BROKEN BISCUITS

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I turned up early, thinking it would be quiet in the exhibition space and I could get a load of photos in before the launch. But they wouldn't let me in. I was locked out as people like RTÉ's master documentary maker, Philip Bromwell, did their professional thing inside.

A blessing in disguise really. As I reflected outside it occurred to me to set myself a challenge. When they let me in I would go hunting for broken biscuits. Not that I thought they'd serve up the real thing, but among the exhibition's copious illustrations.

I'm not sure why, but I did not expect to find any. These were the poor person's biscuits at the complete opposite end of the scale from the various posh/royal collections.

They used to be sold out of a big tin and in brown paper bags. When we lived with my granny she used to sit at table secreting a bag on her knee and discreetly munching the ones with icing and chocolate, leaving the plain ones for the rest of us.

But I was wrong. There was the label, every bit as large as all the others. The granny would have enjoyed that.

Brendan Teeling, Deputy Chief Librararian

Brendan welcomed us all and did his usual great job of animated MCing.

Margaret Hayes, Chief Librarian

Margaret introduced the exhibition and conveyed the Library's thanks to all who had laboured so hard to bring this magnificent project to fruition.

Douglas Appleyard, former Jacobs employee, collector, compiler, donor.

Douglas gave us some of the background, recalling how, as an employee, he had been asked to sort out some filing cabinets and came upon what can only be described as gold dust.

That's how the archive was started and it now contains a vast array of material from company documents to memorabilia. In parallel with the compilation of the archive, Douglas himself has been collecting all sorts of Jacobs objects and he has donated this collection to the Library to accompany the archive proper.

So why is it here. Jacobs was not just a Dublin but a national institution with a history not limited to biscuit production. Its headquarters in Bishop Street was one of the 1916 rebel outposts which not only made it part of national political history but also a player in the development of the trade union movement of the time.

Douglas is not a man to settle for second best. He had three requirements of whoever got to house the archive and related collection: (i) they would have to take the lot - no cherry picking; (ii) it would have to be housed in a way that made it accessible to the public; and (iii) they would have to undertake to organise exhibitions.

Dublin City Library and Archive, of which I am a big fan, was the only institution to meet his three requirements in full, and this exhibition in this place is part of the outcome.

Ardmhéara, Mícheál MacDonncha

The exhibition was to be launched by the Lord Mayor Mícheál, whom I caught making last minute alterations to his script as he waited to take the floor.

But that was not so much what caught my attention as the juxtapostion of his gold Fáinne with the head of King Billy on the mayoral chain of office. We have come a long way since 1691 - I hope!.

As first citizen of the urbs (g. urbus!) Mícheál welcomed us all and took great pride in declaring the exhibition formally oscailte.

Wendy Williams, Curator & Design Historian

The Library farmed out curation of the exhibition to Wendy Williams and she did a magnificent job. The panels are attractive, well laid out and highly informative. And the timeline of Jacobs labels was a great idea. It is well presented, no easy task, and I'm sure it may well turn out the hit of the exhibition, at least for us senior citizens.

It evokes memories with the intensity of a smell or a piece of music and at the same time astounds with the amazing variety of labels, many of which were never seen in recent times and which in their own way bear witness to the company's colourful and sometimes controversial past.

My own advice to my contemporaries is not to come alone. Bring along someone from your own era to share this trip down memory lane with. Just for the record I'm one of the last of the war babies (not saying which war).

Wendy Williams, Séamas Ó Maitiú & Ellen Murphy

There would be no exhibition without the archive in the first place. Séamas has written the book on Jacobs which has formalised a vast amount of research which fed into the exhibition.

Ellen Murphy is the senior archivist who is responsible for the archive and collection in their current home. She and her team (I hope she has a team in these straitened times) have been responsible for housing, preserving, cataloguing and digitising the archive and collection since the Dublin City Library and Archive accepted them from Douglas and the current brand inheritors Valeo Foods in February 2016.

MY PHOTO

MY PHOTO

This is one of my photos from that occasion on display on the panel dealing with the archive as such. Always as well to declare an interest before you're blindsided.

EXHIBITION CREDITS

The list of credits on this panel is worth a read. Those above refer to the exhibition as such.


AN GHAEILGE

BRIOSCAÍ

I was very taken with the creative and informative use of Irish in the exhibition. There isn't much of it but what there is made me feel at home.

These days coming across Irish in any public place is more often than not an excruciating experience. It is carelessly flung about and misused in all sorts of signage and on air.

This was different. If you go back and look at the poster at the launch you'll see Monarcha Brioscaí agus Baile Átha Cliath - Fite Fuaite lena Chéile. A perfect description.

