Update: As of April 2023, the Mills Archive Trust has digitised and made available online a decade’s worth of Northwestern Miller magazines—1930–1939.
This project was made possible through grant funding and fills a gap in the digitisations of the magazine available online elsewhere. For more information on the project, please email outreach@millsarchive.org. To view the digitised portion of the Northwestern Miller collection, click here.
Hello everyone! This week at the Mills Archive I watched Lawrence and Elizabeth move hundreds of issues of ‘The Northwestern Miller’ into the office in order to organise them into the right order ready for binding. The Archive plans to apply for funding to bind these beautiful trade journals.
The ones I saw today dated all the way back to 1925 but Ron told me that they also have some much older ones which were rescued from a caravan that date back to the 19th century!
The ones being organised today were donated to the Archive by the Satake Centre for Grain Process Engineering before the department was relocated. I was able to have a look through a couple of them and they contain mill stock exchanges, information on flour production across the United States and in Europe, articles on famous millers and millwrights and even safety tips on what to do in case of a fire.
The thing that struck me the most though was the beautiful and individual illustrations on the front cover of each issue. Even better, inside each issue is a short paragraph explaining the artwork on the front – who created it, what it is about and why they created it.
The issues are all black and white apart from the illustrations on the front but in some of the earlier issues the adverts at the front are detailed with a vibrant red to make them stand out. This red is then seen on the front covers of the later issues after around 1940 when the covers became less hand drawn or painted and more photographic. I had a look at the use of the colour red in American advertising and this shade was not only very eyecatching, so perfect for drawing attention in small adverts, but also the most popular shade of red in that era. It was known as ‘phantom red’, made popular in the 1920s by ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ and his red cape.
The journal pictured above is a special baking issue, hence the illustration referencing the nursery rhyme ‘sing a song of sixpence’.
The issues may look in good condition at first glance but they are actually very fragile so binding them will protect them and put them in the correct date order with the newest at the front so that the public can look at them too. If you are interested in art or art history then I think you would really enjoy learning about the illustrations on the front of these issues. There are works from different artists all over the world and even some more famous artists such as Richard Caton Woodville Jr who is known for being one of the most prolific and effective painters of battle scenes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.