ESA

Educational Supply Association (ESA/Esavian) was founded in the 19th Century, and by the 1950’s had become a significant supplier to the UK of school furniture, fittings and teaching aids. The legacy of the company, which was dissolved in the 1980’s is mostly in relation to the furniture (designed by James Leonard) however, for a short time, they sold jigsaw puzzles to schools as part of their range. The Catalogue from this period ‘Two to Seven A Catalogue of Teaching Aids, Materials, Toys and Equipment for Nursery & Infant Schools’ January1959, details the myriad of items that could be purchased for use in schools and illustrates the puzzles available.

The 1960’s appears to have been ESA’s heyday in terms of the puzzles that they produced; the illustrations are classic examples of everything that a child in the era could have wished to have had incorporated into a puzzle, with suggestions that the industrial agriculture that was ongoing in the surrounding fields was there for the entertainment of children, with a steamroller pictured alongside a child with a replica steamroller and a farmer with a lorry full of cattle stopping to pass the time with two children and their dog. Other quintessential puzzles within the ESA range offered up seemingly idyllic scenes for children who could only imagine that the world, from the view pictured from within a jigsaw, was a most perfect place.

There is a link between Abbatt Toys and ESA in as much as after the death of Paul Abbatt in 1971 Marjorie Abbatt sold Abbatt Toys to ESA in 1973. Examples of the puzzles that were produced at around this time were dreadful remakes of the Abbatt Toys puzzles, with garish colour pallets and low quality printing, and as such have not been included here. However, two large-scale ESA puzzles were recently added to the collection and are reminicent of the design delights produced by Abbatt Toys, one of which is the main image for the website. 

It should be mentioned that ESA had something of a inconsistent relationship with their branding, and an examination of the steamroller puzzle reveals that they were incorporating 3 variations of their logos into the one puzzle; the elephant, the writing on the elephant (ESA) and the rabbit. The rabbit used as a logo can also be seen on the Zebra Puzzle and the round version of the ESA Logo on the aeroplane puzzle. Other puzzles have no visible logo at all (The Fairground), and some have a sedate, somewhat dull ESA within a text box. Later on (1970’s) they resolved to using a non-descript ‘ESA’ branding in small, barely visible text as seen in the cat and coach puzzles, or no identifying marks at all. 

And finally, it should be applauded that for a time at least, the artists and illustrators that designed the images for the puzzles were given credit for their work during the 1960’s, and it is with pleasure that we are able to identify them alongside their creations.