The truth about my Mary Tins - a Tale of 6 Tins

Well, the continuing saga of the Mary tins. . . well it continues. So, to recap,  in 1914 Princess Mary, daughter of King George V and Queen Mary, decided that she wanted to send a Christmas gift to all British troops on active service on the Western Front. When it was shown to her that she couldn’t afford it, the idea was to have a publicly funded appeal to raise the money to do so which was so successful that, eventually, the gift was given to everyone in the British and Empire armed forces, including nurses. The gifts were presented in a very fetching brass tin and these tins eventually became known as Mary tins.

Now, through a combination of things I have developed an interest in the First World War. For Christmas 2025 my younger brother bought me a Mary tin. I absolutely love it. Even without the history behind it I think it is a lovely object.

My original tin. I thought this was the genuine article. . . at first

This led me to do a little research about Mary tins. One of the things I discovered was that in 2014 the Daily Mail made a promotional offer to their readers to provide them with a replica Mary tin I think they had to collect tokens or vouchers from the paper. I immediately wondered just how good a replica they were. To cut a long story short I found one for a reasonable price on an auction site and bought it. The Daily Mail replica is much, much lighter than the tin my brother gave me and the embossing detail on the lid seems much cruder.

Daily Mail 2014 reproduction. 

On an online forum I found out that the first reproduction Mary tins appeared as early as the 1920s. The Royal Family objected and so the cameo image of Princess Mary was removed and replaced with the year 1914 inside the roundel. I’m told that these were called commemorative tins, to distinguish them from the original Mary tins. You can buy a modern reproduction of these Commemorative tins today, so what I have here is really a reproduction of a reproduction.

The commemorative tin reproduction. Reproduction of a reproduction

Well, when you have two tins you have two tins. When you have three then you have a collection, and mine was growing. The Daily Mail was not alone in commemorating the centenary of the original Mary Tins. In 2014 royal grocers Fortnum and Mason made their own tin. This was inspired by the Mary tins rather than being a replica in the same way as the Daily Mail tin. It’s more narrow than the originals and has what looks to be the head of Britannia where Princess Mary’s was. Instead of Mary’s head being flanked by M and M, Britannia’s is flanked by F and M for obvious reasons. The tins, called Tommy’s Tins, contained chocolate and miniature playing cards. They were distributed to members of the Armed Forces in Afghanistan. I’d like to think that the Princess would have approved.  

Fortnum and Mason 2014 centenary Tommys Tin. Inspired by the original,  but not pretending to be a faithful replica.

So, with the tin my brother gave me, the Daily Mail tin, the Fortnum and Mason tin and commemorative tin reproduction, I thought that my mini collection was complete. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, though. When I obtained my Daily Mail replica I was struck by the difference between the way the lid attaches to the body of the tin on the replica and the way it attaches on my first tin. In the replica the underside of the lid attaches inside the main body of the tin, while my original attaches around the outside of the main body. The embossing of the design started to worry me as well. The face of the Princess is flat and not contoured at all. In the Christmas 1914 inscription there is no full stop.Then there’s the weight of the tin. It isn’t just that it’s heavier, but that it’s so much heavier. My suspicions were heightened when I read a description of a fake that I found on an online forum that matched my original perfectly. The person who posted the description believed it had been made in India, but I don’t know if that was just a guess.

In one way, feeling that my first tin was what famous art forger Tom Keating would call a ‘Sexton Blake’ didn’t stop me still thinking that it’s a lovely object. But I’d come too far to find that I didn’t yet own even one genuine tin to just leave it there. I bought a rather battered old genuine tin, which has seen better days, but it dispelled any doubt I had that my first tin might still be genuine.

At last the genuine article. A real 1914 Princess Mary Gift Fund Tin

The tin is noticeably heavier than the replica, but only a little and its far lighter than the ‘Sexton.’ The lid of the genuine tin attaches to the inside of the main body, and even though the embossing on the lid has taken some punishment over the years you can tell that the Sexton was not embossed in the same way or with the same care.

Mary Tins - Left to right. Top row - left - genuine tin, right Daily Mail 2014 replica. Second row - left - the 'Sexton' (fake) - right - Commemorative tin reproduction - Bottom  2014 Fortnum and Mason Tommys Tin

Well, that’s my Mary tin collection and I don’t currently plan to obtain any more. However, you may have noticed that this is a tale of 6 tins. The 6^th tin is not a Mary tin at all.

