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The Unnofficial Scottish Advertising Envelopes By Peter Lister PART ONE - 1934 Illustrated advertising envelopes were printed by a number of companies of which the main producers were the newspapers. In general the envelopes were put on sale or given gratis for the first flight of the new irmail service, after which a similar envelope was made available to the public for use on the service. The latter usually deviated slightly in design to that of the original printing. The “LEONARDS” envelopes. Type 1 was inscribed “First Orkney-Inverness Air Mail” on two lines over a pair of horizontal lines under which appeared the date “May 29th 1934” all of which was printed in deep blue. The question that arises is does an envelope worded Inverness-Orkney exist? Type 2 cover has both the date and the word “First” ommitted, the typedace also being chaned to Upper Case (Capitals). Tyoe 3 is almost identical to type 2 except that it is inscribed “Kirkwall - Inveress”. This appears to be the scarecest cover in the group. The enclosures contained in these first flight covers are also known in two settings, the variance occuring in the position of the caption (“Issued by the Orcadian, Kirkwall”), being either to the left or to the right hand side of the sheet. Positioned on the left. Positioned on the right. The Orcadian also produced envelopes for General use on the air mail service (Redgrove, type III), the earliest example I have seen is June 4th 1934.

Type 1 Type 2 Type 3 The “ORCADIAN” envelopes A block depicting a high wing monoplane in clouds was used on all their covers. For the first flight of the 29th May 1934, the aeroplane was coloured green with silver wings and the date below was in red. (Redgrove type i). This cover with the inscription “First Air Mail from the Orkney Islands” in grey is known i n two forms: differing in that the letters “F” in the “from” and the letter “T” in the “the” can be in both uppercase of lowercase. letters. Reffered to as type ia in uppercase and type ib in lowercase. Uoper Case Lower Case The scarcer Redgrove type ii with the “First Air MAil to the Orkney Islands” with the t of the “to” and the t of the “the” in lower case. Rhe questions exists as to whether the “t” of the “to” or the “t” of the “the “ exist in upper case. Type ii covers are mostly found without the date inscription “Tue 29th May”, but covers also exist with the above icaption printed n red; Redgrove in his book refers to this as an error. Covers also inscribed “from” are also known flown to the Islands with an Inverness postmark.