COLLECTION #30: Vintage School Supplies!

In our town, school will be getting underway in just a couple of weeks.  Families are flocking to Target, Wal-mart, and Office Depot, shopping for school supplies. Our kids are all grown, and so this busy back-to-school season is once again, passing us by. But there's still a little twinge every time I see those ads for school supplies: not nostalgia for helping my own kids get ready for school, but waaaaaay back, when I used to shop with my Mom for my own supplies. Things were a lot different back in the 50s and 60s. No calculators, laptops, or even backpacks. School backpacks didn't come into fashion until I was in college. We carried our books in our arms, and later in junior high & high school, we girls carried book bags which were like big straw bags, big enough for all of our stuff.

Earlier generations of kids carried book bags that looked more like children's briefcases. I found one a number of years ago, and it's here in my vintage school supply collection. Another thing we used to carry, was pencil boxes. Made from everything from cardboard to wood to vinyl, it was fun to find a box with lots of little compartments to store our mini-ruler, pencils, pens, erasers, and compasses. Pencil boxes often had artwork popular for the era: Mickey Mouse, Roy Rogers, the Monkees.

I also have a few vintage art supplies from the 40s,  50s and 60s. The chalk and watercolor box were my own as a child. I love the artwork on the red crayon box. And of course, Crayola brand crayons have hardly changed through the decades.

I hope these supplies bring back lots of memories for you... maybe you don't have happy school memories, but shopping for school supplies was universally fun, don't you think?