I’m certainly not an expert on war as such and I can’t say I find that the business of war is the most interesting subject in itself. I explained that I am interested in the Western Front, partly because of the poetry and partly because of the death of my great grandfather in the Bettle of Passchendaele and how this led me to amassing a small collection of fakes, reproductions, replicas and reimagining’s of Mary tins and one original.

What I didn’t mention was that when Princess Mary conceived the idea of sending a Christmas present to all of the British and Empire soldiers on the Western front she was following the example set 14 years earlier by her great grandmother, Queen Victoria, during the Boer War. I hope it’s not too controversial if I say that the Boer War was not, in my opinion, Great Britain’s finest hour as a country and it’s certainly not a part of our shared history that I would personally celebrate. But through my interest in the First World War Princess Mary tins that I wrote about in part one I couldn’t help wanting to learn about their predecessor.

In 1899 Queen Victoria decided to send a box of chocolate to each private soldier, NCO and officer fighting in South Africa during the Boer War. Interestingly Victoria’s gift was not to be sent as a Christmas Gift, but a New Years gift for 1900.

Victoria planned to send a tin containing chocolate to each soldier. Only wanting the best for her boys she requested superior chocolate makers Cadbury’s to make and fill the tins. This put Cadbury’s into a dilemma. They did not want to refuse any commission, let alone such a patriotic one, from the Queen. However, Cadbury’s owners were Quakers and they did not want to profit from war or to be seen profiting from war. The solution to their problem was that they invited the Frys and Rowntree, both also firms owned by Quakers, to share the commission. With regards to not profiting from war each firm donated the chocolate inside the tins, while the tins were paid for by Queen Victoria.

The original design for the tins was made by Barclay and Fry of Southwark, but each of the three firms used a different manufacturer. The three companies did not want to put their logo on the boxes. Queen Victoria wanted the soldiers to recognise that she was sending them a quality product so she insisted that each firm put their name on the chocolate itself within the tins. As I said, the tins from the three different firms do look very similar. However it is possible to tell the difference between the tins supplied by the different companies. The easiest to distinguish is the Cadbury’s tin, which is narrower than the other two. The Fry’s and Rowntree’s tins have very similar dimensions.

After completing my Mary tin collection as described, I decided that it would really be nice if I could obtain a Victoria chocolate tin, and so I did so. 

Queen Victoria New Year 1900 chocolate gift tin

My tin, as you can see in the photograph, isn’t in anything like perfect condition, but like the Mary tins I think it’s a very pleasing object. The photographs on the site from which I bought it showed that its proportions meant it was most likely not a Cadbury’s tin. But was it Fry’s or Rowntree’s? Research would be required, I was delighted to see.

I now know that my tin was made for Rowntree. The first two distinguishing marks are the number of beads around the Queen’s medallion and the clear gap between the Queen’s profile and the roundel – on the Fry’s tins the Queen's image touches the roundel in one place. At the bottom of the lid, the Queen’s name and message wishing the recipient a happy new year is slanting upwards to the right. The message on the Fry’s tin is evenly aligned with the bottom edge of the lid.

I mentioned that Princess Mary was following in the footsteps of her great grandmother 14 years after Victoria made her gift. Was Mary consciously inspired by Victoria? It’s hard to say. Did the Queen Victoria tin influence the design of the Princess Mary tin? On both tins the first thing you notice is the roundel with the royal profile. In all honesty it’s difficult to be certain one way of another.

As with the later Mary tins, the Boer War chocolate tins seemed to have been pretty highly prized by the recipients, since they are still fairly common even a century and a quarter later. I’m pretty sure that there was an episode of Dad’s Army in which Corporal Jones was telling Pike all about receiving his chocolate tin in the Boer War, and saving it and keeping it safe, until one day, much later, he decided he fancied a piece of chocolate, opened it and found that the chocolate had been eaten by his best mate. it was funnier on screen.

I think that’s it for the tin collection now. Although there’s always the Cadbury’s and Fry’s tins out there . . .

Art Studio (The Range) Own Brand Sketchbook

I feel that I should give you some kind of excuse for this. I’ve bought another sketchbook. Here I am, slaving away trying to fill the sketchbooks that I’ve already got – so much so that I even have two sketchbooks on the go at the same time now (see my previous post) so what the hell am I doing buying more? As it is I’m more than 2/3 of the way through the Leuchtturm sketching journal I began on 8/2/26. That still leaves:-

A 1/3 full Moleskine

2 Unopened Moleskine

A Nassau sketching journal

A Morrison’s own brand journal

A Crawford and Black sketching journal (currently my secondary journal)

A Shore and Marsh sketching journal

An Amazon Basics A5 Portrait notebook.

