We seem to be over doing the word when it comes to Thomas Black’s outdoor gear, but ‘icon’ seems to fit so many of their items and we have one of their iconic tents here in the collection. Black’s began life as sailmakers in 1863 and the story goes that Thomas Black Junior spotted a thriving canvas products business in Kansas, when on his way home from the USA in 1904 (he had emigrated there some years earlier) to take over the family business.

Sailing ships and their sails were fast becoming a thing of the past and Thomas the younger could see a future in canvas of a different sort – for tents.

Contracts for hospital tents in the First World War along with ambulance covers, bell tents and other canvas items got Black’s firmly established as leaders in the canvas field – the great outdoors and leisure market quickly followed, with the appearance in 1931 of the Good Companion’s Catalogue; a sumptuous collection of tents and other outdoor gear amongst which was the Arctic Guinea. The title provides us with a wee conundrum since most ‘Guinea’s’ are in Africa, not the Arctic and curiously, Thomas Black had worked in Spanish Guinea in the 1850s trading calico. Maybe the idea was that the tent kept you as warm as in Africa when you were in the Arctic!

Anyway, Black’s and another well known tent maker, Benjamin Edgington, amalgamated somewhere along the way and continued making tents including this one – under a dual name. We suspect this one dates from the 1960s and it once belonged to our good friend – now departed – Roger O’Donovan.