As I mentioned a couple of days ago, the Onslows catalogue is now up and complete – eighteen lovely pages of posters for you to look at it, and all of which you can bid for via the internet.
So with the sale less than two weeks away, I thought I’d better take a proper look.
If you are a fan of a) World War One and Two, b) Guinness or c) French posters, you’re in luck, as there’s plenty of all of those.
This Mount/Evans salvage poster is probably my favourite of the WW2 lots – and one I’ve never seen before as well. Large tranches of the rest – unless you like H.M. Bateman cartoons – are more of historical than graphic interest. Although, having said that, I rather like this railway fuel saving poster too.
As well as this fantastically stark warning – also from the railways.
At an estimate of £70-£100, I might even think about that, were it not for the fact that I’d never ever put it up on the wall.
Then (lots 246 – 250 should you be looking for them) there are a small cache of classics, including Henrion, Keeley and three by Abram Games.
Every one a classic, but all also sufficiently grim that I can’t see any of them going up around the house any time soon.
In the world of Guinness, meanwhile, there are a few Gilroy classics on offer, but I rather like this 1962 one by R Peppe, not just for being different, but it does help.
And after that, I just got a bit overwhelmed. There are film posters, London Transport posters – including this 1953 gem by Sheila Robinson.
We once sold a poster of hers once; with hindsight I have no idea why.
There’s also this 1964 design for Kew Gardens, which is by Tom Eckersley’s wife, Mary Kessel, poster trivia fans.
There are of course railway posters, including Terence Cuneo’s Pictures of Trains, lots of 1972 Munich Olympic posters about which I know nothing, and – as mentioned in my last post – industrial quantities of Shell educational posters, at least 22, although I might well have missed some. The Hillier is still the best one on offer, although I am also a big fan of the David Gentleman series on The Roads of Britain.
There’s at least one missing here – The Great West Road with his wonderful image of Silbury Hill – and quite possibly more, but they’re still a great set on a deeply under-rated subject. But I will not digress.
If your a fan of Kraftwerk, you might want to buy this.
And finally (because I am rambling furiously and must stop) I like this, for no good reason at all.
Surely that prize specimen has to be worth more than the £30-40 estimate.
This is of course a fantastically partial review of what’s on offer, and has almost certainly left out all the most valuable posters. So please do and take a look for yourselves, and I’ll come back once the auction’s over and see what I missed out first time around.