That’s 8, most of which have at most only 1 sketch in them already and most of which have a large number of pages in them. I worked it out that since starting the challenge in mid July, I have finished 6 sketchbooks (and am relatively close to finishing another). In the same period I’ve now bought 6 more.

In all honesty I did not set off from the house this morning with the intention of buying a new sketchbook. No, I set off to The Range to buy some new Uniball fineliners. If you’re UK based I don’t know how well you know The Range. For several years they’ve been my first port of call for good art supplies as opposed to cheap own brands. Well, recently the stock of proprietary brands in my local store has shrunk, while the amount of space devoted to the Range’s own brand – Art Studio – has grown hugely. This has been a source of disappointment to me. Thankfully they still do Uniball pens. Well, just as I was about to go and pay for my pens, this caught my eye.

It’s an A5 sketchbook. 100 pages of 160gsm paper for . . . £1.99. 1.9p per page. I don’t really like wire bound books, but £1.99! Had the paper been thinner, I wouldn’t have bought it. Had they had a casebound option in the shop, I wouldn’t have bought this. But as it was I couldn’t leave without buying one to try.

For reasons that I’ve already covered it’s going to be a while before I can really try this out. But I have made one sketch in it today.

You might notice that I’ve used coloured fine liners. This is partly because I’m enjoying using these so much in my Leuchtturm. But it’s also because it’s a pretty decent test of how robust the paper is. Because if I’m honest, to the touch it doesn’t really feel that heavy. Many of the sketchbooks I’ve used struggle with coloured fine liners. Well, I have to say that there is absolutely no show through on the other side of this page.

It’s far too early to review this having only made one drawing, but it has certainly passed the first test. Oh, I just wish it was case bound rather than wire bound.

2 Journals on the go

You know all about the sketchbook challenge so I won’t go through all the details again. I’m ploughing on through my Leuchtturm 1917 A5 journal, and with one day of this third week left to go I’ve already made 20 drawings in it this week. Happy days.

Now it occurred to me during the week that I’ll finish this journal in early March. Then I’ve a Nassau journal to use, but then I’ll either have to go back to Moleskine or start to use up the own brand books I’ve bought. Well, this gives me a problem. The thing about the own brand books is not just that they pretty much seem to have inferior paper in them, but that there’s so many pages in them. Let’s take the Crawford and Black (The Works own brand) I bought in November. Now, I stick with almost everything I said in my review. The paper really is not good. However, what I got wrong was that there were only 80 side of paper in it. No, there’s 80 pages and each page has 2 sides, so that’s a whopping 160. I don’t think it’s good value though because of the paper, but I must conceded that just in terms of cost the price per page is pretty good.

Now, at 160 pages it’s going to take more than 50 days to fill it even making three sketches a day. So I came up with this idea. While I’m making 3 sketches a day in the Leuchtturm and then the Nassau, I am also going to try to make one sketch a day in the Crawford and Black. By the time I’ve finished the Nassau I reckon I’ll have also made about 40 Crawford and Balck sketches and that will bring the total left down to manageable proportions. Here’s 4 sketches I’ve made in the last few days in the Leuchtturm and 4 I’ve made in the Crawford and Black. Can you tell the difference?

1) 

2)

3

4)

5) 

6)

7

8

So there you go. 8 pictures I've drawn recently but can you tell which were drawn in the £6 sketchbook and which were drawn in the £20+ sketching journal? Well, numbers 1,2 5 and 8 were all made in the £6 Crawford and Black and 3,4,6 and 7 were all drawn in the much more expensive Leuchtturm. You might have been able to tell because three of them were drawn in brown fine liner and it's very hard to use coloured fine liner in the Crawford and Black, because it shows through so badly on the other side of the page. You can see this in picture 1, where the dots of coloured fine liner from the drawing on the other side of the page show through badly.

For all that, though, I guess you can't see much of the difference between the books from these scans. My God, but you can feel it when they use them though. The C and B is just nowhere near as pleasurable a surface to draw on as the Leuchtturm 1917. Which seems pretty much a given considering that the Leuchtturm 1917 is more than 3 times the price. 

