ABSTRACT
The front cover of the 15 October 1965 issue of The Investors Chronicle featured an illustration of a family standing on a document rendered, with the help of fringed edges and some graphic licence, as a magic carpet. The family – husband, wife, two children, one girl, one boy – look comfortable in that conspicuously modern 1960s style adopted by so much commercial imagery of the period. The magic carpet they are standing on is a Provident Check, a form of documentary credit that the issuing company, Provident Clothing and Supply, had then been trading in for just under 90 years. The cover referred to a featured article, ‘Provident’s New Image’, that was prompted by the investment potential offered by the company since it listed on the stock exchange in 1962. In its short history as a public company Provident had performed well and, as the article counselled, had made certain adjustments that were poised to help it perform even better.
