1948
DON-060-1/DOZ-1-1 Sports Favourites ~ John Barr Unissued Designs
A. & J. Donaldson
21 designs
For all his Sports Favourites cards John Barr first produced a black & white drawing on white paper (double the size of the card as issued), with the name and club on the reverse. As production reached the printing stage he added the desired colours by hand, sometimes in watercolour, sometimes in crayon or pencil.
In the case of these 17 unissued designs he had noted the colours on tracing paper glued to the drawing.
To show roughly what the cards would have looked out if they had been issued, I have hand coloured scans of the line drawings and added the players’ names at the foot.
The first four pictures show various views of the Dugdale (Everton) sketch - Black & white line drawing, Hand coloured line drawing, Tracing paper colour key, and Reverse with name and team.
Going by the dates of the players’ careers with those clubs, all 17 sketches would seem to date from 1948, (as do most of the issued 'wee heads' designs). For example, Juliussen (who had already appeared as a big head no.66 as a Dundee player) is noted by Barr as “Everton (ex-Portsmouth)”, and he moved to Everton in September 1948.
The preponderance of North of England and Midlands clubs reflects Donaldson’s drive to open up new markets there to try to ward off competition from Baytch and other Glasgow producers. I have established the players’ positions and added them to the R.T. Muat list below.
Bob Peden
A. Black (Inside Forward) (Manchester City)
A. Brown (Centre Half) (Notts County)
G. Curtis (Inside Forward) (Southampton)
G. Dugdale (Left Back) (Everton)
C. Edwards (Left Half) (Bristol City)
M. Finlayson (Goalkeeper) (Millwall)
E. Hinton (Goalkeeper) (Fulham)
A. Juliussen (Centre Forward) (Everton (ex-Portsmouth))
Horace Lindrum (Snooker)
D. Lishman (Inside Left) (Arsenal)
L. McDowall (Centre Half) (Manchester City)
J. McKenzie (Outside Right) (Partick Thistle)
J. Pemberton (Right Back) (West Bromwich Albion)
H. Potts (Inside Forward) (Burnley)
W. Walsh (Wing Half) (Manchester City)
W. Wardle (Outside Left) (Blackpool)
J. Wharton (Forward) (Manchester City)
Later unissued designs
Going by dates when the players were with these clubs, the other four sketches could have been produced at any date between 1964 and 1972, so possibly Barr drew them around the time he self-published a sheet of 16 Scottish players in 1968? His sketches were all roughly shaded in blue pencil.
G. Hurst (Centre Forward) (West Ham United)
R. Charlton (Centre Forward) (Manchester United)
D. Law (Centre Forward) (Manchester United)
P. Osgood (Centre Forward) (Chelsea)