Purpose of B18 Blankets

[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.

[chlankf]

That's a really cool photo. I've been working on this set for some time. The ink blotter theory is interesting, however, I just don't see it. I don't see any with ink stains that would support this thinking. As for washing, not a chance. As soon as you get them wet the ink bleeds. Just my simple thinking. Regardless, I love the set.

Originally Posted by 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.

[NiceDocter]

Great eye for that pickup on the cabinet! Probably sat in an antique store for years without anyone noticing! Wonder if the girl in the photo knew that years from now we would be discussing how wonderful the picture is but because of the pillow on the chair!!!! LOL

[brianp-beme]

I always assumed that the B-18 blankets were meant to be drooled upon.

Brian

[cubman1941]

Originally Posted by 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.

This is the source material. I also just joined John Thorn's blog site:

"Shoeless Notes - Issue 003
September 11, 2020

Hello and welcome to Issue 003 of Shoeless Notes, the email newsletter for the Shoeless Joe Jackson Museum and Baseball Library in Greenville, South Carolina.

When we do find out something we never knew before, it’s such an exciting thing! To be able to share it with you, to be able to make that history come alive, it makes the hours and hours of digging through old newspaper clippings and searching through digital archives worth it. On June 11, John Thorn learned something new.
John is the Official Historian of Major League Baseball, and, without hyperbole, he probably knows more about baseball than anyone who has ever lived on this planet. The fact that even John is still learning new things proves my earlier point: it’s impossible for anyone to know everything. But John didn’t just learn something that he didn’t know… he learned something that possibly less than 10 people currently living knew. He learned what the 1914 B18 Blankets were originally intended to be.
Let me back up, because that last sentence probably doesn’t mean a whole heck of a lot to most of you, and the rest of this newsletter is going to go a lot better for everyone if we’re all on the same page! Back in the early days of baseball cards, card sets would often times have designations such as B18 or N162. One of the most famous card sets of all time, which features one of the most famous cards of all time, is the T206 set which was produced from 1909 to 1911. If you’ve ever heard anyone mention the Honus Wagner card that has sold for millions of dollars, they’re talking about his T206. There wasn’t a rhyme or reason to the lettering or numbering of those sets, it was just a way to tell them apart.
In 1914, a unique “card” set was introduced, which has become known as the B18 set. But the cards were not made of a paper-like material, as most other cards had been before it, and as most have been since. The B18s were felt squares measuring approximately 5 ¼" on each side with a dark brown border all the way around. They started getting included as part of tobacco packages, most notably in ones with the brand name of Egyptienne Straights Cigarettes.
A common way baseball cards were distributed in the early days was in packs of cigarettes, and often times the cigarette companies would have advertisements on the back of the card. In fact, the reason Honus Wagner’s T206 card is so valuable was due to Wagner’s objection to a cigarette ad being on the back of his card. Wagner demanded that the American Tobacco Company pull his card from circulation, which made them super rare, and since he is an all-time great, a graded example can now fetch 7 figures.

If you’d like to read a more in-depth history of the B18 set, read THIS PIECE by Jeffrey Obermeyer, which he wrote in 2009
The method of delivery for the B18s was nothing new, but the size and material of these “cards” was different than almost anything that had been seen before. They became known as “blankets” over the years, and nobody really seemed to know why. One working theory was that they were just like tiny blankets, themselves. Another theory was that the name was due to the fact that people would collect as many as they could, and either sew them directly together to create a blanket, or stitch them onto other patches of fabric and create quilts.
The B18 set had 90 different baseball players represented, including nine from each of ten different major league teams. Five of the teams were from the National League (Boston, Brooklyn, New York, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis), and five were from the American League (Cleveland, Detroit, New York, St. Louis, and Washington). There were 16 teams in major league baseball at the time, but why the other six were left out of this set will likely forever remain a mystery.
Of the 90 players represented in the B18 set, nine became Hall of Famers: Max Carey, Frank Chance, Ty Cobb, Miller Huggins, Walter Johnson, Rabbit Maranville, Casey Stengel, Bobby Wallace and Zach Wheat. Other notable players featured in the set include Fred Snodgrass, Ray Chapman, Chick Gandil, and our very own Shoeless Joe Jackson.
Joe’s blanket had two different variants, each of which are shown above. One had purple basepaths and yellow bases, and the other had green basepaths and purple bases. The purple basepath version is the rarer of the two, and therefore the more valuable, though both are incredibly sought-after.

