News
Despite the production of Pinkham gloves ending in 1966 stories, information and best of all Pinkham gloves continue to surface in all sorts of places. Each month these 'finds' and other related stories are shared with visitors to the website.
Make a date each month to keep an eye on what's happening.
May 2024
Enough to make any girl feel a million dollars
Seen here is another stunning pair of Pinkham gloves which have been given to the collection by Lynn Jamieson of Timeless Gloves.
Dating to the 1940s they show off the superb skill of both the designer and the glove maker. Intricate hand sewing of this fine nylon and embroidery with glass beads sewn into the centre of each embroidered rosette.
All these gloves had their moments, some have gone and some remain.
April 2024
It's been booked.......
...it was bound to happen and doesn't leave a plot to be desired.
March 2024
When I think of love as something new......
This delightful card was discovered at the Victoria & Albert Museum and epitomises the romance of gloves. A sentiment that ran through generations of Pinkhams and drove much of the passion for developing the business.
Who ever it was that wrote the lines on this card was certainly a romantic and wouldn't we like to know the outcome.
As far back as the 16th century gloves were a traditional Valentine’s Day gift for women and men would send women gloves. If the lady wore the gloves at Easter it was a sign that she favoured the gentleman’s romantic overtures. Those were the days!!
See much more at The V & A Museum website vam.ac.uk
February 2024
Swinging Sixties
This stunning pair of Pinkham gloves are quintessentially sixties and were found on a period costume clothing stall at the Twinwood Music Festival in Bedfordshire. Manufactured very late on in the company's history and very unusually with the large zips. A credit to the folk who cut out the fabric and sewed them together with great precision. Perfect.
January 2024
The 'Get-Away' van
Seen here outside the Witham factory which had been built in 1912 is an Engecie delivery van. The company at that time was called The National Glove Company or N.G.C. and some clever marketing chappy of the time morphed this into a trade mark Engecie, hence the van's livery.
The van hitherto has been unidentified and so with some invaluable help from Patrick Collins the Vehicles and Research Curator at The National Motor Museum Beaulieu he was pretty sure from the photograph that it is a post 1917 model of a Model T Van with a black painted steel radiator shell.
So now we know all that, the next step is to find out who was driving it!!!
Many thanks again to Patrick who has helped previously in identifying the make of a Pinkahm delivery lorry.
Happy New Year
Let's hope that 2024 is a great year for everyone
December 2023
Have a very Merry Christmas
If you need inspiration for this year’s Christmas card look no further. Thought to date from around 1877 on first glance it looks like an ordinary rectangular card, however it is a delicately cut out card shape with a clear front and back.
Make what you will of the printed message that Aunt Constance sent to Fred.
November 2023
A fan and his dog
Laurette Laman Trip from Leiden in The Netherlands has an eagle eye that saw the image on a fan in her collection was the exact same image as one of the postcards seen at https://pinkhamgloves.co.uk/our-history-copy-18/ here on the Pinkham Gloves website.
The postcard showing three dogs playing with a glove and a walking cane was printed in France and has a French post mark dated 19th December 1907.
The fan appears to be a souvenir from Cadiz in Spain and is dated 1909 it has the same image of the dogs printed on its fan leaf.
The fan is 19cm long and 35cm wide when fully opened and as can be seen from the images it is in superb condition given that it is over a hundred years old.
Following her discovery last month Laurette got in touch and the story now provides some provenance for the fan in her collection and although it has nothing to do with Pinkham Gloves it adds a curious link with the postcard in the Pinkham Collection
Can anyone explain the origin of the link? If so please get in touch.
Many thanks Laurette for getting in touch.
October 2023
Never mind the width feel the quality
This interesting pair of Pinkham gloves turned up recently in Cambridge. What is so interesting is the cream card label attached to the cuff of the right hand glove. This pair of gloves is a slaesman's sample and would have been part of a Pinkham Gloves travelling salesman's samples which would be used to show potential buyers and hopefully result in a large order. They would and have never been sold by a retailer. Another story for The Romance of Gloves; how did they arrive in Cambridge? how did they become separated from all the other samples that would have been with them.... and many many more questions.
