Ain't no Christmas party like an Amalgamated Leather Companies party, because an Amalgamated Leather Companies party's got CHAIRS.
This ca. 1940 photograph is from our newest digital collection, created from Hagley Library's Amalgamated Leather Companies, Inc. photographs and label (Accession 1986.230). Amalgamated Leather Companies, Inc. manufactured black and colored glazed kid and other classes of leather used largely in making shoes in the early to mid-twentieth century. The company began doing business as the F.J. Blatz & Brother Co. in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where they made kid leather.
In 1919, F.J. Blatz & Brother Co. took over the business of F. Blumenthal & Co., a Wilmington, Delaware business founded in 1890 that manufactured black and colored glazed kid and other classes of leather used largely in making shoes. The firm then reincorporated in Wilmington as the Amalgamated Leather Companies, Inc. Manufacturing ceased in 1966, and Amalgamated Leather Companies, Inc., was dissolved in 1967.
This small digital collection consists of four photographs of employees at various events including the 1948 convention of the International Fur and Leather Workers Union, and one factory exterior. There is also a color label featuring an illustration of the F. Blumenthal & Co. factory buildings in Wilmington, Delaware created by George Aloys Wolf (1862-1946), a local commercial artist and printer who also notably created the iconic 1906 Du Pont logo.
To view this collection online now, click here to visit its page in our Digital Archive.