Printed

These are exciting times here at Quad Royal.  Because as well as going on about posters at great length (a service which will, of course, continue) we’ve also got something to sell.  Prints of Daphne Padden designs to be precise.  Take a look at this.

And while I’m here, this too.

Rather good, aren’t they?  I like them really quite a lot.

They are both original screenprints (none of your giclee or laser printer nonsense over here, oh no) done by our friends at I Dress Myself on lovely quality paper using eco-friendly water based inks.  And the designs are, as far as I can tell, completely unseen until now.

The backstory to all this goes back a couple of years now, to when we bought a couple of great piles of material from Daphne Padden’s estate. As I wrote at the time, this wasn’t only made up of posters but also a small number of full size designs which had been made by collaging cut tissue paper.  You might recognise this one.

The glue has rather browned, but you can’t really blame it after fifty or more years.

Every single person we showed them too said, oh but they are wonderful, you must do something with them, until eventually we gave in.  And so now, after much to-ing and fro-ing over copyright and so on, we have.

There will be a couple more print designs coming in the new year and also, excitingly, some tea towels too.

Now what with moving house and so on I really didn’t want to be selling them right now.  But it is Christmas, and you are the loyal readers of Quad Royal, so I thought you should at least have a chance to buy them before the grand New Year launch.  What’s more, you can have them at a price of just £35 each – so at least £10 cheaper than they will be in the shops.  (Postage is £3.50 for up to five at a time.)

Oh and they’re 30cm x 40cm in size.

Another result of the move and the general chaos that my life is in at the moment, is that I don’t have a shop front or anything useful like that yet.  So if you want to buy a print, or two, or how ever many you like, then the way to do it for now is to send a note via the contact form with your name, address and your order.  I will get back to you with an invoice which you can pay via either Paypal or bank transfer.   If that all seems a bit terrifying and you prefer just pressing buttons to order something, I will also list them on eBay next week.  Or you could just put a comment below and I’ll email you.

Right, that’s the slightly technical bit over with, shall I tell you a bit more about the back story?  One of the issues with the copyright was that we needed to work out what these designs actually were, because if they had been produced for a company, then the rights would still belong to that company.  The conclusion I eventually came to – and I’d be interested to hear any other thoughts on this – is that these were unused designs.

This is partly because I simply couldn’t match any of these collages to a known design, whether for a poster or otherwise.  Then, when I thought about it a bit more, I realised that these were probably the final designs that got sent over to the lithographers for printing.  At which stage I imagine that they got inky, battered and finally screwed up and thrown in the bin.  Which means, I am guessing, that the ones which survived are ones which didn’t get printed for whatever reason.

The upshot of this, incidentally, is that copyright rests with the RSPCA, as beneficiaries of Daphne Padden’s estate, so they will be getting money from the print sales.  In the New Year, we’ll also be producing some larger limited edition prints for the benefit of the RSPCA, and also for Oxfam, who owned some more of the designs too.  And as the originals will, we hope, be coming to rest in the Brighton Design Archive, we’ll do a print for them too.  But that’s next year.  When I’ve moved house.