September 2023
A touch of elegance
The saying coined by Leslie Pinkham in a 1950s advert A touch of Elegance could not be better exemplified than by this magnificent pair of gloves from the 1950s.
They show off not only beautiful design but all the skills of the cutter and the machinist who made them.
These would have been a considered purchase by someone of great taste. Having never been worn they came from an estate in Scotland and found their way to the Pinkham Collection earlier this year. They are both exceptional and unusual.
August 2023
The age of chivalry
Captured on this postcard is the era when kind behaviour, especially by men towards women was not unusual. It stems from the medieval period that put a high value on honour, kindness and courage. Undoubtedly the lady here was using it to her advantage and who can blame her.
July 2023
Start spreading the news
Not vagabond shoes but Pinkham Gloves in these 1955/6 adverts from the New Yorker Magazine. The mid 1950s was one of the company’s ‘heydays’ with production reaching almost 100,000 gloves a week. This was driven by strong sales in many parts of the world in particular the USA.
John Pinkham, the grandson of William Pinkham was heading up the sales drive in the USA at this time and as one of the adverts indicates the company had an office on Fifth Avenue in New York.
‘And if I can make it there, I'm gonna make it anywhere, It's up to you New York, New York'
Many thanks to Tom Marcais of Vintage Paper Ads in Madison Heights USA vintagepaperads.com for re-uniting the adverts with the Pinkham Collection.
June 2023
Rings and things and buttons and bows
...well bows at least'
This fabulous pair of Pinkham gloves in black Helanca with cream bows is surely the company’s manufacturing at its best.
From the designer’s inspiration for contrasting bows with matching fourchettes to the fine needlework involved in not only making the bows to size but making them so perfectly and then applying them to the gloves with such precision.
This pair has survived and appears to have had very little wear.
Thanks again to Lynn Jamieson at Timelessgloves for seeking them out and getting them to the collection.
May 6th 2023
The Coronation of King Charles III
“When all at once I saw a crowd with hands adorned in gloves, O that I were a glove upon those hands”.
Whether a Royalist or a Republican it cannot have escaped anyone’s notice that throughout the King’s Coronation many many people were wearing gloves. It was a true celebration of gloves if nothing else.
How glorious and classless; Police men and women, Service men and women all wearing white cotton or white leather gloves. 'Big Cheeses' in the Army and RAF wearing brown leather gloves. Invited guests wearing day gloves, and long evening gloves – some with good taste and some with no taste at all.
A ceremonial gauntlet worn by The King.
Footmen and members of The King’s Blues and Royals wearing white uniform gauntlets.
Hard working support personnel wearing warm gloves and safety gloves and some poor individuals wearing wet gloves.
Such an elicat of gloves is seldom seen. A true wonderment and proof of the importance of gloves in all our lives.
The King decided to break with tradition by not commissioning a new glove for the Coronation. He decided to use the glove made for his Grandfather King George VI. The glove was first presented by the Worshipful Company of Glovers after being made by Dents the glove makers in Warminster and embroidered by Edward Stillwell & Company in 1937.
In 1937 John Pinkham was working in Berlin and his father, Leslie who wrote to him every week mentioned King George VI’s coronation in his letter of May 18th 1937 six days after the coronation.
Sadly no record of the Pinkham Coronation gloves of 1937 can be found.
Or do you have a pair? if so please email nickpinkham@pinkhamgloves.co.uk
May 2023
Fashion beyond gloves
This Pinkham blouse made in the early 1960s turned up in a charity shop in Huddersfield and then laid in a bedroom drawer in Harrogate for ten years before finding its way home to the Pinkham collection earlier this year. Given its ‘camouflage’ look, for a sixty-year-old garment it could be said to have been ahead of its time.
This is a rare find and stands out for many reasons: It is a salesman’s sample which would have been shown to prospective buyers by a travelling Pinkham salesman or agent. This is why it has a paper label sewn into the inside of the front placket and has various details written on it in pencil. It has never been worn or washed and is in ‘as new’ condition.
