Category:Hobbies Weekly

1913: Hobbies: "A Weekly Journal for Amateurs of Both Sexes" [image info]

1913: "fretsaw with sunburst" design masthead [image info]

1913: Poultry farming, section artwork ... [image info]

... "Bees and Beekeeping" ... [image info]

... "Kinks for Handy Men" (hints and tips) ... [image info]

... "Model Aeroplanes" ... [image info]

... "Photography" ... [image info]

... "Sale and Exchange" ... [image info]

... "Scout Life" ... [image info]

... "Shillingsworth" ... [image info]

... "The Editor's Notebook" ... [image info]

... "The Garden" ... [image info]

... "The Helping Hand" ... [image info]

... and "The Hum of the Wheels" (cycling). [image info]

Hobbies Magazine, or Hobbies Weekly, was the regular publication of Hobbies Ltd. of Norfolk from 1895 onwards.

The magazine went through a number of name changes during its run, notably toward the middle to end of the craze for home constructed wireless sets that lasted from the late 1920s to the mid 1930s.

1930 redesign

The Hobbies weekly went a relaunch and overhaul in late 1930, also switching to a new publisher, Newnes.

Up until September 1930 the magazine had been somewhat dull-looking, with a dull orange background featuring a turquoise panel with black scrollwork featuring a comparatively small black titled line image of an often-uninspiring scrollwork object.

From the beginning of 1930 onwards, the cover was no longer specific to scrollwork, and featured larger, colourful, and more exciting images of a range of hobby activities. With the relaunch the range of advertising also ballooned, and "external" advertising was no longer quite so dominated by quarter-pages extolling the wonders of vegetable glue.

The New "Hobbies" – Important News for Readers
This old-established and popular Journal (nearly forty years old) will, as from the next issue, be produced in a new form.
It will be an entirely New Hobbies – new and larger in size, with a new and strikingly attractive two-coloured cover each week, and it wil contain more pages – 32 larger pages packed with matter and illustrations of interest to everyone with a hobby. Its price will remain, as at present, 2d. every Wednesday.
The text and illustrations will be presented in a bright and interesting manner and lead writers on every hobby will contribute to its pages.
Each issue will continue to contain a a free inset of a Wood-work Design Chart. In addition, the first two issues of the publication in its new form (October 4th and 11th) will contain all the parts for making the fine flying model seaplane shown in the photograph here.
In future it will be published by George Newnes Ltd., 8/11, Southampton Street, Strand, W.C.2.

— , -, , Hobbies, , 27th September 1930

1932: Trix Supplement

In March 1932, the Hobbies magazine (now Hobbies and Practical Wireless) started including a Trix Supplement promoting Stefan Bing's Trix metal construction sets, which seemed to be accompanied by a corresponding spike in the amount of advertising and articles related to Bassett-Lowke Ltd.

Selected covers

Most of the museum's archive collection of Hobbies weekly (from the Michael Gilkes collection) consists of bound copies, which, prior to volume 70, don't seem to have been bound with the covers. Volume 70 covers are orange-and-turquoise, with the relaunch and redesign (October 1930) starting volume 71. In later years, the basic cover design stayed much the same fro issue to issue, with colour schemes changing each year with the start of a new volume.

Publication names

Information and dates extracted from the British Library indexes

1895 Hobbies no.1-1894 (19 Oct.1895 - 6 Feb.1932)
1932 Hobbies and Practical Wireless no.1895-1926 (13 Feb. - 17 Sept.1932)
1932 Hobbies and Wireless Supplement no.1927-1971 (24 Sept.1932 - 29 July 1933)
1933 Hobbies - no.1972-1980 (5 Aug. - 30 Sept.1933)
1933 Hobbies Weekly - no.1981-3648; New series.no.1-9 (7 Oct.1933 - 10 Nov.1965; 17 Nov.1965 - 15 Jan.1966)
1966 Hobbies Magazine -New series.no.10-25 (March 1966 - July/Aug.1967)