British Vespa Cog Badges & LNP ( London Name Plate Manufacturing Co Ltd )

The following articles have been extracted from Veteran Vespa Club journals

MAKING OUR COG BADGES

Every time I visit the printers in Brighton to collect this magazine, I’m always aware of the presence of British Industry as it likes to be seen today – a very modern digital printing facility in a pristine environment. On leaving, sometimes I take a walk for the half mile or so to the premises of LNP, the company who have made all our badges since 1964 and 90% of VCB ones between 1956 and 2002.The contrast is remarkable; this is manufacturing in the old style. Noises, smells, endless dark and winding corridors. An evocation of past glories of British Industry if you like, but the walls command the respect of decades of absorbing passion and endeavour. Just in case you question the value of such places, think of this. You might pay thirty million quid for a 1963 Ferrari 250GTO. Made in a factory just like LNP. The start of the process is suprisingly modern, a mock up of the design arriving by E-mail. These days it usually originates from myself, though our Chairman is responsible for the new Cherbourg badge. The rough image is made into a proper drawing on the screen, and then it’s straight back to 1956 for the rest of the process – known as “photo etching”. It’s been around since the nineteenth century, but it was technical advances by Kodac in the fifties that made it suitable for mass production. The computer image is converted to an acetate and photographed. This image is then repeated, and special chemicals allow the photographic image of the bits that are going to be painted to peel away. This leaves just basic outlines of the badge patterns, and these are placed on brass strips and treated with acid. Since the acid will not react with the outlines attached to the brass with “resistor” chemicals, the pattern of the badge emerges. None of my visits have coincided with any of our badges being at this stage of the process, so seen here are someone else’s badges to illustrate the point.

Then we’re on to the next stage, which is getting the etched images stamped out in the shape of a cog. The sometimes quoted “Victorian fly press” turns out to be a (slightly) more modern power press from the Stanley Baldwin era. The “male” part of the tool shown here fits into the press and forces the brass plate into a correspondingly cog shaped “female” part, thus creating the badge. This process actually used to be carried out at LNP’s nearby Shoreham factory until it was closed in 2006. The chrome plating also used to be carried out at Shoreham until about twenty years ago. When they did it the badges were painted first, then “flash chromed” which is why you see brass showing when paint gets chipped off old examples. These days the chroming is contracted out, the badges being fully plated before painting.

The painting is nowadays in the capable hands of a lady by the name of Janet, who has been finishing off our badges since the seventies. Here she is doing the Chobham badge. When she has finished with them, the badges are oven baked and have any excess paint burnished off – and then they’re finished.

After a false start with a smaller size, the definitive badge shape emerged with the one made for the 1956 Goodwood Regulatory Trial – shown on the back cover of this issue. Since that time about 240 different VCB/VVC badges have been made- in quantities of up to 1000 for some of the early National Rallies. Many thanks are due to Graham and Gloria for allowing me to wander around with a camera. Both have been with LNP since the sixties, and in fact nobody seems to leave other than to retire. That really tells you all you need to know. My kind of place and my kind of people.

BRITISH VESPA COG BADGES

People in general have an insatiable urge to collect souvenirs of things they do. Usually the item itself is of limited value; it’s the association with the event it represents that really counts. When scooter rallies got going in this country circa 1952 the souvenir of choice was the pennant. Every rally issued one, allowing eager participants to add each new arrival to their (ever expanding) masts on the rear of their scooters. Given the increasing frequency of events in this era, by 1956 some of these were becoming a nuisance to low flying aircraft so a switch to badges was the order of the day. Or at least it was in Vespa land. Lambretta clubs never embraced badges in quite the same way, and such Lambretta badges as there are tend to be of disparate size and quality. Why this should be so is something of a mystery.

On the continent the whole process started a couple of years earlier. In Germany, France and Italy most Vespa clubs had a badge and the rallies they organised had one too. But although these continental badges are often attractive items (and are highly sought after), they come in just about any shape or size and in a wide variety of materials.

In Britain alone there was near-uniformity. After a false start with a circular design (1956 Woburn Abbey Rally and Bristol club badges) the definitive shape emerged with the 1956 Goodwood Regularity Trial badge. And it continues to this day for VVC rallies and VVC/VCB joint rallies. The VCB itself moved to a cheaper design after 2002. The VVC badges are still stamped out on the same ancient fly press and by the same company as in 1956. They are still all still hand painted. The company who produces them are called the London Nameplate Co (LNP), who were relocated from Clerkenwell to Brighton during the war so that their business of producing dials for aircraft instruments would not be threatened by the blitz. The sea air was so convivial that they never returned.. The factory is called the Zylo Works, and for this reason you sometimes hear the term “Zylo Badges”.

Since 1956 there have about 235 LNP/Zylo badges including around twenty five or so larger ones used for special occasions. Of the one hundred and eighty or so VCB branches, about ninety five had badges (about another twenty had cheaper badges made elsewhere). The club badges are much rarer than the rally ones- some branches having as few as ten examples made. There are only single surviving examples known of some branches’ badges. In comparison, there were up to one thousand badges produced for national rallies.

The very structured nature of the VCB is reflected in the badges - they exist for regions as well as branches. A collection of these badges is like having part of your life history on display. I swear I can still hear the rain falling when I look at the 1991 Cheltenham VVC badge, feel the sunburn from the Seaford 1989 badge, curse the seized clutch that the 1981 Brighton badge represents. The uniformity of design means that you feel linked with events from the nineteen fifties that you were much too young to attend.

At this point I have to confess to a secret vice - these cog badges are something of an indulgence of mine. A few years ago it looked as though production might cease due to general disinterest. After moving house to not far from Brighton in 2003 I resolved to sort things out. Since then I’ve made it my business rekindle LNP’S enthusiasm, to design two new badges per year, to fill in a few gaps from the recent past and to generally try and improve the designs themselves. To be honest these badges make no commercial sense at all. The quantity they are produced in these days (25 -40) can’t possibly justify the amount of floor space the press takes. It would take just one bean counter to walk through the door and then they would be history, but until that day comes we’ll try and keep them going. After all they represent not only Vespa Club history but also-in a small way- manufacturing in Britain itself. If keeping them going means one less thing made in China or somewhere then I, for one, think it’s worthwhile.