Category: archives

Just when you thought it was safe to come out of the signal box

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The dust has hardly settled since Harrogate, but notheless, it’s railway poster time again.  Oh goody.

Coming up in just over a month’s time, another giant auction of picture-perfect railway posters, this time at Bloomsbury Auctions in New York.  And once again, I am trying to be enthusiastic, but not quite managing it.

This one’s quite fun, although mostly because I quite fancy the idea of a holiday in some camping carriages (preferably in the style of the Amstutz on the ‘About Us’ page please).

anonymous camping coaches railway poster

But in the main I can’t even get enthusiastic enough to post them on the blog.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s tons of wonderful and collectable posters there, and I’m sure I’d love to see them on someone else’s walls, a few at a time.  But, just like with Morphets, all of that lovely landscape and pretty pastel colours and sheer niceness ends up overwhelming me, and I don’t want to buy a single one of them.  Not that I could afford it anyway.

Plus there’s a lot of Terence Cuneo, which is always a bit of red flag for me.  Or perhaps I should say signal.  He’s a sign that we have tipped over the border of art and are now firmly in the land of people who like pictures of trains.  Lovely detailed pictures of trains on tracks where you can see what model it is and where it is going.  (We did once accidentally own a Cuneo picture, which was of the ICI Works in Cheshire at night., a picture so uncompromisingly industrial and ugly that it earned my respect.  Although we still sold it.)

But nonetheless, there are lots of people who like buying these kind of posters and paying lots of money for them, so I am sure the sale will do very well.  And the fact that I can’t see this is the number one reason why I’m not a poster dealer and never will be.

One final word: what is truly odd and unique about this sale is the fact that this was one man’s collection and every single one of these 198 posters is framed.  My mind is well and truly boggled.  Where on earth did he (I assume it’s a he) live?  In a hotel?  Or a mental asylum?  How else would he have had enough wall space?  Answers in the comments box please.

Vintage design for modern times

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Tom Eckersley is all over the web at the moment.  Yesterday he was here on Grain Edit (and hence tweeted and reposted hither and thither).  And over the last few months, he’s also been here, here, here, here and even all the way over here in Italy.  (There are loads more, I just lost the will to look at them all).  The two images below are currently spreading across the web like a virus.

Tom Eckersley Keep Britain Tidy vintage poster

This is in part – a big part – because the Eckersley Archive is both so big and so available.  But it must also be because there is something about Eckersley which is particularly appealing to today’s designers and students.

What’s noticeable about the posters which have, mostly, been chosen from the archive is that they tend to be Eckersley’s much more simple and graphic work, from the 60s and later.

Tom Eckersley Pakistan Airways vintage poster

What’s missing from the tides of Eckersley’s work ebbing and flowing across the web are the earlier, more whimsical posters.  Posters like this one:

tom eckersley seal guinness vintage poster

Or even this:

tom eckersley mablethorpe vintage poster

(This just went for £110 at Talisman Railway auctions, which is a bit of a bargain, even if it is a bit battered).

There is one exception to this, which are his Please Pack Parcels Very Carefully series, which the BPMA have been using quite a bit recently.  If I am truthful, I’m a bit cross about this.

Tom eckersley china dog vintage poster

It’s not that it’s not a lovely poster, it is, and of course everyone should get a chance to see it, if only to prove that Tom Eckersley did a bit more than just sparse modernism.  But it’s mine.  This was the first poster I ever bought (more on that some other time) and it’s sitting watching me as I write right now.  So hands off everyone.  Go and find another poster to tweet about please.

Here’s one to start with, another lovely piece of sparse modernism.

Mr Crownfolio and I are off to turn this into a twitter button.  We may be gone some time.  In the meantime, you can follow me on Twitter here.

Britain Can Make Lovely Posters

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A further digression here.  I’ve spent the morning assembling the first draft of the links page, and in the course of it have rediscovered this wonderful photograph:

Britain can make it poster exhibition

It’s the General Printing part of the 1947 Britain Can Make It exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum.  The aim was to showcase the consumer goods which would lead the country’s manufacturing recovery after the war.  Although the show was wildly popular, it was generally known as ‘Britain Can’t Have It’ as the country was still under heavy rationing, and almost all the goods on display were designed for export.

Britain Can Make it posters wuder

At least the posters above would have been an exception to this.  I can identify a Games, the Lewitt-Him Vegetabull (below, any excuse) and a Fougasse.  The caption also tells me that the front poster about Milk is a James Fitton.  If you can identify any others, I’d love to know.

Lewitt Him vegetabull poster

The image comes from the VADS archive, which is a collection of more images and resources than one person can reasonably use in a lifetime.  They’ve got a good (if slightly over design-historical) introduction to Britain Can Make It if you’re interested in learning more.  I’d just like to have a wander round the exhibition really.  And then take the posters home, of course.

These classic posters, they’re all rubbish you know

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This link to Design magazine online has been on the bookmarks for a while, but I’ve never quite got round to exploring it.  But, a bit of random surfing while bored and tired the other evening came up with this:

Design magazine archive posters 1969

It’s an article about how most modern public information posters are rubbish.

“…the standard of the majority of most of these posters is very low indeed… The copy is often unconvincing or repelling, the artwork amateur, the design dull or muddled. Sadly staring out from tatty municipal notice boards, or lost among the sports and theatre fixtures on office notice boards, these staid, sometimes pompus lectures are rarely in themselves convincing.”

Which is all well and good, but the ascerbic thrust of his article is rather undermined by the illustrations, which are of some truly classic posters of the period.  To be fair, he’s not actually saying that these are bad, but it’s still hard to get worked up when faced with images like these from Mount/Evans, which are light years ahead of any informational poster produced today.

mount/evans vintage COI posters

Here’s the last one in glorious technicolour for your proper enjoyment.

vintage mount evans COI poster every girl should know

And as if that wasn’t enough, there’s also a lovely spread of GPO ‘Properly Packed Parcels Please’ posters (yes, again), by Malcolm Fowler, Thomas Bund and Andre Amstutz.

vintage GPO properly packed parcels posters Design

Again, here’s the Amstutz in its full glory (if not great size) thanks to the Postal Heritage archive.

vintage GPO properly packed parcels please poster Andre Amstutz

In part, I know, these posters do look good partly just because they’re old.  But I also genuinely think that you’d be hard-pressed to find any public information poster that is half as well designed these days – and if anyone can prove me wrong, I’d love to see the evidence.  So, Design Magazine, you may have found the wealth of posters unconvincing and repelling, but with forty years worth of hindsight, you didn’t know how lucky you were.