Although I’ve been mildly obsessed with what’s been happening in Harrogate, life has in fact been going on elsewhere.
This rather wonderful Abram Games poster went past on eBay on Monday, for a what seems like a fair £231.
I’ve never seen one out in the wild before, and I approve of it.
Meanwhile, if you do have any money left, a few other posters are also coming up in the next week or so should you fancy them.
Probably the most interesting is this London Electricity Board poster. The seller actually has three, but this one by Geoffrey Clarke is my favourite.
The listing says that they’re from the late 1940s, and they seem to be from a collaboration between the LEB and the Royal College of Art. They’re another example of how our history of posters is mostly determined by what survived; these are really interesting attempts to produce posters of cultural worth, just as the GPO or Shell did, but I’ve never come across them before or seen them mentioned. If anyone can shed any more light on them, I’d be really grateful.
Elsewhere, this slightly odd Geraldine Knight poster is from 1972, with an inital asking price of £30.
The original artwork is pictured on the London Transport Museum site, and it’s a great lump of bronze. Which may quite possibly make this poster unique. And I imagine plays havoc with their archiving systems.
Then, in competition for worst eBay picture of the week, there is this Badmin coach design.
The seller is hoping for £99, which isn’t entirely unreasonable given the prices that this kind of thing was fetching at Morphets (I wonder if that’s what flushed it out onto eBay or whether it’s a simple coincidence). But it’s a very high start price, and probably needs a few more photos to do well. As ever, watch this space.
And then there’s this, which isn’t a poster at all but is so delightful that I can’t resist, and has the added bonus of almost certainly not going for £99.
It’s from 1962 by James Mawtus-Judd, about whom I can discover precisely nothing at all. But it’s still lovely
Finally, I’ve been meaning to mention Martin Steenson’s blog for a while. He has the admirable aim of providing a proper overview of the work of well known artists and designers (as opposed to the scattered thoughts and biased opinions on offer over here).
His latest piece is on Edward Bawden, so please do go and take a look.