Colored S74 Silks Revisted

[Vintagecatcher]

The colored S74 silks happen to be one of my favorite items to collect. It also is a set that still has many unanswered questions.

One of the details that interests me the most is how many different color combinations exist? Not only does there seem to be an endless number of colors of the silks themselves, but then you can add the twist of multiple color inks for the portraits of the players.

Whereas, the white S74s have a paper backing that advertises four possible brands including: Turkey Red, Old Mill, Red Sun, and Helmar, I have only seen Turkey Red and Old Mill advertised on the front of the larger colored S74 silks.

Although I have collected multiple players over the years, I have traded all but my Chief Meyers' S74s away. Attempting to put together a run of color combinations of Chief Meyers will be no small task.

Here are a few of my Chief Meyers' silks:

Let's see how many color combinations the board can provide!

Patrick

[andybecker]

hey patrick.

as you mentioned, there are only two tobacco brands for s74-2.

in addition to what is shown; i have seen green, brown, pink, teal, ivory, and purple.

btw, the deep red is pretty scarce.

[Vintagecatcher]

Hi Andy,

Thanks for the response.

Here are a few more that I have including a blue one I picked up yesterday.




Patrick

[BobC]

Hi Patrick,

Don't forget that in addition to the backround silk colors, the images themselves came in any of three specific colors; brown, blue and a reddish-rust shade. I think your scans include an example of each. So to get all the different color combinations you'd have to multiply the number of different backround silk colors by three. Andy's list of additional colors is good but, I don't think that is anywhere near all inclusive. For example, when you put different yellow colored S74s side by side you start to notice very distinct variations amongst them. Some are a bright yellow, others a darker yellow or even goldenrod color, and so on. The sometimes subtle differences could be caused by fabric coming from different material lots with imperfect or inconsistent dyeing applications being used to create them. Or it could also possibly be from age, exposure to elements or even sunlight that has caused fading and other changes to the silk colors over the years. I just think that they used whatever colors they may have had available and felt that the more variations in colors, the better, since the silks were primarily to be used in the making of quilts and pillows. We may never really know how many different colors/shades they actually used over the production run of the colored silks but, it would be an interesting project to attempt. The biggest problem would be deciding whether slight color/shade variations actually constitute different colors or not. Not everyone will always agree and you'll never get a consensus on the true number of different colors produced. Still would be an interesting project to attempt. Oh, and Andy is right, the real darkish red silks are one of the rarer background colors out there. There's also a light lime or chartreuse color that I think is pretty rare too. (My theory for the darkish reds ones being so rare is that you can hardly make out the image of the players on those silks and therefore they just weren't kept or used.)

Bob