A fellow chainstitcher mailed me some ephemera that she acquired with a few old embroidery machines from a lettering shop in Springfield, Missouri. In the stack was a set of alphabet boards. Each board carried a full velvet-flocked alphabet adhered to heavy cardstock. Each one was stamped “VEL*VET VELVATONE.”
Velvatone marketed these flocked alphabets to garment lettering shops. The letters were meant to be traced directly onto pattern templates.
Very little is known about the company beyond what survives on the boards themselves. The cards list a return address of “Box 39862, Los Angeles 39, California” and describe the product as “FLOCK RUB OFF Lettering & Designs for Garment Lettering – Pat. Pending.” The postal-zone style address places the boards sometime between the mid-1940s and the early 1960s, when large U.S. cities used two-digit postal zones (“Los Angeles 39”) before the introduction of ZIP codes in 1963.
These boards belong to a category I think of as template alphabets, tools that provide a starting point. You still have to trace and refine the forms into a layout. The template solves the hardest part, structure and consistency, but the final result still depends on an artist.
Many of the alphabets are similar to lettering styles and typefaces that I’ve seen before. A few, though, are harder to place. (The blackletter alphabet above for instance) I haven’t been able to match their sources yet, and likely means they were hand-lettered.
No trade listings or advertisements for these specific alphabets have surfaced in digitized archives so far, making surviving sets of “Velvet Velvatone” boards a rare glimpse into a small, almost completely undocumented corner of mid-century garment lettering.
We’ve digitized all 16 “Velvatone” alphabets from these boards as vector files, ready to use in your own lettering and design work. Each alphabet has been carefully traced and cleaned up while preserving the character of the original templates.
Paid subscribers get access to the full set as downloadable vector files (AI and PDF formats). These mid-century lettering styles can now be incorporated into your own work, just as they were originally intended.
Subscribe to download all 16 alphabets and support the preservation of vintage hand-lettering.
Special thanks to chainstitch embroiderer Kaitlyn Willow (@whatkaitmakes), for providing the Velvatone flock alphabet boards. This scan and digitization work wouldn’t be possible without her.
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