Emilij Laszowski: “Grbovi Jugoslavije”, Kava Hag, 1932.
It was an honour to host at out 19th Tribune the Netherlands heraldic expert Mr. Ralf Hartemink, who held us a lecture in English titled Heraldic collector cards of 20th century: the example of Coffee Hag albums. The Tribune was held in co-operation with the Croatian Heraldic Heritage seminar of the Chair for auxiliary history sciences of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Studies of the University of Zagreb, on 22 April 2013 the the Faculty.
By the end of 19th century many companies started using for their promotion with their products small gifts, mostly cards, to be collected. The cards were issued in series and it was interesting to collect the entire series. Soon albums for their collection emerged. Among thousands of albums by the mid-20th century, although not the most popular, frequent are also heraldic motives. Among those the Coffee Has company, active throughout Europe, stands out, issuing very high quality albums and series of cards depicting coats of arms, mostly municipal. These albums stand out not only for their quality, but they were edited by leading heraldic experts in each country. On of those is also the crucial heraldic work in this region between the two World Wars, the “Grbovi Jugoslavije” album by Emilij Laszowski, which is actual today as well. On emergence, development and characteristics of these albums we heard from Mr. Hartemink, who studies them for a number of years and who maintains, for nearly two decades, the web site on the world municipal heraldry (Heraldry of the world – International Civic Heraldry, www.ngw.nl), certainly the largest available collection of such arms.
CIGH