Antique Vintage 26" Wool Felt Pennant Cleveland Ohio with Great Illustrations

Antique Vintage 26" Wool Felt Pennant Cleveland Ohio with Great Illustrations (image 3/[null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null])

Antique Vintage 26" Wool Felt Pennant Cleveland Ohio with Great Illustrations (image 4/[null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null])

Antique Vintage 26" Wool Felt Pennant Cleveland Ohio with Great Illustrations (image 5/[null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null])

Antique Vintage 26" Wool Felt Pennant Cleveland Ohio with Great Illustrations (image 6/[null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null])

Antique Vintage 26" Wool Felt Pennant Cleveland Ohio with Great Illustrations (image 7/[null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null])

Antique Vintage 26" Wool Felt Pennant Cleveland Ohio with Great Illustrations (image 8/[null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null])

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Antique Vintage 26" Wool Felt Pennant Cleveland Ohio with Great Illustrations. Measures 8 1/2" x 26". There is 1 very tiny edge wear spot, otherwise fine - see my 8 photos. Guaranteed a genuine older vintage souvenir pennant. Part of a huge collection of wool pennants we acquired years ago and will be listing all year. We always refund for combined shipping. Felt pennants became popular novelties thanks to two cultural changes: the proliferation of colleges and universities, and the popularity of a new sport called football. By the end of 19th century, these changes combined to create an environment where the felt pennant was bound for success. And while professional baseball may have been the National Pastime, by the turn of the century, football was the fastest growing sport across college campuses. By 1900, the game of football began to supplant crew, lacrosse, and other traditional collegiate games that had dominated the Ivy League the previous century. And it was the game that made the nation, for the first time, pay attention to collegiate sports. Against this new backdrop the felt pennant was born! It began as a decorative novelty intended to showcase collegiate pride. In that sense, they were first marketed toward college students; and, they were mostly intended as display pieces--say, for one's college dormitory. (Contrast this with the 1940s and 50s and 60s, when the felt pennant was mostly marketed towards children as a memento or souvenir of one's attendance at a game or event.) It's no surprise then that the earliest pennants from the 1900s were collegiate pennants. Examine one of these beauties up close and you'll soon notice: they were very well made. Many were comprised of two or three-piece construction. Letters were hand cut and sewn on. All work was done by hand. Because everything was so labor intensive, these early pennants were hard to produce in great quantities. That meant they weren't cheap either. Perhaps these factors caused many original owners to hold on to them, long after college? That may explain why so many survived the test of time. As felt pennants and other collegiate novelties grew in popularity, entrepreneurs across the country raced to produce them. A common observation among these early makers was their location: many began their wholesale production in college towns, taking full advantage of their close proximity to obvious retail customers, e.g., the local campus bookstore. It's no accident that Chicago Pennant Co. started their business a stone's throw from the University of Chicago. Collegiate Mfg. Co.'s roots trace back to Ames, IA, home to Iowa State University. And the Schloss Mfg. Co. spent nearly seven decades in Athens, OH just up the street from Ohio University. To be fair, not every felt novelty maker was located next to a college campus. New York City had its share of felt novelty makers. Indeed, by 1921, close to a dozen different businesses were making pennants within the city's bustling garment district. Felt pennants were enormously popular by the 1920s. But if you were a wholesale pennant maker, and you wanted to stay in business, you had to offer your retail customers more. Most of these early pennant makers quickly expanded their product lines to other collegiate themed goods. Felt banners and pillow cases came next. Others delved into caps and gowns, while others offered laboratory aprons, even laundry cases. Good luck finding a pennant from the 1950s or earlier with any kind of trademark warning. In those days manufacturers operated as they pleased. Sometimes their designs merely referenced the school or team by name amidst original artwork. But by the 1950s, use of seals or logos were more commonplace, with no apparent trademark info thereon, nor any indication that the maker had obtained a license to use these from the school or team that created (and owned) them. By the 1960s schools and professional sports teams put an end to all this. It's not that professional baseball pennants from the 1910s, or earlier, didn't exist. They most certainly did. And... read more

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