Edge wear

And still they keep c0ming.  Today – cue drum roll – it’s eBay Watch.  Along with a bit of complaining from me.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got no problem with what’s out there.  Because there’s loads of it.

Let’s start with this Aer Lingus poster, which is very stylish.

John Bainbridge Aer Lingus poster c1950s

Although it’s in German it was printed in Ireland and is by Bainbridge.  This is almost certainly the John Bainbridge whose London Transport poster I mentioned the other day (and about which more later).

Then there’s this lot.

Beath Winter Number vintage London Transport poster on eBay

Beath vintage London Transport poster Green Line Coach Guide eBay

Beath vintage London Transport Poster March timetable eBay

They’re all by Beath, all from 1936 and they will cost you £49.50 a poster at the moment.  I also think  that they’re all rather good bits of modern typography.

But what pains me is that the descriptions say that they have all three been mounted on canvas.  Now it may just be that they’ve been stored badly (that’ Mr Crownfolio’s theory) but even if that’s so, they’re in pretty poor condition for a mounted poster.  I also can’t see any of the mount around the edges, which is a bit odd.

Now if these were the only examples, I wouldn’t be so bothered.  But it’s happening elsewhere.  The Henrion and Bainbridge posters that I mentioned yesterday also claim to be linen backed.  But the Bainbridge in particular is in even worse condition – take a look at the edges.

HEnrion 1950s London Transport poster as seen on our walls

John Bainbridge 1950s London Transport poster

And again, no edges of linen to be seen.

So what’s going on?  Is there just an outbreak of fibbing on eBay?  Or, more kindly, of sellers who haven’t seen a mounted poster before.  Or is there someone doing cut-price poster mounting and not doing it very well?  Or have I just got the wrong end of the stick altogether?

And finally, this.

Percy Drake Brookshaw

My beef here is with the description:

On offer here is a beautiful original Percy Drake Brookshaw travel poster dating to the mid 20th century circa 1950’s.

Yes, it’s by Percy Drake Brookshaw, yes it’s original.  But no, it is definitely not beautiful.  Just look at it.

They (an eBay based antiques dealer in Chippenham) also want £200 for it, which is a bit steep considering that I distinctly remember it going for about £40-60 at auction earlier this year.

There ought to be large signs all over the relevant bits of eBay, warning people that just because a poster is old, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s valuable.  The same applies to the Beaths above.  £49.95 isn’t as much, but it’s still a lot when you think that we bought a similar (and in fact better because nicely mounted on linen and therefore flat) Beath Winter Number for just £7.99 only last year.

Right, enough complaining.  On the positive side, you could have this smiley chap by Daphne Padden for a mere £4 or so at the moment.

Daphne Padden menu design from eBay

As well as a ton of WW2 posters from this seller.   They’re not the most visually appealing – this is probably the best of the bunch.

nurse WW2 poster from eBay

Once more, they’re not cheap,with opening prices from £50 for this, to £200 for a fairly tatty Norman Wilkinson.  Perhaps I’ll come back to this post next week and see how they all fared.

  • The LT posters and their linen backings – I suspect many of the posters such as these currently on sale at Ebay have, over time, been released from the spares held by the old LT Publicity stocks by the LT Museum. I recall that many of these ‘information’ posters (rather then pictorial posters) were linen backed so that they could be trimmed and then used on a more semi-permanent basis at offices, stops, etc. A good example would be the LT ‘you are here’ posters (the area maps for tube stations) that were printed in 10s or 20s (as spares/replacements) and that were seldom replaced. The ‘spares’ were released to dealers etc by LTM some years ago and now show face on Ebay and at dealers – they’re often linen backed, either trimmed or not.

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