General Catalogue. The Union Manufacturing & Agency Company, 299 Elizabeth Street near G.P.O., Melbourne.

Melbourne : Alpha Printing Co., 71-73 Hardware St., [c.1930]. Octavo (185 x 125 mm), colour pictorial wrappers (upper wrapper with original owner’s name, chipped at fore-edge, corners bent; spine ends with short paper splits); pp 160; line-drawn illustrations throughout; ownership inscription in pencil to first page, corners dog-eared, but contents clean; order form loosely inserted.

Scarce interwar Melbourne trade catalogue for a firm that offered a huge variety of homewares, games and novelties – in fact, a cornucopia of knick-knacks, gadgets, do-it-yourself medical appliances and other things you wouldn’t really need. Shops of this type still abound in Melbourne today, of course.