A separate label on the inside of the collar attached to the Pinkham label highlights the trade name of the ‘new’ acrylic yarn Courtelle that the fabric that it is made from and ‘with cool iron’.
It also has a retailer’s label Tall Girl Piccadilly which would have shown off the company’s ability to provide an additional feature for a prospective buyer.
Blouses were made between 1962 and 1964 as the company attempted to diversify in the face of a shrinking glove market and competition from the Far East.
An advert for a Pinkham blouse can be seen at pinkhamgloves.co.uk/media-adverts
April 2023
The lost glove - we've all done it
This delightful cartoon titled The Lost Glove from the February 1932 edition of Punch Magazine must resonate with many people. There's a moral to this tale.
March 2023
Tatler talk
Recently discovered this advert from November 1956 sees Pinkham gloves, not for the first and not for the last time in Tatler magazine. This time the advertisement is promoting the magic of then new wonder fabric Nylon. Here with embroidered rosebuds. Did this glove design have anything to do with Leslie Pinkham's passion and hobby of growing roses?
February 2023
War effort
Glamour was not in the designer’s brief for this pair of Pinkham gloves.
They show just how diverse the company was when it needed to be. This pair of unissued World War Two British Army gunner’s gloves dated 1942 were discovered in an Army & Navy storage depot in Oldham.
They were made during World War Two at a time when the company had turned over much of its production to the war effort and were developing heated gloves for the RAF as well as manufacturing thin silk gloves which were worn for warmth inside leather flying gloves. These were in addition to various types of gloves for the military including this pair for gunners and also ski mittens for arctic deployments.
Many thanks to Dan Lewis at themilitariashop.com who re-united the gloves with the Pinkham collection.
Finding this pair of gloves manufactured in 1942 resonated with the letter below that Leslie Pinkham wrote to the workforce in December 1941. Inspiration, compassion; make of it what you will.
January 2023
Quality that's obvious
Another year and another stunning pair of Pinkham gloves has been discovered by a great friend of the collection Lynn Jamieson at Timeless Gloves.
It’s Lynn’s sixth sense for quality that resonates so much with the Pinkham marketing message from the 1950s – Quality that’s Obvious.
This delightful pair of nylon day gloves shows off so well the great craftsmanship of the people who made them. The finest fabric and the finest stitching. A lasting tribute to the Company’s philosophy – We can’t make all the gloves so we only make the best.
Happy New Year
Let's hope that 2023 is a great year for everyone
December 2022
South Wales and Pinkham gloves at their best
This stunning pair of black Nylon Pinkham gloves came to the collection from the Gingells in South Wales.
Anne and Loulou Gingell realised immediately that they were a pair of special gloves and in no time they had ‘come home’.
The combination of the shiny black Nylon fabric, the black wrist buttons and the paste rhinestones create a very stylish pair of gloves. Probably made in the late 1950s all of the adornments would have been sewn on by an outworker working from home, a common practice at the time.
Lots of good rugby and good taste in South Wales.
Many thanks go to Anne and Loulou.
November 2022
Clicks and close-ups
Those who are in regular touch and those who have an eye for website design will know that The Pinkham Glove website is both uncomplicated and evolving. And it is its evolution that this month makes the headlines.
On the Gloves page the images of the gloves have been re-set so that a simple hover and click over the image shows it off in larger detail.
Go have a look at pinkhamgloves.co.uk/the-gloves/
October 2022
Pack up your troubles......
Not so much Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag but Pack up your Sunday best gloves in this wonderful gold embossed presentation envelope from the 1950s.
This rare find made its way to the Pinkham Collection from a dear friend of The Collection, Lynn Jamieson of Timeless Gloves in West Sussex.e 1950s.
Snug inside the envelope was an original pair of unworn white cotton gloves –a "Touch of Elegance", and "Pinkham’s Of Course", as the adverts would say. It's fascinating that so many years on these treasures of the company’s past are still turning up.
Very many thanks Lynn.
8th September 2022
A Velvet hand in a velvet glove
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth ll
1926 - 2022
Long live the King
September 2022
Pigeon holed
A stray homing pigeon which landed exhausted near Dover has been returned to its owner.
