PENNANT FACTORY
Homemade pennants inspired by designs of the past
The jobThe 1959 World Series marked the first time the cities of Chicago and Los Angeles faced each other in the Fall Classic. For the American League Chicago White Sox, their pennant-starved fans had been waiting decades for this. The "Go-Go Sox," as that '59 team was affectionately nicknamed, were built on speed and pitching. They were led by exciting young players like Luis Aparicio, Minnie Minoso, and veteran pitcher Early Wynn. For the Dodgers and their followers, the excitement was just as great. Just one year prior, the Dodgers had relocated to Los Angeles from Brooklyn; and they remained the hottest ticket in town, regularly filling their temporary home at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum--no easy feat, given its cavernous dimensions. The '59 Dodgers represented a blend of Brooklyn holdovers like Gil Hodges and Carl Furillo; coupled with the youthful presence of game changing players like Maury Wills, Don Drysdale, and Sandy Koufax. It was one of the most anticipated World Series match-ups of all time... ...which meant, it was the kind of event a novelty maker dreams of! After all, nothing spells profit like a special event attended by hundreds of thousands of spectators. One such novelty company that had to be especially giddy over the matchup was the WGN Flag Co. of Chicago. For decades, WGN had been making felt pennants for Chicagoland sports teams. They also ran the concession stands at Notre Dame Stadium. And by the late 1950s they were producing baseball pennants for most of the big league teams located throughout the country. But, of all their offerings, WGN's most cherished pennants among collectors today were those made to commemorate special events, i.e., a pennant made to commemorate a specific occasion, such as a world series, all star game, bowl game, or a super bowl. Undoubtedly, these "special event pennants," as I've named them, were produced for and sold at the events themselves. Consequently, they were made in limited runs; and, they were often hastily made given the limited time available to make them. Special event pennants by WGN share these common characteristics: (1) they're rare due to their limited production runs; (2) they're highly sought after because they bare a date and location on them; and (3) they often exhibit minor imperfections due to their accelerated production schedules. Here’s a sampling of my favorite special event pennants by WGN over the years: Special event pennants were a challenging product to manufacture. Sometimes you knew weeks ahead that a particular game would be played in a given location; and, perhaps even who the teams would be, e.g., The Super Bowl. These events left the maker with ample time to design, make, and ship the finished product to the retailers. In other cases, e.g., The World Series, the maker was not so fortunate. If one team didn't clinch the pennant until the final day of the regular season, pennant makers might only have a few days before the start of Game 1 to make the correct pennants. For the 1959 World Series, WGN made special event pennants for both the American and National League Champion participants. The hometown White Sox actually got several interesting variants: Okay, so WGN had plenty of options for White Sox fans; but, what about the visiting team and their fans? Accordingly, WGN made a National League variant, geared largely for Dodger fans attending the series in either city: Between the two cities, more than 400,000 fans would attend the six world series games played; and thanks to this array pennants, WGN was positioned to sell a lot of pennants at either venue. I mentioned earlier that WGN did not have a lot of time to make these special event pennants; and their Dodger pennant certainly exemplifies the hasty nature of its production. It appears that the designers intended to screen print this using three colors: white, orange, and green. Here's two different pennants that illustrate how the graphics were supposed to look: But, there was a problem. You may have noticed that the above two pennants lack a contrasting felt spine. That's because, in his/her haste to make these, the screen printer placed the stencil too close to the edge of the felt roll. (Note the placement of the batter. A spine would have covered the end of his bat.) Rather than discard these, WGN simply sold them, as is. They were known to do that. On their next batch of pennants WGN corrected the above error. Now the graphics were "in register" and there was sufficient room to sew on a spine. But, they had less time to make this round. Something had to give. Accordingly, they omitted the color green: Okay, the two-color version looked fine. Not as good as the three-color, but okay. But look closely at either version and you'll see another sign of corner cutting by the production team at WGN.... Typically, pennants from this era were printed in one color--often white or sometimes yellow--known as an "underbase." In this case, the underbase was white. Then, secondary colors were added atop this base layer, typically via an airbrush. To ensure that the secondary colors went where they were intended, a "block-out stencil" was placed atop the graphics allowing each secondary color to land only where desired. Here, green and orange were applied via an airbrush; however, it's clear WGN never bothered to use a block-out stencil. As a result, you can see places where the green and orange ink landed on the felt itself, beyond the graphics. Additionally, you can also see that there's areas of the graphic that the airbrush missed. The result is a sloppy looking pennant that appears as if they rushed the job. Which is exactly what happened. The upshot of all this is that, whether intended or not, WGN actually produced several variants of this same pennant. Most were printed on blue felt; but there was a red variant, shown above. Some featured felt spines; others not. Some featured three colors; others, only two. No matter the version, this was a really cool pennant. And because the Dodgers won the series that year, it remains highly sought after by pennant collectors today. And, because WGN didn't make a great quantity of these, they're quite scarce. Which means the only way I'll ever get my hands on one is to make it myself. |
AuthorIn 2018 I started a separate website called Pennant Fever dedicated to 20th century felt novelty manufacturers. It focuses on these companies' history, products, etc. Eventually, my interest in these businesses inspired me to start making my own pennants. THIS site you're currently viewing, Pennant Factory, is where I'll showcase some of the felt projects I've taken on. Most are reproductions of real pennants once for sale to the public. I've done my best to re-create the originals as authentically as possible based upon surviving photos, known dimensions, etc. Others are my original work, intended to look like the styles of yesteryear. Some turned out better than others. See for yourself. Enjoy! -KRB Projects:
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