Mini Bookshelf of Dennison Office Supplies
Monday, June 16th, 2008In lieu of Mundane Monday, this Monday I’m presenting these fine vintage office supplies.
Call me silly, but I think this is pretty cool. It’s a mini-office supply bookshelf. It contains gummed labels, transparent mending tape, thumb tacks, gummed reinforcements (for 3-hole punched sheets), pins, dry gum eraser, paper clips, photo wafers, key tags and postage stamps. Or, rather it once contained those things. Most of the boxes are empty.
But, the neat thing is that it looks like a bookshelf and all the office supply boxes look like books. Pretty nifty! They were also available in a version for the kitchen (which contained many of the same items). You can see an example of the kitchen version here. The boxes are the slide-out type (like old matchboxes), so nothing (should) fall out of the boxes when standing upright as they do.
It was made by Dennison (now known as Avery Dennison, after their merger in the early 1990’s).
I’m not sure how old this is. There is nothing on it to indicate age. I’m guessing between the 1940’s and 1960’s. If anyone knows a more accurate date, please speak up! Here’s another version, with an estimated date of 1950’s - 1970’s.

The typewriter and phone are paperweights. Not very heavy paperweights, mind you, but I guess giving them a function makes them easier to sell than just calling them knick-knacks.
Oh, and the typewriter will hold two or three business cards; the telephone will hold none. But, I just like that they look old and take up less space than an actual old telephone or typewriter.
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