Nothing special about that until you find out that the pigeon fancier lives in Dagenham.
Nothing special about that until you find out that of all the Pinkham glove factories Dagenham is the one factory about which little is known.
Gloves were manufactured in the factory in Whitebarn Lane in Dagenham from the 1930s through to the 1960s and that’s about all the information that remains.
The pigeon fancier has lived in the town for many years and is going to ‘start making enquiries’.
These things are meant to happen, it’s a case of today a statue tomorrow a pigeon.
Watch this space.
If you know anything about the Pinkham glove factory in Whitebarn Lane Dagenham please email nickpinkham@pinkhamgloves.co.uk
August 2022
The Hostess with the mostess
These stunning Pinkham gloves from the 1960s were found at the McCord Museum. 690, Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal Canada.
Supplied through a Canadian retailer Robert Simpson & Company Limited they had been part of the uniform worn by some of the two hundred and fifty hostesses who escorted visitors around the EXPO 67 fair between April and October 1967.
Many thanks to the McCord Museum for allowing the reproduction of the image and description. More information about the museum is at musee-mccord.qc.ca/en
July 2022
In the swim of things
Nothing new in webbed swimming gloves and these go back to the days of Flapper Girls.
Also used at the time in solo synchronised swimming don’t you know.
Maybe a Hi-Viz version would be helpful today when hailing a taxi – any takers?
June 2022
Under pressue
This charming and unusual boxwood glove powderer was found in John Gilbert’s antique shop in Robin Hood’s Bay near Whitby. Whilst on the face of it it appears quite ordinary further inspection reveals an unusual base. The base has a thin convex metal plate in it which, when pushed in increases the pressure in the powder compartment which then ‘puffs out’ a small amount of powder through the nozzle
See exactly what the powder does at pinkhamgloves.co.uk/paraphernalia/
May 2022
Lorry for sale
This photograph was taken in the 1950s on the forecourt of Hurrell & Beardwell’s garage on the corner of Avenue Road and Newland Street in Witham. The lorry had clearly come to the end of the road.
Do you know who bought it all those years ago? If you do please email nickpinkham@pinkhamgloves.co.uk
With the help of Patrick Collins the Research Officer at the National Motor Museum, Beaulieu the lorry has been identified as a 1936 Bedford 2 ton with a Greater London registration - GYY 722. This fits in with the Company’s development at the time. A new factory had been opened in Dagenham in 1933 hence the Greater London registration.
Not only used to deliver gloves to customers these lorries were also used to transfer items between the factories.
The photograph which was taken by John Scott-Mason and reproduced with permission from Adam Scott-Mason was found on Janet Gyford’s The History of Witham website.
Many thanks to everyone for their help with this photograph.
April 2022
My old china
For many years in the board room at the Witham factory there were two ash trays modelled as china gloves, one pale blue and one gold. (If only they could recount some of the boardroom conversations) These are now prized items in the collection and have been added to over the years
The latest to join the collection was found in Fort Myers in the USA and is a very unusual china glove modelled as a life size upright long evening glove in primrose. Stunning and hopefully it is definitely one of a pair.
It’s just a case of finding the other one!!
See the whole collection at pinkhamgloves.co.uk/promotional-merchandise
February 2022
A timeless elicat of Pinkham gloves
Once again Lynn Jamieson of Timeless Gloves in West Sussex has discovered a fine elicat of Pinkham gloves which have found their way to the Pinkham Collection. Many thanks Lynn. All in exceptional condition and representing the wide range of styles that the company produced and the many fabrics that were used. Not surprising given that in most post war years the company produced two ranges a year totalling around three to four hundred styles. Then multiply that by different sizes and colours in each style and its amazing to imagine planning the production without a computer!!!!
See them with many other pairs of Pinkham gloves at pinkhamgloves.co.uk/the-gloves
January 2022
Timeless in more ways than one
These two pairs of Pinkham gloves were given to the Pinkham Collection by Lynn Jamieson of Timeless Gloves in West Sussex. An established dealer in vintage fashion Lynn has sixth sense when it comes to seeking out Pinkham gloves and many pairs in the collection have come from her stock.
