Hey, pennant guys

[Domer05]

I've never actually seen this mark before; but, I figured there had to be a few out there in circulation. Great find, thanks for sharing.

Earlier this year I wrote a piece over on Pennant Fever covering WGN Flag Co. You can read it here: https://pennantfever.weebly.com/blog...ry/wgn-flag-co There, I attributed this particular graphic design to WGN's pennants. In that piece, and toward the end under "KEY PRODUCTS, " I discussed something that the current owner of WGN shared with me: sometime in the 1960s or 70s WGN used another pennant maker to supply their pennants. He identified that company as the G.B. Feld Co. of Chicago, IL. I suspect this SMU pennant was in fact manufactured by G.B. Feld; and subsequently distributed by WGN during this era.

That would explain why the artwork is the same as others bearing no such mark; and which I attribute to WGN. They probably just shared artwork.

WGN's owner also shared with me that many of the products his company offered were in fact manufactured by outside vendors. Their nodders, pinbacks, etc. were likely supplied to them by others. I asked him if that were true of their pennants, and he couldn't really answer, as the company had pretty much moved away from pennants by the time he was born. Nor could he identify the artist behind many of these great designs. That suggests to me that WGN may have always used an outside supplier for their pennants--not just in the 1970s.

If true, that maker likely would have been G.B. Feld. Mr. Newbould and Mr. Feld seemed like natural business partners. The two companies were located near each other on Chicago's south side.

This SMU pennant's kind of different from the WGN ones. It is monochrome; whereas WGN seems to have offered this design in the polychrome/Day-Glo look. It also has tassels; and WGN seems to have stopped using tassels by the 1950s. So who knows, WGN may have had nothing to do with this particular pennant. (Hence the Feld maker's mark.)

The G.B. Feld Co. dates back to at least 1948. It started out of the owner's home, located at 2137 E. 90th St. By the late 1950s they were operating out of 2256 E. 75th St. Here's a 1960 advertisement of theirs from The Billboard that clearly identifies them as a pennant maker....