Timeless vintage brands #4 Ladybird books

For the last issue of this series of post dedicated to timeless vintage brands, I was glad to present you the Penguin Books' logo and to tell you about the history of this publishing company... and for this current issue I wanted to continue this cultural branch and, following a very precious suggestion received on flickr by a friend of mine, I took decision to hand carve the amazing logo of Ladybird Books limited! I have to admit that, in spite of the fact that it is an old and well established enterprise, I had never heard this company before but, since I've discovered it, I've fallen in love with its wonderful logo! And to show this new love of mine, here some pics of Ladybird hand carved rubber stamps...

According with its official website, Ladybird published books for children since 1915, when Wills & Hepworth (the former name of Ladybird Books) published a large variety of fairy tales or ABC picture books under the imprint "A Ladybird Series". I was not able to find why they have chosen a ladybird as logo, no evidence about it is available on the net, but what I learn is that this brand became in England a kind of synonymous of childhood education since 1940s, when the Ladybird invented a new standard in books for children with 30 x 40 inches and 56 pages format, a cheap price, and a such as quality in writing and drawing able to stimulate little ones' curiosity and imagination (other than the mine... ;)). More than their official website, some other site are dedicated to this children books publishing company: check them out here and another one here...