Attention S74 Silk Collectors

[BobC]

Originally Posted by steve B

It's really too bad the page doesn't have more info.

With the s72-3 not including a brand it makes me wonder.
The s-74s would be easy to trim or deliberately cut short to use in a different brand alongside the non- branded actresses.

Agreed Steve, but you never see any trimmed S74-1 silks like that out in the hobby. Now if the backing is off and they've frayed short like that, then yes. But that Dots Miller silk looks like the backing is still attached so that it had to be purposely trimmed to look like that. And if the shortness was due to fraying instead, that fraying would most likely be real obvious. But I honestly can't tell for certain without seeing that page in person.

As for the actress silk not having any brand identified, that is because it also came with a paper backing advertising the brands just like with the S74-1 baseball player silks. Later unbacked versions of the actress silks that had the tobacco brands on the front, just like the S74-2 colored version baseball players silks, were also released.

http://www.s74silk.com/related/

There are to my understanding 5 different recognized versions of the S72 actress silks. The S72-1 and S72-2 versions did not come with advertising backings, and showed the tobacco brands on the fronts of the silks. Both the A and B versions of the S72-3 silks did come with an advertising backing attached. The silk of Isabel D'Armond shown in the above image next to the Dots Miller S74-1 silk looks to be an S72-3A silk, with the image in an all brown/sepia tone. The actress silks shown on the site I included a link to just above are S72-3B full colored actress silks. Though at first glance the Helen Holmes image looks like it might be all brown/sepia toned, and therefore actually an S72-3A silk after all, when compared more closely to the D'Armond silk above, and also viewed in person, it becomes clearer it is an S72-3A full colored actress silk after all. Also note that the numerical references given by Burdick to the actress silks, 1 - 2 - 3, do not equate to their chronological release. The ad-backed S72-3 actress silks were likely released first, alongside the S74-1 baseball silks, with the unbacked S72-2 and S72-3 actress silks released later with the S74-2 colored version baseball player silks.

S72-1A ACTRESSES (Hvy prnt halftones, serrated, Old Mill) - 14

S72-1B ACTRESSES (Lt prnt halftones, two lengths, Old Mill, Turkey Red, Piedmont, The Pet - longer, Nebo, Zira - shorter) - 90

S72-2 ACTRESSES (Line Drawings, serrated, Old Mill) - 12

S72-3A ACTRESSES (Brown, As T27C) - 25

S72-3B ACTRESSES (Colored, As T27C) - 25