Blampied: menus

Designs for menus

Many organisations and dining societies held formal dinners in good hotels or restaurants. Blampied was occasionally asked to provide a design to be printed on a menu. Two are shown here but there are more, mainly for the Jersey Society in London of which Blampied was a member while he lived there. Blampied had joined the society when he was about 20 years old and exhibited some of his drawings at a meeting of the Society, so presumably in about 1906 (Read, 1994). He is reported to have designed a menu for the Society's annual dinners in 1932, 1933, 1934, 1935 and 1946 (a vraicing scene). Only the menu for 1932 has been seen: there is a copy sent by Blampied to Harold Baily in the collection of the Long Island Studies Institute at Hofstra University, New York. Blampied also designed a menu card for H.M.S. Jersey, which visited the island in July 1939.

Design for menu card for the Jersey Society in London (EB-MU1)

Date: 1952

Card size: 212 x 147 mm

Signed: BLAMPIED, lower right

Format: Single piece of white card.

Notes: This is design for a menu card but without the menu. It is illustrated on page 106 of the book Jersey in London (Read, 1994)

It was for the Annual Dinner in October 1952 of the Jersey Society in London which was held at the Waldorf Hotel. The menu shows an imaginary ancestor, Richard Le Vavasseur dit Blanc-de-pied, who collects bannelais (road sweepings collected for compost) and writes about 'Senlac', the Battle of Hastings in 1066, which was celebrated at the dinners; Wace, a Norman poet born in Jersey in about 1110; and Guillaume, notre Duc, who is William, Duke of Normandy the first Norman King of England. Sans blague means 'no kidding'. The text is written in mixture of French and Jèrrias or Norman French, which was Blampied's first language. The toad on the bucket is a crapaud, the traditional name of people from Jersey.

Menu card (click to enlarge)

Design for menu card for the Jersey Gourmets (EB-MU2)

Date: 1957

Sheet size: 178 x 133 mm

Signed: Blampied, centre

Format: Single piece of white printed card.

Notes: This is design for a menu card for a dinner at the Ommaroo Hotel held on 26th January, 1957. The gourmets drank Chateau Cheval Blanc 1943, Warres Port 1923 and a brandy from 1914. The dinner in 1958 was attended by 11 people who paid £3-2-0 each, which is equivalent to about £70 in purchasing power in 2019.

The President was Richard John Bedford Bolitho, who lived at Rosel Manor.

Heading of letterhead paper (click to enlarge)

Menu card (click to enlarge)

Reference

Brian Ahier Read (1994). Jersey in London. Jersey: Seaflower Books.