UK Packaging Awards 2009: Outstanding Contribution

WINNER

Robert Opie
Many people take for granted the thousands of packs we see every day, but not Robert Opie. For him, they are objects of beauty, fascination and, perhaps most of all, historical record. For more than 45 years, Opie – who was once described as the “archaeologist of the supermarket” – has amassed the world’s foremost collection of packaging, which now counts around one million items.

Browse through Opie’s packaging collection – or, at least, the 12,000 or so objects from it that are on display at the Museum of Brands, Packaging and Advertising in west London – and you will be transported through time. No-one has done more than Opie to demonstrate how packaging defines every era in which we live. Art deco tins evoke the 1920s, while the advent of the two-piece beverage can marks the 1960s.

But Opie is more than just a collector. He is the author of around 20 books on the history of packaging and advertising and is a regular face on TV shows charting social history and the history of brands.

His packaging journey began in 1963, when, as a teenager, he bought a pack of Munchies sweets at Inverness train station and decided to keep it. As the collection grew, so did Opie’s reputation and, by 1975, he had enough material to curate a show at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London entitled ‘The Pack Age: A Century of Wrapping it Up’. In 1984, he opened his first museum in Gloucester, while his London museum, which also houses toys, advertising signs and a host of other branded objects, opened in 2005.

Opie may not be, strictly speaking, from the packaging industry. Yet the industry should treasure the work that he does to celebrate its role in creating society as we know it.

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