[Trade Catalogue]

Crooks & Brooker Ltd. The Good Value House Furnishers. Catalogue of Cabinet Furniture, Carpets and Upholstery ... 93-95 Rundle Street, Adelaide [cover title]

Adelaide, Printed by Sharples Bros. [for Crooks & Brooker Ltd], [1920s].

Quarto, 148 pages plus a colour frontispiece (a linoleum pattern), a detachable order form, and two tipped-in leaves (116A-116B and an additional page 128, verso blank); there are approximately 500 items or groups of items illustrated.

Two-colour wrappers (with the index printed on the inside front cover) lightly marked and slightly chipped and creased; an excellent copy.

One leaf (pages 19-20, containing illustrations #37-40) has been neatly removed; the following opening (pages 22-23) has some light glue stains near the edges, indicating they were sealed at one stage. We suggest these were done by the firm before the catalogue was distributed, presumably to remove or hide errors, or the details of items no longer available for sale. An interesting article appears in the Adelaide newspaper, the Chronicle, on Thursday 20 October 1932, under the headline 'Hardware Firm To Close Down'. The article continues: 'After 56 years in the hardware and general furnishing business, the firm of Crooks & Brooker is relinquishing its operations in South Australia.... The firm at one time conducted wholesale and retail ironmongery and hardware establishments at Port Adelaide, and Rundle street, and a large store in Hyde street, in addition to establishing branches at Murchison, Cue, Daydawn, Peak Hill, Nannine, Geraldton, Sandstone, and Meekatharra in Western Australia. In recent years the South Australian business was restricted to the Rundle street shop, and finally to the Hyde street premises'. No Crooks & Brooker trade catalogues are recorded in Trove.

Item #102706

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