a few used them as ink blotters as I think blotters were in high demand especially in school settings (at least reading some news articles I saw from 1914).

I saw no mention of "ink" or "blotter" for the Flag "Blankets" in 1914 ads or articles.

Seems to me the B18s would be made for the same reasons and logically it would be simply as a collectible/incentive in order to boost sales.

I will add I love the Shoeless Notes and see nothing wrong with their twist/take playing off John Thorn's insight. Keep up the good work over there guys if yall are reading this.

+1

[buymycards]

7 1/2' x 44". 24 B7's and 4 B5's.

[FrankWakefield]

Alright.... ink blotter? I'm not convinced. I've seen several white border cards and Goudey cards with ink spots, marks and blobs on them... haven't seen a B18 with that. I've seen a few that looks like a border was trimmed into the card a bit (which I figured was done after distribution because it was slightly diagonal from the square corners). Are we gonna see someone say that our old ball cards were blotters, no... I'm not convinced about this blotter idea. One of us has such a B18, but there are hundreds of B18's in our hands and we only have ONE? I'm not convinced. Convincible, yes; but some contemporary print description would sell that to me.