There are many excellent books in existence dedicated to trade unions, their histories and their outward form of display – banners, certificates, posters, regalia, medals, pottery and ephemera. The intention of this book is to cover a previously neglected field – how the artists who devised the emblems of the Victorian and Edwardian eras conceived their ideas. Our inspiration lies with the groundbreaking work of Joan Bellamy, who opened up this field of exploration in the Open University Art Foundation course.

Little exists on the commissioning of banners and certificates. Minute books and monthly records of the unions and friendly societies, if they record the matter at all, often merely state that a particular artist has been contracted to perform the work for a given amount of money. In some cases, the printers themselves (who also produced commercial advertising posters) designed the certificates. Sometimes the certificates were issued with a ‘key’ in order to explain the intricacies of the iconography to the union members. The key was a separate sheet of paper on which was reproduced a scaled down version of the emblem and an explanation beneath. Sometimes the explanation described the scenes above and why they were included, but others printed a number beside certain figures or scenes with a list of the numbers beneath and a very basic identification or explanation of what was portrayed. Keys also appear in trade journals of the period.