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2026

Advertisement for J. C. Vickery Dressing and Travelling Cases

Cat. No. AD-2026-029

A refined interwar advertisement for J. C. Vickery, the prominent London retailer and manufacturer of luxury silverware, leather goods, travelling accessories and presentation pieces.

The advertisement focuses on one of the firm’s characteristic high-end products: a fitted lady’s dressing case made in blue crushed Morocco leather, lined with grey silk and equipped with silver-gilt and engraved glass toilet fittings. Such cases combined practical travel use with the workmanship and visual prestige expected from luxury London retailers of the period.

Particularly notable is the price given in US dollars — $155.50 — together with the explicit invitation to American visitors to London. This strongly suggests that the advertisement was intended either for an international readership or for a publication circulating among affluent American travellers. It illustrates the importance of overseas clientele to fashionable Regent Street businesses during the early twentieth century. The lower part of the advertisement emphasizes Vickery’s prestigious standing through references to royal appointments, identifying the firm as silversmith and jeweller to members of the British Royal Family. The Regent Street address further reinforces the company’s association with London’s luxury retail district. Although the advertisement does not concern a meteorological instrument directly, J. C. Vickery is relevant to the history of barometers and precision instruments because the firm retailed and commissioned a variety of high-quality scientific and domestic instruments alongside its luxury goods. Surviving barometers bearing the Vickery name demonstrate how such instruments could form part of the same market for refined household and travelling objects represented by this advertisement.

As ephemera, the document therefore provides useful context for understanding the commercial environment in which Vickery-branded barometers and related instruments were sold: not primarily as industrial apparatus, but as finely finished luxury objects intended for affluent domestic and travelling use.

Images

vickery_adv

Inscriptions & Annotations

The advertisement identifies J. C. Vickery of London as a specialist in dressing and travelling cases, motor cases and fine leather goods. It describes the illustrated example as a 14-inch blue crushed Morocco dressing case for a lady, lined in grey silk and fitted with engine-turned silver-gilt and engraved glass toilet ware, priced at $155.50. The firm’s address is given as 143 & 147 Regent Street, London, W.1, together with references to royal appointments.

Physical Description

Single-sheet black-and-white printed advertisement, apparently removed from a contemporary magazine or periodical. The composition is dominated by a photographic illustration of a fitted lady’s dressing case containing silver-gilt and engraved glass toilet accessories. Decorative typography and a framed border surround the image and descriptive text.

Provenance

The document was purchased from a private seller in the United Kingdom.

Document Details

Creator

J. C. Vickery, London. Original publication and printer unknown

Subject

J. C. Vickery; luxury travelling cases; dressing cases; leather goods; silver-mounted accessories; British luxury retail trade

Date

circa 1920s

Place of Origin

London, United Kingdom

Language

English

VERY GOOD

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