If you compare the Irish and English versions of the panel heading above you'll see the Irish has a slightly different emphasis and resonance. Biscuits at the front is one thing. Brioscaí i mBéal an Chatha has a resonance of biscuits under fire and in the heat of battle.

CARTLANN

The Irish version here is not a slavish or pedestrian translation of the English but contains additional information.

I have expanded on this subject in a separate post.


TINS & LABELS

Marietta

Let's take a look at some of the individual labels in the timeline.

Marietta, the plainest of the plain. Wendy has mentioned how people used to put butter between two of them and how it came out through the holes when you compressed the sandwich.

USA 1

Then there were the tins of assorted biscuits, evoking exotic lands and people. I'm not sure if this lady could be classed a Southern Belle or not?

USA 2

But in a later version she is clearly firmly stitched into the Union.

IFS

And drawing on that design Jacobs brought us an IRISH FREE STATE assortment. You'd want to be a lot older than me to remember that one.

AN TÓSTAL

An Tóstal was not allowed to pass without a special issue. I have always loved the distinctive Tóstal harp. We used to draw it on our school copy books all the time.

FAIRY PUFFS

I doubt if this one would pass today's PC brigade, but it is from an era when gay was just jolly.


POLITICAL

ULSTER

Biscuits might sound like a neutral or safe kind of product, but Jacobs did come up with some products which could cause offence in some quarters.

This Ulster Assorted is clearly not aimed at the province but at Northern Ireland as the profusion of crowns makes clear. I wonder did they market this one south of the border?

ROYAL AFTERNOON TEA

I have to be careful what I say about the British Monarchy. Despite eight hundred years of occupation and a vicious War of Independence, soon to be commemorated, there has always been a grá for the monarchy around the place.

However this emphasis on royalty and things British didn't go down well everywhere. A member of the Jacobs family told me that the company had come under fire from the Workers Party no less for having in the past been involved in supplying biscuits to the British Army.

25TH JUBILEE 1935

George V's twenty fifth jubilee. Little did they know what was round the corner within the year. I remember him from the old worn pennies that were still in circulation in my day.

CORONATION 1937

The present Queen's daddy. Pushed into service after his brother Edward VIII abdicated in 1936 over his love for a divorced American lady.


BREXIT

LETTER TO EMPLOYEES
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I'm going to indulge in a bit of conflating and counterfactual histrionics here.

The above is a letter from Jacobs to its employees warning them of the difficulties that would be caused for the company's activities should Ireland leave the British Commonwealth of Nations. The fear at that point was of Fianna Fáil pulling the plug, but, of course it was the other crowd what did it in the long run.

The letter points out that much of the company's produce would become subject to prohibitive tariffs, with the implication that some half of their output would have to be transferred to their British factory with a devastating effect on employment at the Dublin end.

You will notice that the firm is described as W & R Jacob & Co., just a single company. With Irish independence in 1922 the company was split in two for tax reasons. The Dublin end retained the name W & R Jacob & Co but you will frequently see also W & R Jacob & Co's, presumably referring to both companies. Not quite sure what the apostrophy was doing there, but never mind.

BROKEN BREXIT

Anyway you can see why it brought Brexit to mind, and in honour of our curreent predicament I have come up with my own biscuit label, as I'm sure Jacobs would have, had they still been around. It mightn't be quite like mine, but every man to his own.


TELLY

Jim Figgerty

You can watch and listen to some of the Jacobs TV advertising campaigns on the video viewer. This one is probably the most famous - the hunt for Jim Figgerty, the man with the secret of how the figs get into the fig rolls.


DISTINGUISHED GUESTS

Former Jacobs worker, Ann Rogers, 96

Ann, now 96 years of age, worked in Jacobs. She was much in demand at the launch and looked like she was having a ball. Her favourite biscuits? Goldgrain and Marietta.

Mark Merrigan's entry in the visitors' book

Ann didn't get round to signing the visitors' book on the day but her grandson, Mark, was back on 13/9/17 and entered her name in a comment.

Michael Jenkins, member of Jacobs family

Michael is a member of the Jacobs family, his grandmother having been a Jacob.

He pointed out, here on the timeline, how the company had got in a consultant to redesign the logo in the 1960s. This led to an overall simplification and the incorporation of the shamrock. That logo has since been abandoned.

Douglas Appleyard

Without Douglas there would be no archive, no collection of memorabilia, and Dublin would be the poorer.

So, in my book, Douglas takes the biscuit (aaaggghhh!)

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There is a good review of the exhibition in the journal.ie and you can book a tour here.

