A Barrel-Full of Money Making Ideas for Printers. Full Size Plans for Die Cut Booklets - Folders- Novelties Etc. Accurate Steel Rule Die Manufacturers [together with] mailing envelope to prospective customer, along with typed letter to prospect

New York: Accurate Steel Rule Die Manufacturers, 1949. First Edition. Wraps. Stapled. Envelope. Fine. A most unusual shaped-book, die cut trade promotion, most appropriate in this instance as the company is promoting its own business of making die cuts for the printing trade. In other words, the company was the maker of die cuts to be used by other printers, as opposed to being a printer using die cuts. Of further interest is that the promotion is a pattern book and primer on the die cut process, clearly intended to fuel enthusiasm for using die cuts for all kinds of business advertising and promotion, and critically, to get printers to expose their customers to its possibilities. The shape is a barrel, which plays nicely on the title, "A Barrel Full", the title itself quite possibly chosen because the printer wanted to use the image of a barrel, which is large-ish and its size too setting this apart from more ordinary promotions. The size is, using the maximum length and width, 38.5 by 29.5 cm. 24 pp., including front and rear of wraps. The booklet abounds with small black and white vignettes of a wide range of consumer products, as well as other objects, animals and people that might be used in advertising, perhaps because of a company's name, or alternatively, some association in the promotion with a characteristic of say, the animal. (Think elephant when the word "jumbo" is part of the promotion, as just one example.) Most of the space on a page, though, is given to outlines to be used in constructing a die cut. These include geometric shapes that have nothing to do with a particular subject but might be a desired shape for a background board, to give just one of many possibilities. And things such as display boxes are among the patterns, and these patterns aren't the least bit decorative in and of themselves. The company, Accurate Steel Rule Die Manufacturers, was in business from about 1930 or '31, based on its representation of having been in business 18 years in this brochure, and remained in business at least until the 1980s. It issued catalogues later than this one, but none of the others of which we are aware were themselves die cut, nor were they the folio size of this one. Scarce, with a single copy recorded on OCLC First Search, located at Harvard, and no indication this copy comes with mailing envelope and letter. Printed onto the mailing envelope, in large lettering, is the question, "How to Become The Most Successful Printer in Your Community (Sent at Your Request). This informs us that among Accurate Steel Rule's client base were other printers. In a sense it had a wholesale business, that being the case. The parenthetical is suggestive, too, that this brochure was perceived as something more than merely a company's promotional puffery. The cover letter is housed in a pocket, which is itself an envelope mounted onto the lower long edge of the shipping envelope. It is undated and signed by a company officer whose title is not given. The envelope has light soiling, much of which could be erased if one wished to make the effort. Otherwise, an outstandingly well-preserved piece of unusual printing ephemera.