Purpose of B18 Blankets

[jjp3rd]

Thank you!


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[swarmee]

Fountain pen blotters? Why would you use felt/fabric for that instead of the heavy cardboard normally used. You'd just have ink running through it onto whatever the felt was sitting on.

When I first opened it, I expected the answer "doll house rug" or "fabric square for quilting pillows or blankets."

[Vintagecatcher]

Christie's had an important group of documents in a lot that ended 4/5/2018, which revealed that Mercantile Novelty Co., Inc. made the B18s for American Tobacco Company.

Patrick

[buymycards]

At first I didn't think it made sense that they were pen wipers, but then I looked up a definition of pen wiper:

Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.

noun A piece of rag, chamois leather, or other material used for wiping or cleaning pens after use. Pen-wipers are often made up into ornaments more or less elaborate.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
noun A cloth, or other material, for wiping off or cleaning ink from a pen.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
noun A cloth or other material for wiping off or cleaning ink from a pen.

[nolemmings]

Odd in that I don't recall ever seeing one with much if any ink stains or blots. You'd think the school kids among others would have used them freely. I guess those could have been tossed as garbage, but the cynic in me makes me wonder if they were just collectibles and somebody, pressed to come up with a more useful explanation, chose ink wipers. Better that than snot rags.

[Clutch-Hitter]

Originally Posted by buymycards

At first I didn't think it made sense that they were pen wipers, but then I looked up a definition of pen wiper:

Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.

noun A piece of rag, chamois leather, or other material used for wiping or cleaning pens after use. Pen-wipers are often made up into ornaments more or less elaborate.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
noun A cloth, or other material, for wiping off or cleaning ink from a pen.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
noun A cloth or other material for wiping off or cleaning ink from a pen.

Thought of the leather cards reading this

[Clutch-Hitter]

Leather cards perhaps used to assist in opening jars and the like

[bigfanNY]

At one time I was close to completing this set and thumbed through quite a few stacks. And it seemed that most stacks had a few that were washed out. So maybe these were the ones used to clean pens and then were washed to use again?

[Jobu]

This surprises me too. Like the silks, I thought these were made to display or sew together. I also thought what Todd did - odd that there aren't a bunch with ink stains on them.

I have a cabinet photo that shows several B18s sewn together to make a pillow. This doesn't mean they couldn't have been repurposed ink blotters, but I would like to see the source material for the ink blotter claim.