brown paper packages

I’ve just read or perhaps, given its immense length and density, it would be more honest to say filleted, The Soviet Century by Karl Schlögel. Its scope is enormous, there are some infelicities of translation from the German and, as with a lot of big books by big names, it could have done with some tighter editing. But, and it’s a HUGE BUT, it looks at all sorts of aspects of everyday and domestic Soviet life that are omitted in the political and historical accounts: the horrors of shared living arrangements, the ‘Moscow’ kitchen, the importance of doorbells, queues, palm trees, dachas, trains, the lack of any telephone directory, the significance of knick-knacks, the unbranded shops (‘Hairdresser’, ‘Delicatessen’, ‘Bread’). Ah yes, I remember them well.

[Vilnius, 1990]

One chapter in particular created a Proustian rush: Chapter 17: Wrapping Paper, Packaging. How brilliant that a serious historian has recognised that ‘eras have their surfaces’ and that the pre-plastic bag Soviet era is bound up with rough, greyish-brown paper which made the world of Soviet wrapping so simple. There was no choice of paper, so ‘wrapping was secondary’ and 'the important thing was what was inside’. Books were wrapped in strong brown paper and tied with a sturdy piece of string, so that opening them involved untying the string and knots and smoothing out the paper for reuse.

I’m sure people in the USSR would have given their eye teeth for colourful printed wrapping paper, the sort which we now and, slightly ironically, are rejecting in favour of plain brown paper and card. It has to be said though, our plain wrapping materials are a world away from the rough, fibrous Soviet brown paper.

[photo borrowed from Labour and Wait]

What we have in Kraft paper is a smooth, semi-glossy, very strong, easy-to-handle material in a nice warm shade of brown in which to wrap our goods. A few years ago I went to Broadhurst’s of Southport where my book purchases were expertly wrapped in exactly this sort of brown paper torn from a huge roll and tied with string pulled from an overhead contraption.

I think there was even a loop so that I could carry my books the same way that many readers and shoppers in twentieth century films and novels do.

It wasn’t just a naked book to put straight in a bag, it was a lovely, carefully wrapped parcel which I could have put in the overhead parcel net on my train back to Manchester, had these still existed.

[‘Shoppers in Hitchin Chuchyard’ (mid-50s) by Phyllis Morgans]

It’s actually not that long ago that all sorts of things were wrapped in brown paper and string, and transported this way, no matter how bulky or awkwardly shaped. (Mrs Miniver arrives home from Christmas shopping ‘festooned with parcels’.)

[Sorting Christmas parcels, Head Post Office, Birmingham, 1954]

So ubiquitous were brown paper parcels that at Christmas the Post Office was inundated with mountains, avalanches, and landslides of them, all to be sorted by hand (more good photos here). I like the fact that brown paper and string were an “everyman” wrapping, good enough for most people.

[Margaret Howell’s brown paper packaging]

Although, in something of an inversion, plain brown packaging has been co-opted by some rather upmarket retailers as a statement of their values. Margaret Howell whose plainness (at a price) is part of her aesthetic, would never use garishly paper patterned paper. So it comes as no surprise that she says, “There is something about good quality brown paper that reassures and satisfies. For me, it’s a classic. We use it to wrap purchases from our MHL shops. It fits the utilitarian character of the clothes.”

[The Two Ronnies, 1976]

Similarly, Old Town used to wrap orders of clothes in brown paper - they may still - which matches many of their brown cotton garments inspired by workwear which is a long way from the range of the owners’ employment. (At this point, I can’t help but think of the Two Ronnies’s Fork Handles sketch.)

And AG Hendy sells lovely traditional candles and other goods wrapped in brown paper. In fact, the whole shop is a homage to the colours of brown paper and string. I love it, but it does make we hope for something hot pink or neon lime inside a tastefully wrapped parcel.

[Bristol Museum collection]

Even museums here are now recognising the ‘surface of the era’, and are collecting local shops’ paper bags, brown ones included. Given the environmental issues around disposing of mixed packaging materials such as foil, glitter, sticky tape, fancy bows, tags, and so on versus the slightly Scrooge-ish pleasure of smoothing out brown paper and rolling up tiny balls of string for re-use, it would not surprise me if we saw a wholesale return to brown paper, brown card, brown bags, and miles and miles of good, old-fashioned string.

Finally, I can’t not mention The Sound of Music which did so much to promote the wrapping of packages in brown paper tied up with string, yet didn’t even have any in the film. It turns out that just the sound of the words sung by Julie Andrews and sad children is enough to make you want to buy a roll of brown paper and a ball of string, and start wrapping.

Happy Sunday!

PS I’ll be back in a couple of weeks.