We’re all going to the zoo tomorrow…

Now I don’t normally do European posters.  I know nothing about their styles or their designers, and I have no idea what anything is worth.  This is mostly self-protection; rather too much of my brain is already cluttered up with images and facts about British graphics and posters, when it should be more worried about paid work and what’s for dinner, never mind adding all of Europe to the load.  And anyway, if I started finding out about them, I’d discover lots of ones I liked, and then I’d have to buy them and where would it all end.  Etc.

But this one has got through the defenses today, mainly because it is such a great bit of photomontage.

antwerp zoo poster from ebay

Who could fail to like that?  I still don’t know anything about it mind you. It’s on eBay, and the listing says it’s by Studio Peso.  The listing also says that it’s “fifties”.  I have a slight raised eyebrow at that, but then that, given my ignorance, is probably of no consequence.  So if anyone reading can tell me anything about it, please do.  My mind could be broadened here.

It’s being sold by someone in Belgium who wants €95 for it.  Now I think that’s quite reasonable, but please do tell me if you think otherwise.  He’s also got a surprising range of other classy posters on offer.  Including another one that I am almost tempted to buy.

Atomium poster from eBay

Apart from the great colour, this is mostly  because I visited the Atomium a couple of times as an impressionable teenager, at a time when it had been left to moulder gently since the 1958 expo.  So the entire interior, signage and exhibitions inside were all shrines to high 50s design (and optimism about atomic power).  This experience of being dipped straight back into the atomic 1950s must be one of the reasons I’m still so fond of the era now.  And it is also one of the weirdest structures ever built.  (Fancy travelling on an escalator along the arm of an iron crystal?  The Atomium is probably the only chance you’ll get.)

But if you haven’t been converted to the world of the Belgian poster, here is something more traditional.  And cheaper, even if it is in the States.

Poster for the Times

I’ve investigated this poster before, and come up with a blank, so if you know anything about it, please do say.  But my main observation is that it’s a single sheet, and so impossibly big which, along with the damage at the bottom, will probably keep its value down.  Personally, my money’s on the seal, or it would be if I dared dip my toe into European waters.

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