After seeing the Bruce Angrave Hastings poster yesterday, Mondagogo tweeted with a link to her photos of this wonderful object.
It’s a strange mechanical weather forecasting device – part of the Victorian weather station in Hastings. Here’s the whole thing.
Although if you look closely, the cartoons aren’t actually Victorian.
In fact they look suspiciously as though they might also be by Bruce Angrave. Certainly the chins seem familiar…
It seems Angrave did do cartoons as well as poster design (and illustration, and write books, and paper sculpture and a lot more besides). Here are a couple which were reproduced in Graphis in 1946
Compare and contrast.
It certainly looks like his work, but I can’t prove it one way or another. In a weird omission no one seems to have written anything at all about the weather station, so if you are in Hastings and know more, I’d love to hear from you.
And thanks to Anna from Mondagogo for the loan of the pictures.
If you compare these two images side by side it seems proof enough for me:
http://vintageposterblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/IMG_3605.jpg
http://vintageposterblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/angrave-weather-det-2.jpg
It appears to be a character Angrave has devised as a marketing tool for Hastings.
Love the paper sculpture book. I recently bought one of the Studio ‘How to’ series by J. Ramsey Wherrett titled ‘Composition’. Very nice dust jacket. I bet you have a poster or two by Wherrett? I can feel a blog post coming on!
I have a small GPO one (http://catalogue.postalheritage.org.uk/dserve/dserve.exe?dsqServer=localhost&dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqCmd=ImageView.tcl&dsqDb=Catalog&dsqImage=POST109_232.jpg) . Interestingly I found this while sourcing the image: http://catalogue.postalheritage.org.uk/dserve/dserve.exe?dsqServer=localhost&dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqCmd=ImageView.tcl&dsqDb=Catalog&dsqImage=POST109_228.jpg
The 3d variant came first (1950 and 51) but appears to be the weaker design which I find quite fascinating!
Yes, I think you’re right, but I was rather hoping some Hastings conservation type might pop up with proof!
I’ve never been disappointed by any of the Studio How-To’s yet, so it might be worth us having a look at that. I am ashamed to say that I knew nothing of Wherret until now, but thanks to your links have discovered that one poster we have framed is in fact by him :
http://catalogue.postalheritage.org.uk/dserve/dserve.exe?dsqServer=localhost&dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqCmd=ImageView.tcl&dsqDb=Catalog&dsqImage=IRP049.jpg
I shall investigate further
The ones you linked to are great aren’t they – and as you say, really interesting to see the evolution of the design!
Delighted to see that you like my Father’s work! I agree about the dust jacket, do you have the first or second edition?
Best regards,
Daniel Wherrett
Thanks for the comment – I’d love to know more about your father and his work.