BROKEN BISCUITS

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Raheny library has a very interesting exhibition running through the month of August. The theme is W&R Jacob Biscuit Factory and the 1916 Rising.

It draws on the Jacob's Archive and that of Douglas Appleyard, both recently presented to the City Council, and on a number of other sources. It is curated by Ellen Murphy who is responsible for the Jacob's archive in the Dublin City Library & Archive.

So who needed the Pillar, or the Guinness Tower, or the Smithfield Distillery for that matter.

Long before Jim Figgerty and the public's obsession with how the fig got into the fig roll.

This little gem from the 50th anniversary of 1916. Two names which will be familiar to the oldies. Charlie Haughey as Minister for Agriculture, no less, congratulating Jacob's marketing director, Gordon Lambert, on the company's 1916 Jubilee Booklet and thanking him for the box of biscuits.

Do drop in and check out the rest of the exhibition. There's heaps of background here.

And the title of this post. Well, in my day, you could buy broken biscuits by weight in a brown paper bag. Put some of the posher biscuits within reach of the rest of us. A serious contribution to cherishing all the children of the nation equally.

JIM FIGGERTY

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Jim Figgerty is no more. But his spirit lives on in the Jacobs' Archive and Douglas Appleyard Collection of Jacobs' Memorabilia, formally presented to Dublin City yesterday by Valeo Foods who inherited the archive when thy took over the brand, and Douglas Appleyard, a former Jacobs employee, historian, and collector of the memorabilia.

Anyone for a Mikado?
Ardmhéara launches a new career in domestic service.

I don't know whether it's passion or just distraction, but the older I get, and I am very old already, the less I care about making a fool of myself in public. And that's how I crashed the photo session in the Ardmhéara's parlús, only to find I was still wearing my distinctlively downmarket rainproof anorak. Never mind. To paraphrase a totally different brand ad "it's the photos that count".

[l-r] Ellen Murphy - Senior Archivist, Mary Clarke - City Archivist,
Críona Ní Dhálaigh - Ardmhéara, Kieran Glennon - Valeo Foods,
Douglas Appleyard, Margaret Hayes - City Librarian.

And while I'm at it, I notice that even in English language releases the term Lord Mayor is giving way to Ardmhéara, much on the lines of Taoiseach. I wondered initially if it might be related to Críona's political affiliation but it then struck me that it is a very convenient, distinctive, and gender neutral term and I hope it remains in use after her stint at the Mansion House.

The Man from Valeo - Kieran Glennon

I had never heard of Valeo Foods, though, of course, I was very familiar with Jacobs. Oh dear, I thought, another foreign takeover of an Irish brand. So I went to their site and found they are headquartered in Dublin. And you won't believe the number of extant and nostalgic brands now under their roof. I won't bore you with a long list but take a look at the timeline on their website - starting with Odlums at the beginning of the Famine, or, just check out individual brands.

Anyway, Kieran gave a good speech and stressed how happy the company were to be making the archive of one of their iconic brands available to the people of Dublin.

I only wish Liptons, or whoever owns that brand today, would do the same. My grandfather was briefly manager of Liptons in Birr and his career crashed. I still don't know why, but am consumed with curiosity. So I do appreciate the value of Valeo's gift to the public realm.

Ardmhéara Críona Ní Dhálaigh

Now, I've been at a few things launched or introduced by the Ardmhéara in recent times and I have to say I think she is unique. Her passion and enthusiasm for her subject, and knowledge of it, are a wonder to behold.

And Jacobs really pushed the button. In the middle of a lively speech of thanks, and before she even got to taste the biscuits, she invited the audience to join her in a Jacobs' jingle, which, not surprisingly, at least half those present did. Great fun and nostalgia by the bucketful.

Watching the ads - Part 1

We then had a viewing of some old Jacobs moving advertisements. The audience had a great view but not so good those on the platform. So Críona took to the steps the better to see the biscuits. Douglas, who had endured forty years of this stuff seemed less pushed.

Watching the ads - Part 2

But then, even he could not restrain himself from seeking a better view and joined Críona in the cheap seats, or to be precise, no seats at all.

Full Oak Room

This is the third time I've been in the Oak Room of the Mansion House in a matter of weeks, and it is an indication of the extent to which the Ardmhéara is making her residence available for community and other public interest functions. This is how it should be, long may it last.

Appleyard family

I mentioned Douglas Appleyard's collection of Jacobs' memorabilia. Now, that may sound a bit boring but believe me it's not. I've been at Douglas's illustrated talk on Jacobs and on his memorabilia in particular and it is a fascinating collection of material which is readily identifiable as intrinsic not only to the city but to the country in general. But that's only part of the story. Douglas has also striven mightily to ensure that the company archive itself has been preserved and then presented to the City. So this was a huge day for him and his family. Well done Douglas.

