A 1930s Donnell Grain & Warehouse Match Holder (221)

Some time ago, an item described as “new old stock” came on the market.

It was a1930s advertising “match holder”  given out by the Davis Donnell Grain and Warehouse company, which was a grain buying and storage operation located on the south side of 4th Street just east of the tracks.

“New old stock” is a wonderful phrase describing something manufactured that never sold and sat in storage for a long time--as if in a time capsule. But the time finally arrives when items of that kind are “dug out” and disposed of.

Such is the match holder I purchased and show here. It is “virtually new” in the sense that it is 1930s, but was never used or sold--except to me only recently.

Jim Becket, 1929-2015 (220)

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Matchbooks From Six Iconic Progressive Era Davis Restaurants (219)

Believe it or not, in Davis’ “Progressive” ‘70s-‘80s restaurants and other public establishments “enabled” smoking with ashtrays and matchbooks.

At a recent estate sale, I came onto a cardboard box of matchbooks that included about two dozen from Davis businesses.

Among them, six were from restaurants well known to and frequented by Davis residents in the “progressive” decades. In my experience, these six are “iconic.”

I have removed the matches from the six “books,” cut them into viewable form, and pasted the result up on the page shown here.

For anyone living in Davis in that period, these matchbooks are surely, a nostalgic “blast from the past.”

A Helpful “Capsule” on UCD’s Historic Art Department (218)

The Tuesday, January 27 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle prints a story on fund-raising for the new UCD Shrem Museum of Art that contains a capsule summary of UCD’s historic art era that I thought might be of interest at this time.

The “at this time” is of course the City Update Survey of Historic Resources that includes the possibility of making the house at 1303 Alice Street a City Designated Historical Resource. The capsule provides a concise broad sweep depiction of the context endowing that house with historic importance.

It is written by the Shrem director, Rachel Teagle, and appears in the top portion of excerpt 3 in this post (where it is enclosed in a red box).*

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