Vintage T-Shirt Forum & Community Authentication Appraisals

Don't appear to able to resize these pics so they'll load, so I'll just provide a description.

Continuing the 3D shirt saga, came across a shirt/tag this week that got me thinking about these t's in a new light. It's a very early 3D shirt, 1985 c/r; which predates all I've seen by a year. Artwork bears the signature of the artist (a not uncommon feature) and it is a "blank back" black t.

Anyway, I'm accustomed to the usual black/gold tag with 3D logo predominant, also own a couple (bought new) that are long-sleeved, 100% cotton, and bear the same logo on a bone white tag.

However, this tag has the Harley Davidson "bar & shield" logo predominant, but in the lower portion of the shield it says "company" instead of the familiar "cycles". Below this, in smaller lettering is the "3D Emblem" on one line; then "Ft Worth Texas" below that. Tags are faint but readable, btw; had to use a flash to get 'em to pop.

Very early production t for sure; because of the tag info, I'm wondering if 3D was a subsiderary of, or owned by HD? The absolute dearth of info about this shirt company over the years could perhaps be well explained by the NDA's that HD is famous for when dealing with secondary (or principal) suppliers. It would also explain why so many HD dealerships wound up with promotional t's printed by 3D in the late 80's/early 90's.

Cripes, maybe the truck stop market was just an accident!

One other thing that struck me...the print actually displays some moderate cracking & piling from wear. (and from storage, I believe) I've seen very, very little of this on 3D t's, and usually on the back in the truck stop/dealership top and bottom.

Got me wondering if they didn't have that "dot matrix" printing process quite dialed in yet?

Can you resize them in Windows Paint or an Apple image program? It would be nice to see.

I'm workin on it in Paint right now

OK, this should get us started

101_0384.JPG[/attachment]Couple more

Thanks for sharing and awesome tee! Ive definitely seen the 3d/Harley combo tag. I think that tag-union came to be after 3d had already established their company - and had already been commissioned to print their tees for a while. Likely Harley beaome more concious about their branding and probably negotiated to include their logo on the tag. Eventually Harley 3D tees had 100% Harley tags with 3D only represented in the print.

I dont think 3d was Harley owned. That would also show up somewhere in trademark info.

I do know the 3d/Truckers trademarks have recently been acquired by someone in the vintage tee community.

That's interesting that the AW & c/r stuff has been acquired; hopefully some t's will emerge from this?

That's the first time I've seen that combo tag on one of these t's, so I was thinkin' out loud. I've had a couple friends who were employed downstream from the factory doing specialized paintwork on parts (but still under contract to HD) and one did not bring up the subject whilst in their company...

Regardless, I'd sure like to see more info about the company itself, and especially their print procedures!

Their print procedures aren't a mystery. They did better quality work than a lot of the screen printers out there at the time but it's not like they unlocked some secret than nobody else was privy to. It's basically just using halftones in conjunction with high mesh count and process/simulated process screen printing. This technique has been used for a long time, in newsprint, screen printing, etc. So yeah, 3D Emblem did great work on t-shirts and we as vintage people may obsess over the minutiae of this kind of stuff but in reality their techniques were nothing new, original or proprietary to 3D Emblem themselves.