Ellen Murphy - Senior Archivist

Ellen Murphy has overall responsibility for the reception and treatment of this archive in the Dublin City Library and Archive in Pearse Street. She deserves to take a bow on this occasion which is purely the public face of an enormous amount of collaborative work on this archive and collection which has been going on behind the scenes in Pearse Street for a while now. Today's occasion, while celebrating the gift to the public archives, is really marking its presentation to the wider public.

Jacobs Factory Header

And for those among you who may have an interest if following all this up, here is the score, as Ellen explained it to me.

There is now a database with over 3,300 entries which can be viewed in the Reading Room in Dublin City Library and Archive. Each database entry has a reference number and this can be used to call up original documents and memorabilia from the collection which can be viewed by members of the public in the reading room. All items from 330 boxes are available in the Reading Room with the following exceptions:

• Some oversize items have been sent to off-site storage. These have been digitised so an individual can see an image instead.
  
• Employee files are closed for data protection reasons. Some access to information may be given to direct relatives of deceased employees . Email cityarchives@dublincity.ie for further information.

Writers

Cover of book containing entries from the finalists
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As this will be my 500th blog post on this blog I am glad to have something positive to report.

The other evening (15/12/2014) I attended the final event in the Battle of Clontarf Millennium Celebrations. This was a book launch and the presentation of prizes in the millennium's creative writing competition for local primary schools.

Every finalist, and there were lots of them in the different class categories, got exactly the same prize. A copy of the book and a selection box. But what a book. The entries from the finalists themselves had been brought together in a book entitled "We Are Writers", published by the Clontarf Historical Society and the Raheny Heritage Society. So the creativity here extended beyond that of the competitors alone.

In addition the overall category winners also received vouchers for Easons - up to €600 worth of vouchers were presented.

Barbara Tarrant & Collette Gill

MC for the evening was the ubiquitous organiser of everything, Collette Gill, Chairperson of the Clontarf 2014 Committee. You can see her here with her clipboard as she invites one of the judges, Barbara Tarrant, to address the audience of parents and children packed into the Indigo Lounge of the Clontarf Castle Hotel.

Daragh Moran & Barbara Tarrant

Before going any further, I have to declare an interest here. The photo shows Barbara presenting his book to Daragh Moran, who happens to be a first cousin twice removed. The removal bit just means he's way younger than I am. Given that I was concentrating on trying to photograph every winner in this fast moving pageant, I hadn't noticed Daragh until I saw his mother there at the end of the evening (and yes, she's only once removed).

Daragh's entry consisted of a brief account of the battle, in (almost) rhyming couplets.

Kay Lonergan & Robyn Gill

The youngest judge is Robyn Gill, a transition year student, who has already had two short stories published in the Irish Times. She is seen here accepting a presentation from Kay Lonergan, Chairperson of the Clontarf Historical Society.

Of the entries published in the book just over 40% are from girls. Not a huge imbalance and it may not have any particular significance. I suppose these bloody battles may be more appealing to boys, though one of the entries was actually from a female warrior. Indeed, if you look at the 2014 re-enactment of the battle, you'll see there was no shortage of female warriors taking part.

Morgan O'Reilly

The third of the four judges, Morgan O'Reilly, said he was very encouraged by the sense of community permeating the range of celebrations and was particularly happy with the standard of entries in this competition.

The range of styles, inventiveness and imagination in the entries was spectacular.

There was a lot of time travel, much magic, family correspondence, live tv reporting, and, as Collette remarked, even the rewriting of history - the licence of youth, no doubt. There was a variety of styles from prose (purple and otherwise) to poetry (including acrostics).

You have to remember that the children's ages were from 7 to 12 years, and you wouldn't always know from the entries alone which end of the spectrum you were dealing with. Some of the younger entries were really excellent.

Douglas Appleyard (on right)

The fourth judge, Louise Melinn, could not be present due to exams, so Douglas Appleyard, Chairperson of the Raheny Heritage Society, stood in and presented the final batch of books.

And as we're on the subject of competition, this photographer (me) had serious competition all evening from parents taking advantage of the miracles of modern technology to immortalise the achievements of their children .

I'll leave you with an enhanced glimpse of the picture on the cover of the book. This was the work of Aoife Tynan, from St. Brigid's Girls National School, Killester, who won first place in the third and fourth class category in the Battle of Clontarf Art Competition, held earlier in the year in this same venue.

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If you are interested in some of the other events during the year's celebrations you can see a report on the 1014 Retrospective event, along with links to those individual events which I managed to attend, here.