The original photograph which inspired the image on Joe’s B18 blanket was taken by George Grantham Bain (likely on March 23, 1914 at Cleveland’s spring-training site in Athens, Georgia)
Which takes us back to John Thorn, who was doing some reading on June 11, and came across an entry on NYHistory.org which very casually told him precisely what he didn’t even know he was looking to learn that day:
A white cotton felt cloth pen wipe, printed with a central image of a baseball player marked "Jackson", surrounded by pennants marked "Cleveland" and "A.L." for American League, with green borders decorated with purple corner blocks resembling bases, with baseball items in each block including a ball, a mitt, crossed bats and a catcher's mask. Part of a collectible series of baseball team felts given as a premium by cigar stores and manufacturers for blotting the ink from a nib pen.
So there we have it! 106 years after their creation, the world knows once again what these “blankets” were originally intended to be: pen wipes. "

[swarmee]

Originally Posted by cubman1941

There wasn’t a rhyme or reason to the lettering or numbering of those sets, it was just a way to tell them apart.

Part of a collectible series of baseball team felts given as a premium by cigar stores and manufacturers for blotting the ink from a nib pen.
So there we have it! 106 years after their creation, the world knows once again what these “blankets” were originally intended to be: pen wipes. "

Still don't have a period source; that's just a modern attribution, as far as I can tell. All of their tobacco felts are listed as "pen wipes", with the disclaimer that "Due to ongoing research, information about this object is subject to change."
May be right, may be wrong. But the article writer's quote I bolded is incorrect. The letters have meanings, and the numbers are grouped in such a way that they also have meaning, just like the numbers in the Dewey Decimal system have meaning.

Here's my counterpoint. They declare the national flag blankets as pen wipes as well.
https://www.nyhistory.org/exhibit/pen-wipe-tobacco-82

Pen wipe/ tobacco
OBJECT NUMBER:
2002.1.2852
DATE:
1912-1930
MEDIUM:
Cloth
DIMENSIONS:
11 3/4 x 8 1/4 in.
DESCRIPTION:
A brown cotton felt cloth pen wipe, printed with a 48 star American flag, with a red and blue border decorated with ribbons, swags and striped shields with a brown border. Part of a series of Flags of the World given as a premium by cigar stores and manufacturers for blotting the ink from a nib pen.
CREDIT LINE:
Gift of Bella C. Landauer

Does anyone believe that in 1910 an American company printed a US flag on an item meant to clean soot off a fountain pen? I remember how much outrage bathing suits printed with American Flag symbology were causing back in the 1980s. Making an item intended to be soiled and then thrown away depicting an American Flag a hundred years ago would have been ridiculous. I would say the labeling on nyhistory.org is lazy and the article writer's republishing that attribution as some kind of fact is also lazy.
Weren't many of these items redemptions as well from coupons or order booklets? There should be some paper trail if these were manufactured with the intent of being pen wipes.

[1880nonsports]

Don't buy it at all. First nothing to do with cigars so makes what's said less credible? Second - without the felts manufacturer or possibly something from the ATC - no way were they pen wipes even if someone used one in that matter once or twice. On coupons and trade card type paper - it's been clearly stated that it's use was for the home honey to create household items. I have a folder showing all the things that could be done with them - pictures plenty of sewn items - no mention of a pen blotter. While I'm sure as a baseball historian he brings a lot to the table - sometimes supposition replaces fact.
I'm rarely right about anything - just ask my wife. However until I see something contemporaneous in print - ink blotter a HUGE stretch. I actually have a few blotters in my accumulation. 1930's-1950's their "hey day" and ostensibly made of a porous paper.
I would LOVE to see an actual reference as the utilitarian and/or practical uses in either situation are not mutually exclusive. Come over to the non-sport side (link at top) and let's discuss it. We have a couple of experts in the field that would be happy to explore and discuss the issue even though the S/L/B category gets little respect.

no guarantees whether written or implied........