Both of these pairs are timeless and would look great on any lady’s hands today. The yellow pair from the late fifties is quite rare and beautifully made in Helanca, a stretch fabric of Rayon and Nylon and have four faux pearls on each cuff. The black pair is so delightful for the honest and humble simplicity.
See them with many other pairs of Pinkham gloves at pinkhamgloves.co.uk/the-gloves
January 2022
Bridgend beauties
Pinkham gloves were exported all over the world and this glamorous pair of long black evening gloves were discovered in Bridgend in Wales. Manufactured around 1960 they are made from Helanca fabric which is a Nylon / Rayon mix and is very elastic. It meant that gloves could be stretched over the hand to look skin tight.
See them with many other pairs of Pinkham gloves at pinkhamgloves.co.uk/the-gloves
See them with many other pairs of Pinkham gloves at pinkhamgloves.co.uk/the-gloves
Happy New Year
Let's hope that 2022 is a great year for everyone
December 2021
Paraphernalia at full stretch
This unusual pair of Edwardian carved boxwood glove stretchers were discovered in Derbyshire. The delightfully carved dogs heads have glass eyes and notice the 'stitching' running all the way around. How many ladies use such stylish things today?
See more glove stretchers at: pinkhamgloves.co.uk/paraphernalia
November 2021
Another masterpiece
Recent research in The British Newspaper Archive has thrown up a wealth of Pinkham material which includes these two adverts from 1955. They speak for themselves.
More of the archive can be seen at: pinkhamgloves.co.uk/media-adverts
October 2021
Ruched all round
East Sussex is where this unusual pair of white nylon Pinkham gloves were recently found.
What makes them interesting is the ruched strip around the wrist. Dating from the mid-1950s these would have been made in several colours.
This delightful pair of nylon day gloves shows off so well the great craftsmanship of the people
September 2021
New finds
Two pairs of Pinkham gloves from Timelessgloves on the South Coast have just found their way to the Pinkham Collection. One black pair and one cream pair of cotton embroidered Nylon gloves. Both pairs date from the late 1950’s and are in beautiful unworn condition.
This delightful pair of nylon day gloves shows off so well the great craftsmanship of the people
July 2021
Family album
Granddaughter of Leslie Pinkham, Liz Magem has unearthed some until now rarely seen family photos dating back to the 1920s and 30s.
Mother & son
Leslie and his mother Rebecca in 1939 a year after William had died.
Three generations Leslie and Elsie with William and their four children summer 1934
Back Row; Elsie Leslie William David ?? Marie
Front row: Richard John
Marie's christening 1925
John Marie Richard David
May 2021
Fit for a Queen
At the Queen’s coronation in 1953 each of the lady guests were given a glove clip with an enamelled badge bearing ER.
These clips were used to secure a pair of gloves to a lady’s handbag when not being worn. One has been added to the Pinkham Collection go to: pinkhamgloves.co.uk/paraphernalia/
February 2021
Coming home
Towards the end of 2020 Ashley Smith made contact and explained that he had a barometer which had been presented to Leslie Pinkham in 1948 and Ashley has now reunited it with the Pinkham Collection.
Ashley had acquired the barometer in an auction with some other items a few years ago in South Essex and had researched its background to discover the company’s history.
It is now a treasured item and heartfelt thanks go to Ashley for getting in touch. More about this amazing find at: pinkhamgloves.co.uk/family
January 2021
Wedding bells
Sylvia Clark made contact and recalled the story of her mother Sylvia Iren Clark (née Lloyd) who worked at the Dagenham factory with a friend Margaret Clark. On one occasion there was a works outing to see a show at the London Palladium and Margaret asked Sylvia if she would like to go to the show on a blind date with Margaret’s brother Alan Clark. The rest as the saying goes is history.
Happy New Year
Let's hope that 2021 is a great year for everyone
August 2016
In the beginning
This article from The Braintree and Witham Times of August 4th 2016 is how the whole idea of a legacy website plotting the story of W Pinkham & Son Ltd all began.
Email your stories of Pinkham Gloves
nickpinkham@pinkhamgloves.co.uk