Well, my plan is to soldier on making one sketch a day in the C and B, then finish it after I've filled the Nassau.

Receiving his Mary Tin sketch

It did occur to me that maybe I could find some way of combining art – sketching with my recent interest in Mary tins and their replicas (if you missed this the best way for you to catch up would be to read the page from my links section).

Mary Tins

So this is my sketch based on a photograph showing a corporal on the Western Front opening his tin at Christmas in 1914. We can only imagine how the recipients must have felt when receiving their gift. The fact that so many of these tins still exist suggests that they must have been treasured by a lot of the recipients and continued to be so long after the tobacco and cigarettes had been smoked or the sweets had been consumed.  

A Successful Week's Sketching

It’s been quite a week for the sketchbook challenge. In my first week of using the Leuchtturm I only made 16 sketches. That’s still more than the two a day minimum target, but quite a bit less than what I’ve been managing since the start of the year. There’s reasons for this. For one thing the first sketch made in the book on Sunday 8^th Feb was the 7^th of the day. For another thing I was away all of last weekend so didn’t whack in my usual bumper number of sketches on the Saturday. So essentially I started this week a day late on Monday.

I’ve had a week off work and it was always my plan to whack in with a lot of sketches this week. Well, I’ve made 34 so far this week, with a few hours yet to go. So with 60 pages left, that’s a finish in the second half of March if I keep to the two a day target, and the first half of March if I maintain the pace at which I completed the Derwent.

I posted my feelings about the Leuchtturm 1917 sketchbook a couple of days ago, so I don’t want to go over that again just yet. But one thing I will say is that I do think that it’s the best sketching journal I’ve used for coloured fineliners. Here’s just a few I’ve made using them in the last few days: -

A Tale of 5 Tins

 My 2014 Fortnum and Mason’s Tommy Tin arrived today which means I have now collected all that I wanted to collect after my brother bought me an original Princess Mary Tin for Christmas.

In case you missed my earlier posts on the subject, in 1914 Princess Mary, daughter of King George V and Queen Mary, decided that she wanted to send a Christmas gift to all British troops on active service on the Western Front. When it was shown to her that she couldn’t afford it, the idea was to have a publicly funded appeal to raise the money to do so which was so successful that, eventually, the gift was given to everyone in the British and Empire armed forces, including nurses. The gifts were presented in a very fetching brass tin and these tins eventually became known as Mary tins.

Now, through a combination of things I have developed an interest in the First World War. For Christmas 2025 my younger brother bought me a Mary tin. I absolutely love it. Even without the history behind it I think it is a lovely object.

Being the kind of person that I am, if I’m interested in something I want to know more about it. So I found out that, in the 1920s variations of the tins were made commercially available. Being as the Royal Family objected to their image being used for commercial purposes in this way, the cameo head of Princess Mary was replaced by the date 1914. Copies of this ‘commemorative tin’ are available today and I bought this one, pictured with my original tin :-

Top - original Mary Tin. Bottom - Reproduction 1914 Commemorative tin

The lettering is the same as the original with one exception. The words in the top central plaque – Imperium Britannicum (British Empire) – are omitted. The lid is slightly larger than the original, and the brass effect is much darker.

In 2014, to commemorate the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, the Daily Mail newspaper offered readers a replica Mary tin as part of a promotional offer. These are much easier to obtain than the replica commemorative tins.

My two Daily Mail 2014 reproduction Mary Tins

I ended up buying two of these. In terms of dimensions and details they’re a pretty decent replica. However the modelling and embossing on the lid is noticeably cruder than the original, and they’re much, much lighter than the original as well. The lids don’t open as far as the original, and to be honest I can’t see that you would ever mistake either of these for an original.

After I’d bought these replica’s I then discovered that these were not the only tins inspired by the original Mary tin to be produced in 2014. Posh London grocers, Fortnum and Mason’s, made their own version of the Mary tin to commemorate the centenary and as with the original, they gave the tins, containing chocolate and mini playing cards, to members of the Armed Forces. That was well done. I wanted one. There did not seem to be anything like as many of these on the market as the replica or indeed the original Mary tins, but patience brought its reward and I was able to buy an empty tin for about the same price as I paid for the first Daily Mail replica.

