Description:Inlay from an Edwin Bostock & Co. Ltd. overseas trade catalogue which shows trade marks of the company in about 1915.
The trade marks illustrated are: Flexilis, Lyric Brand, Cosmos, Ariel, Iris, Lotus, and Delta. Top centre is an emblem from the Centennial International Exhibition at Melbourne, 1888.
Bostock's was founded in the eighteenth century by Thomas Bostock, a cobbler. His three sons started their own factories in Stafford, Stone and Northampton. Edwin Bostock's original Stafford factory was on Foregate Street. The building was destroyed by fire in 1901, but was rebuilt on Sandon Road in 1903. In 1919 the three factories amalgamated to become Lotus. The Sandon Road factory was demolished in 1998