While doing some sorting out Mrs Audrey Chatfield ‘Dunsinane’ decided to reduce some of her canine clutter offering two collections of marked catalogues, each of which spanned more than forty years, to the Rough Collie Archive Collection. Perhaps the most exiting, although the least photogenic, is the almost complete Catalogue collection for Yorkshire Collie Club Shows including its Members and Open Shows as well as those for its Championship Shows. The second collection is of Crufts catalogues from 1960 to 2001 but with the addition of my own collection these can be brought right up to date.

Here you can compare the changing presentational style used for the Yorkshire Collie Club’s first Championship Show in 1963, where Miss Joyce Skilbeck was a none too successful exhibitor, and the much slicker presentation used for Yorkshire Collie Club’s 2008 Catalogues, where Miss Skilbeck had earned considerable promotion not only being the club’s President and Treasurer but also one of its Judges in 2008.

This montage of Cruft’s Catalogues graphically illustrates the changes over the year. Forty years ago the front cover was little more than advertisements with a small amount of spot colouring.

Advertising was confined to spine and back cover for the Kennel Club’s Centenary Year, not illustrated, with a pale green cover and darker lettering for the 1973 Catalogue.

The following year saw a split front cover in two shades of green, again not illustrated, not unlike the Crufts Centenary Cover which was in Green and White.

1996 brought a new innovation when the Kennel Club introduced a reproduction one of its art works on the front cover with advertising confined to the back cover and inside-pages.

By 2004 a further change brought different images for each day with each featuring one of the breeds exhibited that day.