SELF-INKING STAMPS – THE CRAZE THAT’S SWEEPING THE WORLD

Unbelievable as it may be, rubber stamps and other custom stamps owe their existence to tribes of Indians in the jungles of South America.

It’s not the rubber stamps per se, but rubber itself that was the springboard, and it was a French scientist and explorer, Charles Marie de la Condamine, who noticed that some South American Indian tribes used a sticky substance to form a bouncy plaything – and he sent a sample of back to France.  ’India’ rubber remained a rare and scare commodity and didn’t really capture attention until around 30 years later, when the scientist who discovered oxygen, Sir Joseph Priestly remarked that it was ‘…excellently adapted to the purpose of wiping from paper the mark of black lead pencil’…but despite this, the ‘rubber’ of choice at that time remained bread crumbs (seriously!).

It took an intrepid and determined entrepreneur, Charles Goodyear to crack the rubber ‘code’ – a feat which took him years and years, all his disposable income and all his energy, but it resulted in him working out how to ‘cure’ rubber so that it kept its properties even after temperature fluctuations.

And of course, once there was rubber, there were rubber stamps.  The actual origins of rubber stamping are not clear – and articles cite several different theories as to who invented the first one – but when ink stamps first made their mark, it was predominantly to put information onto manufactured goods and postal items. 

What is definitive however, is that stamps of all kinds, rubber stamps, ink stamps, personalised stamps and custom stamps – have become enormously popular around the world among crafters, hobbyists, scrapbooking enthusiasts .  So if you want to make your mark on the world, ‘rubber stamp’ it!.

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