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Florida’s Best Newspaper for Antiques & Collectibles

AUGUST 2017 • Volume 30 No. 12 www.antiqueshoppefl.com

Crayola Crayons Cylindrical

canister of
Have Colored America 48 colors
from the
1960s.
for Over 100 Years

By Larry LeMasters
LeMasters’ Antique News Service Scrappy Crayons
from the 1940s
If you want to recapture your childhood, nothing takes you In 1903, the first box
back quicker than a box of Crayola Crayons. Nearly all of us of Crayola Crayons
have owned crayons, and our children and grandchildren are was manufactured.
now learning to color with them. Edwin’s wife,
The average child in the US will wear down 730 crayons Alice, coined the
by her tenth birthday. And kids, ages 2 to 8, spend an average term “Crayola” by
of 28 minutes each day coloring — that equates to 6.3 billion combining the French
hours a year! word for chalk, craie,
Crayons, as we know them today, were originally produced with the first part of
in Europe by mixing charcoal and oil. The charcoal was soon oleaginous, the oily paraffin
replaced with various hues of colored, powdered pigments. wax used to make the crayon.
But the oil-based sticks were still too soft and difficult to The first box contained eight crayons —blue, brown, red,
work with. Replacing the oil with wax produced sticks that violet, black, green, orange, & yellow, and sold for 5¢.
were stronger, hardier, and easier to work with. Wax and colored pigment are still the Continued on Page 2
ingredients used in crayons today.
Although many companies have made crayons over In This Issue . . .
the years — they are actually relatively easy to make
— by far the most well-known crayon manufacturer is QUESTIONS & ANSWERS ...pg. 26 & 30
Crayola LLC (formerly Binney & Smith, the creators
of Crayola Crayons). WARTIME HUMOR
In 1864, Joseph Binney founded the Peekskill ...pg. 22
Chemical Co. In 1885, Binney retired. His son, Edwin
Binney, and Harold Smith (Edwin’s cousin) formed
a partnership under the new company—Binney & HOBBY
Smith.
HORSES ...pg. 19

COLLECTING HISTORY
...pg. 32
Rubens Crayola
Crayons from the 1920s
Goldwater promoted his
Presidential candidacy
in 1964
with these crayons GRANDFATHER CLOCKS ...pg. 14

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