Buy Empire Every Day: First Oranges from South Africa (Empire Marketing Board)
Colour lithograph poster of a street oranges stall, with a barrow-boy holding up fruit to children and shoppers and a woman at a table making a pie. Panels at the top mark '1907 First oranges from South Africa' and '1903 First sultanas and currants from Australia'; the slogan is 'Buy Empire every day', with 1929 shipment figures beneath. The tell: loyalty to the Empire is pasted onto an ordinary grocery purchase (transfer).
- Date
- 1930
- Period
- Interwar
- Made by
- Empire Marketing Board (UK government), printed for H.M. Stationery Office; artist catalogued as R. T. Cooper
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Medium
- Poster
- Issuer type
- State
- Regime
- Macdonald Government
- Leader
- Ramsay Macdonald
- Audience
- Domestic public
- Purpose
- Persuade or win support
- Techniques
- Transfer
- Source
- Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- Source
- Wikimedia Commons, retrieved October 2, 2026
- Rights
- CC BY 2.0 (LAC scan, per Commons); poster is c.1930 UK Crown/HMSO, outside term
Library and Archives Canada (e010758917), CC BY 2.0, via Flickr and Wikimedia Commons; poster by R. T. Cooper for the Empire Marketing Board.
Text on the object
1907 FIRST ORANGES FROM SOUTH AFRICA 1903 FIRST SULTANAS AND CURRANTS FROM AUSTRALIA BUY EMPIRE EVERY DAY 1929 South Africa sent out 1,000,000 boxes 1929 Australia sent out 108,000,000 lbs of sultanas & currants [small imprint, lower left, partly illegible: ... ISSUED BY THE EMPIRE MARKETING BOARD] [small imprint, lower right: PRINTED FOR H.M. STATIONERY OFFICE BY WATERLOW & SONS LTD. LONDON, DUNSTABLE & WATFORD]
The two small imprint lines are tiny in the 960 px image; the left one is only partly legible. The Library and Archives Canada footer outside the poster is not part of the object.