2014 Fortnum and Mason's Tommy's Tin - inspired by the Mary Tin

It’s fair to say that the Fortnum and Mason’s Tommy Tin is a homage to the Mary tin rather than a reproduction like the Daily Mail tin. The design is obviously inspired by the original – with the border work, and the circular motif surrounded by laurels. Instead of the profile of Princess Mary, or the date, the circular motif shows a helmeted head, possibly Britannia. I’m not sure if this is  specifically Fortnum’s logo or not. This motif is flanked not by two capital M’s, but rather an F and an M, as in Fortnum and Mason’s. There is no other writing on the tin where the original said Imperium Britannica and the names of the UK’s allies. However, where the original tin says ‘Christmas 1914’ the Fortnum and Mason’s tin says, in very small writing ‘Tommy’s Tin 1914 – 2014’.Unlike the original or the Daily Mail reproductions, the lid removes and isn't hinged, and you can see the embossing from the back.

The size of the tin is similar in length to the original, but it’s noticeably thinner. It is also much, much lighter, possibly even a bit lighter than the Daily Mail replica. That’s not the only similarity between them. The quality of the modelling and embossing on the Fortnum tin is comparable to the Daily Mail tin and not as fine as the original. Well, Fortnum and Mason’s were giving them to the Armed Forces so let’s not moan too much about that.

Comparison - Top - F and M Tommy's tin 2014 - bottom - Daily Mail reproduction Mary Tin 2014

Well, I am very fond of my little tin collection, anyway. Here’s some photographs comparing them.

 

Top - F and M 2014 Tommy's Tin - bottom - original Mary Tin

Top F and M 2014 Tommy's Tin - bottom - Original Mary Tin

top - reproduction commemorative tin - Middle - F and M 2014 Tommy's tin -
bottom - original Mary Tin

Top - F and M 2014 Tommy's tin - middle - Daily Mail 2014 replica Mary tin
bottom - original Mary tin

New Sketching Journal - Leuchtturm 1917

 Well, I have now made over 40 pictures in my Leuchtturm 1917 sketching journal, so I think I’m in a position to make some more observations.

I began the sketchbook on the 8^th February, the same day I finished filling my Derwent Academy A5 sketchbook. Being as it was on sale the Derwent, with 128 pages, cost less than £5. The Leuchtturm with 112 pages cost more than £20. At that price you might well say that it’s writing a cheque that a sketching journal can’t cash. Well, look. I didn’t buy it with a view to making it my sketching journal brand of choice that I will loyally buy for the rest of my life. No, I bought it out of curiosity, really wanting to see what I might get for my money.

So let’s look at what exactly it is that I’ve got for my money. Durability-wise I’m not all that impressed. The Leuchtturm gives you 112 pages of 150 gsm paper. You get all the features of the ‘moleskine style’ journal that you might expect – elastic fastening, a document pocket attached to the inside back cover and an integral ribbon bookmark. In fact you get two bookmarks with Leuchtturm. I’m not entirely sure why you’d want two and if this is one of the reasons for the expensive cost then they could take it away as soon as they like. The covers are a matt black and similar to a Moleskine, although they are a bit thinner than a typical journal of this style, and do seem to me to be bowing just a little outwards – not as much as the Amazon Basics, but still something I would not have expected. So far it has not shown noticeable ill effects from living in my backpack.

As regards use I would say that there is a particular problem with this particular sketching journal. Most of the sketching journals I’ve used, not just the best ones, open and sit nicely flat, wherever you are in the journal. Leuchtturm does not. It’s a really strange oversight on the part of the manufacturers because it makes it harder to use all of the pages than it is in competitors like Moleskine and Seawhite.

Being more positive I would say that the paper works very nicely for fineliner – it’s up there with Moleskine and Seawhite. 

It’s certainly amongst the very best I’ve used with coloured fineliners. There’s no show through and the marks are every bit as clear and crisp as they are in Moleskine and Seawhite. There’s no show through at all either.

I’ve also used watercolour. The colours are pretty vivid, maybe a little more so than Moleskine and up with Seawhite. However the paper does waffle which the Seawhite doesn’t. When the book is closed you can clearly see the pages where you’ve used watercolour and in this respect it’s very like the Moleskine and inferior to the Seawhite.

In just over a week’s time I’m heading off on the first sketching trip of 2026, to Tallinn in Estonia. This will provide a good test of the journal. Basically, if I can’t take a journal and use it well on a sketchpedition then it’s no real use to me. In the past I’ve used Wilkinson’s own brand, Moleskine, Seawhite and Royal Talens for sketchpeditions and I’m sure that the Leuchtturm will cope well.