Up, up and away

Time, for a quick saunter round the Christies results.  Which were a mixed bag; some things sold, some things didn’t.  Some things sold for way over their estimate (we’ll come to those in a minute), some things for well under.    This Fred Taylor, for example, went for £250, despite an estimate of £600-800.  So far, so like normal.

Fred Taylor, Cambridge, British Railways

But the real shock – and the reason that it’s worth my saying anything at all – was this one.

McKnight Kauffer, Daily Herald

£32,450, the highest price in the sale, despite being huge.  I’m gutted.

I know that sounds unreasonable, but I love this poster.  Not only because it’s great (it is) but it was also one of the reasons that I started to appreciate posters in the first place.

Back in the day, it used to hang a little-used back stairwell of the V&A, which ran from the Exhibition Road entrance, past the Twentieth Century Galleries and then up into the Eighteenth Century.  I used to go up and down there quite a bit, and I learned to love it.  But now I’ll never own it (mind you, at 79 x 60 inches, that’s probably a bit of a blessing).

But that wasn’t the biggest shock.  That has to belong to this Edward Wadsworth.

Estimated at £4,000-£6,000, it went for £18,750.  Someone must have been chuffed this weekend.

Other than that, it was also good seeing the Edward Bawden and David Gentleman London Transport posters making over £1,000.

Although each lot had been made up with other posters (six more in the case of the Bawden – I wonder which they were).  Before the minimum lot requirements, these would almost all have been sold separately; it’s a shame that they’re all bundled up, unseen and unvalued now.

What will be interesting is whether or not more posters pop up at the next Onslows sale at the end of the month as a result.  Patrick Bogue has just posted up a teasing page of previews at the moment – so it’s hard to tell. There’s a Stan Krol UN poster that I rather like, and I will post that when some larger images are about, and anything else interesting which turns up in the catalogue.