The Cyclic Journey of food packaging from Cardboard and Paper to Plastics back to Cardboard and papers made or grown from plant and fungi materials.

The very idea of printing detailed original illustrations on crinkled patty pans still seems somewhat of a bold and inventive idea, even with all sorts of amazing printing technology nearly a 100 years later. It seems like it was a mixture of entrepreneurial sense and somewhat idiosyncratic wild invention. The Decorative Patty Pans appear to had capitalised on their initial novelty, fascination and successful insertion into existing social rituals from birthdays to bridge and cocktail parties— Until the late 1970’s they were sold in every state of Australia, had been licensed to New Zealand and possibly some international exports. Yet ultimately they became unviable with every increasing mass production and global trade rather than isolated local provenance based production. It strikes me that the contemporary popularity of Farmers Markets, Local Gastronomy and importance of a food product’s ‘farm to plate provenance’ as well as “boutique”, “artisan” food and cupcake producers and restaurants, seem to have a new potential for creating cherished local producers and artists partnerships.

There has been very little information about the Barker and Co Business , especially its early staff, designers, factory hands and so on. From the printed material that remains , the now strange tone of much of the advertising language elicits what I think my father used to referred to as stuffy, stilted, Edwardian English style. Something that struck me, is the predilection the company had for making up special names, “Cakoes” for cake containers, “Barko” dog training and a few different alleged special, superior printing techniques that I have not been able to find mentioned anywhere else. For instance , the “life-like printing process, the new “Fantascopic” method” I suspect was just another invented name for whatever printing technology was available at the time.(sincere apologies if Im wrong!)

From Studio Art, consistent Repetition of a style to…

Machine Replication of a style…

I wonder what would Barker and Co have done with the capabilities of Machine Learning, or A.I. ? — If they did adopt it Im sure they would have at least made a special proprietary name for it.

Not at all sure what Barker & Co would make of the “a.i” (StableDiffusion)slide-show below, nor even what I make of it myself yet.. But it is a very interesting field of endeavour and intrigue being met with a range of attitudes, from loathe to love and applications from heavy grade commercial, and industrial to wild experimental and artistic. In lieu of finding any photos of the Barker and Co printing press I undertook my own A.I journey giving the machine learning the prompts of 1960’s Printing business, books and party decorations etc… this started a whole lot of terrible, fascinating and sometimes fun results….

the gritty real black and white historical photos.

Actual Printers Factory-possibly 1960-70’s?-Photo by  © Henry Talbot 1920-1999.                       State Library Of Victoria   Pictures Collection