Promotional glass tray, by Joseph Lucas Ltd.

Promotional glass tray made by automotive electrical equipment manufacturer Joseph Lucas Ltd. featuring the company's lion, tyre and flame trademark, 1930s-1940s. Gifted to Noel Henry Urquhart on his retirement as Service Director of Lucas Sale and Services, Ltd. in 1949.

Joseph Lucas Ltd. was founded as Joseph Lucas & Sons by Joseph Lucas and his son Henry in Birmingham in 1872. Initially the company made general pressed metal goods and ship lamps but was quick to adapt their products to needs of new transport industries, first bicycles, then cars and later, aircraft. A contract signed in 1914 to supply Morris Motors with electrical equipment put Lucas’ on its course to become the country’s largest independent supplier of components for the motor industry for the next eighty years. Alongside diversifying their goods, moving into batteries, dynamos and brake pads, Lucas adopted advanced American methods of manufacturing; acquired rival companies (most importantly C. A. Vandervell and Rotax); and signed marketing sharing agreements with competitors in Europe and North America. As part of this expansion, between 1920 and 1925 Lucas opened depots in London, Liverpool, Leeds, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Newcastle, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Dublin and Belfast for local distribution to wholesalers, traders and the public and for service and repairs.

This tray was gifted to Noel Henry Urquhart (1890-1974) on his retirement from Lucas in 1949. Urquhart joined Lucas in the 1910s after studying at King’s College London when around 1,000 people worked for the company. Although there is little record of Urquhart’s career, he submitted two patents, the first in 1916 for an apparatus for recording water pressure, and a second two years later for ‘improvements relating to electric starting motors for internal combustion engines’ along with Harry Lucas and engineer Carl Louis Breeden, Harry’s son-in-law and later the founder of Wilmot Breeden, which specialised in metal plating for the automotive industry and introduced metal bumpers to Britain. During his thirty-odd years at Lucas, Urquhart climbed to Service Director for Lucas Sales and Service Ltd., a subsidiary of Lucas, and is credited for making the first world survey of Lucas Service requirements and being largely responsible for setting up organisation of overseas service stations running at that time. By 1951, when the company changed its name to Joseph Lucas (Industries) Ltd., there were eight manufacturing groups in the UK and more than twelve distribution companies operating overseas. The following decade Lucas industries was exporting to over 130 markets with around 4,000 authorised outlets.

Embossed on this red glass tray is the ‘King of the Road’ motif of a lion, tyre and lamp, which became Lucas’ trademark in 1884, and remained a major feature of the company’s advertising into the mid-twentieth century. Although trademarks were nothing new, this tray was produced at a time when marketing and commercial advertising activities became pervasive. In the interwar period, Lucas, like other public and private organisations, used these techniques in its commercial, social and political objectives. Newspaper advertisements, trade shows and packaging all contributed to selling the Lucas brand, promising quality goods at low costs to their customers. The Science Museum also has some examples of Lucas advertising material, including material from display stands and posters (1998-114 to 1998-118). At the other end of the spectrum were high end items used in company headquarters and given as gifts, in this case to celebrate the contribution of one of their staff. While still designed to demonstrate Lucas’ craftsmanship and project a strong corporate identity, goods like this tray were also used to facilitate business deals and broker new trading relationships. Other examples of unique Lucas items include chrome and glass bowls, desk tidies and lighters, and illuminated globe lamps. Notably, up until the Second World War, the Lion monogram was used on Lucas’ most prestigious and highest priced goods.