Ravilious - 1938 High Street arcade & seaside slots

[pennymachines]

In 1938, the Curwen Press printed 2000 copies of "High Street" by J.M. Richards, before the Luftwaffe destroyed the lithographic plates. Fortunately, last year, the Victoria & Albert Museum produced a fine facsimile of it. With the aid of charming lithographs by Eric Ravilious, it describes 24 shops you would typically find on the British high street at the time. Some are still there, like the Cheesemonger and Fireworks shop; others not, like the Plumassier and Submarine Engineer. Each is described with a detail that reveals diligent research. The penultimate one, we would all love to go back in time to visit - the AMUSEMENT ARCADE:

This is quite a new kind of shop. A few years ago there was no such thing: the nearest was the row of automatic machines on the pier at seaside places, where people with some pennies to spare could amuse themselves playing hockey with miniature figures, or aiming at a target with a revolver, or watching a thrilling rescue by the fire brigade.

The next thing that happened was the introduction of what were called 'pin-table' machines (or Corinthian Bagatelle) into public-houses and cafes. You put a penny in the slot, which released a number of balls, and you tried to shoot them into the holes with the highest numbers. Arrangements of little pegs or pins deflected the ball so that the highest numbers were the most difficult to score. These games became very popular in public-houses, particularly with the landlords as all the pennies put in the machines became a source of profit. The other games people play in public-houses, like darts and shove ha'penny, do not bring in money, though they induce people to stay and spend money on drinks.

It was only after pin-tables had shown themselves so popular in public-houses that a lot of special pin-table shops like this one were opened, and now you find them all over the place—in London there are two or three in nearly every principal street. Often they are only temporarily occupying empty shops, which their proprietors can get for low rents as long as they are willing to move out as soon as the shop is let. For this reason the decorations are usually of a very rough kind that ran be quickly put up and taken down again: glass and trellis work, and bright lights and mirrors. The front of the shop is very open so as to invite people in, and a man stands at the door to change silver into pennies.

The people who run an Amusement Arcade have to be careful not to infringe the Gaming Laws. These are the laws that say you must not play games of chance for money in any public place. So the machines that people put pennies into are labelled 'for amusement only', and if there is any prize given for a good performance on one of the machines it is prominently labelled 'a game of skill'. The prize is generally a packet of cigarettes.

The machine on the left is one they nearly always have. The bottom of the cabinet is full of sweets in which are embedded things like china dolls and cheap alarm clocks. The sweets are meant to be gravel and the other things rocks, and there is a model of a mechanical excavator which works when you put a penny in. You get anything it picks up, but a notice says, 'you pay to see it operate: articles picked up are complimentary'.

The machines inside the arcade are mostly on the pin-table principle, but they get more and more complicated. Sometimes the ball gets shot about the table by springs that it hits on the way, or it runs about on overhead railways and lights electric lamps and does all sorts of things before dropping into a hole; and there is a new kind in which the ball bumps against a spring coiled round a peg, and the number of times it hits a spring before reaching the bottom of the table is recorded by electricity.

Nearly all the new pin-tables come from America. You will see 'made in Chicago' written on most of the machines, with the price of a turn advertised as five cents. A piece of paper has been pasted on the top with 'one penny' on it.

[pennymachines]

Although Ravilious was killed during World War Two, before he was 30, he was a prolific painter, and much of his work is being exhibited from 1st April - 31st August at Dulwich Picture Gallery.
The British coast is the focus of many of his pictures, including these two of bathing machines at Aldeburgh. Beside the tall vending machine, coin-operated scales and British Automatic Co. metal nameplate stamper is a German invader in the form of a Hartwig & Vogel chocolate egg vendor.

Bathing Machines at Aldeburgh (detail)

Bathing Machines at Aldeburgh (detail)

Ravilious also made a number of seaside murals which have not faired well, such as the one he painted, with Mary Adshead, for Colwyn Bay's Victoria Pier Pavilion Tea Room, and another with his wife, Tirzah Garwood, for the Rotunda Bar of Morecambe Bay's Art-Deco Midland Hotel.

Pavilion Tea Room mural

Rotunda Bar mural

[bryans fan]

[badpenny]

Nice bit of digging there Mr P.

[pennymachines]

As the ownership wrangle rumbles on, it was announced today that Colwyn Bay's ill-fated Victoria Pier has been turned down again for lottery funding.

Colwyn Bay pier's future in doubt after Heritage Lottery Fund rejects £9.6m redevelopment grant bid

[badpenny]

As predicted.

[pennymachines]

I just noticed on February 18th, J S Fine Art Auctioneers sold "Eric Ravilious, Bathing Machines at Aldeburgh, signed, watercolour" for £265,000.
I'll stick to collecting machines I think.

The objects themselves are intriguing even by Ravilious’s high standards of oddity: the chicken appears in another painting and must have had some purpose, but we don’t yet know what it was.

http://www.jsauctions.co.uk/new/eric-ra ... aldeburgh/

[badpenny]

Don't count them.

[13rebel]

A good article, thanks Mr PM.