Laidlaw Leeds :Laidlaw Leeds, wholesale merchants and warehousemen. [Catalogue] no. 7, 1916. Printed by the Brett Printing & Publishing Co. Ltd, Shortland Street, Auckland, New Zealand [1915]

Sales catalogue for the company which merged in 1918 with the Farmers' Union Trading Company, to become the Farmers' Trading Company. Inside front cover shows a calendar for the last part of 1915, and January-September 1916. There is a foreword by company founder Robert Laidlaw, photographs of the Auckland sales staff, photographs of the showrooms of each department and portraits of the staff who ran them; photographs of office staff at work and the shop equipment (entrance stairs, elevator, employees dining room, currant cleaner and raisin stemmer, the packing department), and an illustration of the warehouse on the corner of Hobson and Wyndham Streets. There follows an advertisement for the company's book of plans and specifications for houses, and an account of the way the war was affecting prices and supplies of goods (See pages 18-21). Information about ordering, paying and freighting follow. The illustrated catalogue of goods is arranged in the following sections: grocery, patent medicines, ironmongery, tools and household ironmongery, stoves (Dover, Orb, Zealandia, Champion), sheep shearing machine, roofing iron, tinware, enamelware, cutlery, aluminium, brushware, handbags, pipes, wallpaper (with 2 colour sample pages), stationery, books, cameras, rifles and pistols (guns), tennis rackets, bicycles, telephones, gramophones, violins, electroplated goods, jewellery, watches, clocks, windmills, pumps, buggies and wagons, engines, ploughs, crockery (2 colour plates), lamps, saddlery and harnesses, luggage, boots and shoes, clothing, hats, drapery, haberdashery, lace, rugs, sewing machines, furniture, linoleums (2 colour plates), toys (including Meccano).

Quantity: 1 album(s) Album(s).

Physical Description: Catalogue of 500 pages, each 277 x 220 mm, blue paper covers, bound in brown suede with gilt lettering

Provenance: Purchased at Webbs Auction, 19 November 2008, lot 33