Box Vox

packaging as content

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June 14, 2009

The Flat-Bottomed Paper Bag

PaperBagPatent

Following the thread of the previous two posts—(about early shopkeeper “packets” and a new bring-your-own-container shop)—leads inexorably to the subject of bags. 

Thomas Hine on the invention of the paper bag:

In about 1870, an inventor named Luther Childs Crowell patented machinery to create the flat-bottomed paper bag. Like the Canaanite jar, the flat-bottomed bag became a universal container.

… Historically, paper bags preceded the popularization of the package. In fact, the paper bag, into which the grocer would scoop small quantities of sugar, rice, or other commodities from a big barrel, was what packages had an often difficult time displacing. Still, the introduction of paper bags represented an extremely important transitional step, because they were found to increase sales wherever they were used. It was no longer necessary to bring canisters to the grocery store to be refilled with staple commodities. Paper bags ensured that shoppers could carry home whatever they had bought. By reducing such barriers to purchasing, they acted, in effect, as a lubricant to allow the retailing machine to hum along at a continuous, predictable pace.

Thomas Hine, The Total Package

(An anthropomorphic flat-bottomed paper bag, after the fold…)

Sic27

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

No Responses to “The Flat-Bottomed Paper Bag”

  1. alessia says:
    July 15, 2009 at 10:07 am

    can I send you my salt & pepper ?