Gaining new knowledge from old Guard Books

Within the Ovaltine Collection, rescued from Kings Langley when the factory closed in 2002, are 40 Guard Books. These fragile books range from the late 1910s to the 1960s. What makes them so special is the fact that they are the advertising department's scrapbooks.

Hidden amongst the pages are cuttings from newspapers and magazines glued to the books pages. Some have notations of where they were published, others include the costs of the adverts or other annotations by the department employees. They tell the story of styles, products and changes in society and advertising over 7 decades.

As we work with the wider Ovaltine Collection, this unique archive helps us to date the original artwork and advertising mock-ups that we also saved when the factory closed.

A recent discovery amongst the pages help to date one of the Ovaltine babies - two oil paintings that have recently been conserved. Whilst we thought that both babies were used to promote the sale of Ovaltine Rusks in the late 1920s, we happily learn that one of the babies didn't.

We've found advertisements from 1923 that show this particular baby 'enjoying' Cristolax - a lubricant, laxative, nutrient, digestive.