British company sleeve · Decca
Decca “Supreme Records”
Decca’s Art Deco company sleeve, with large DECCA lettering and concentric arcs.
Dating at a glance
- Printed
- c. 1940 – 1945
the design may be older, and it was still used after the war - In use
- Wartime, and on into the late 1940s and early 1950s
- Confidence
- Medium that a copy like this belongs to the war years. Low for this copy: it could be a post-war printing of the same design
- Basis
- A museum example dated by the Victoria and Albert Museum, and a sleeve-history site’s observations
The sleeve
Brown paper printed in dark brown, with DECCA
in large Art Deco capitals across the top, overlapping concentric arcs and quarter-circles around the hole, and SUPREME RECORDS
along the lower edge. No address or printer’s imprint is visible.
Simon reports that the back is blank or the same as the front, so only the printed face was photographed.
The evidence
- DocumentedA museum date. The Victoria and Albert Museum (E.1236-1988) catalogues this design as designed perhaps in the early 1930s and published about 1940–45. Its example came with an Ambrose record of Dinner for One, Please, James.
- DocumentedA long run. Around and Around reports the design still in use into the early 1950s.
- InferredSo, wartime or later. A copy of this design fits the war years, but nothing on Simon’s copy separates a wartime printing from a post-war one. We include it because the documented date of the design falls before 1945.
Sources
- Victoria and Albert Museum, Decca “Supreme” sleeve, item O174858: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O174858/
- Around and Around, “Early 78 sleeves”: https://aroundandaroundcom.wordpress.com/early-78-sleeves/
What we could not find
- Any printing difference that would tell a wartime copy from a post-war one.
- The record that originally came in Simon’s copy.
Researched 12 November 2026 from Simon’s photographs of that evening.