auctions Archives - Page 19 of 19

Life (and design) During Wartime

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Just because posters were produced at a time when some of the very best designers were working, it doesn’t mean that they were all great design, or even interesting. This thought was brought on by a collection of posters on sale in Lewes next week.

The idea – 20 lots of wartime and post-war HMSO posters – sounds wonderful. The reality is, sadly, rather less appealing. The vast majority of the posters are pictures of tanks, aeroplanes or people fighting. Dramatic, probably effective, but not for me. Even the home front ones are anonymous, and more social history than art:

(lot 591)

There are a collection of H.M. Batemans as well,

(lot 599)

But to my mind, the best posters are a set of anonymous recruiting posters for the ATS, which I’ve never seen before.

(lot 606)

which are a rather nice mix of photomontage and snappy type. If anyone has any info on the designer, do let me know; even the Imperial War Museum have them down as anonymous.

But I still don’t even like these enough to go to the trouble of putting an absentee bid in and then, somehow, getting them transported from Lewes to Crownfolio HQ.

However, they’re still a salutary reminder about the quality of graphic design in the war vs the quantity. I, certainly, have a tendency to imagine a bombed-out London plastered with one beautiful poster after another, all the work of Abram Games, Lewitt-Him or James Fitton. The reality, however, probably looked nothing like that, and most walls were covered with exhortations, pictures of planes, speeches from Churchill and rather average illustrations. The ones we cherish now were the exception, not the rule.

Still, some of them were great. In the course of researching the auction lots, I came across this, a Henrion I’d never seen before.

Now if that comes up for auction, even in the Orkneys, I’ll be making a serious bid.

Market failure?

auctions

At the end of last year, MrCrownfolio and I made some enquiries about selling some posters at Christies. We have done this before, although the combination of something being good enough quality and us wanting to get rid of it doesn’t come round that often. But, as will become apparent, it’s unlikely ever to happen again. Because the (very polite) reply from Christies was that they now had a minimum lot value of £800. Yes, that’s right, £800.

I couldn’t quite get my head round this, because it seemed so unlikely. Would Christies really want to turn away so many of the posters which have filled their recent sales, from railway posters like this,

(£375, Sept 2008)

which is a species of railway poster I rather like, probably because of the type. Or this classic Abram Games

(£375, June 2008)

So I contacted Nicolette Tompkinson, the head of their poster department, who confirmed that this their new policy.

…the general policy here at Christie’s for new consignments is to include posters that have a minimum lot value of £800. Our aim is put together higher quality sales with less lots as we feel that at £800+ we consistently sell a high percentage of lots at a good price.

I still find this both extraordinary, and a great shame. There are now a whole swathe of poster types which now won’t be sold at Christies, from the kitchier post-war railway posters such as this anonymous Clacton poster,

(£275, Sept 2007)

to post-war London Transport posters (and, indeed, a great many pre-war ones as well).

London Transport Bainbridge vintage poster (£250, Sept 2007)

And there are a number of designers – not only Abram Games, but also Royston Cooper,

(£375, June 2008)

and of course Tom Eckersley

(£264, Sept 2006)

who just won’t appear in their sales any more.

Now, you may be wondering, does this really matter? After all, there are other auctions where these posters can be bought and sold (if I were Patrick Bogue, say, I would be rubbing my hands with glee right now). But I think it does; not just because these are exactly the kind of posters I like and I don’t want to see them left out in the cold, but because I believe it will damage the market in two ways.

One is quite simply that I think fewer posters will now come to market, because they won’t fetch such high prices as they would have done at Christies. Nicolette Tompkinson seemed to suggest that their higher fees were putting off buyers anyway,

In addition, due to a commission rate of 15% and the minimum marketing fee of £40 it is also expensive to sell here at a lower level.

Personally, we’ve never found that too much of a problem. Most of the time the extra fees at Christies are more than cancelled out by a much higher hammer price, so the good posters are – or were – almost always worth putting into their sales rather than somewhere else, despite the costs involved.

But I think the Christies decision will do more than just depress the market financially. There is a sense in which a large auction house operating in this area acts to underwrite the market – these posters are perceived as being both more valuable and more collectable because they are sold at prestige auctions. Without those auctions happening – and without those visibly high prices – post-war graphics and posters are going to struggle for a while. It’s rather like buying a house in an ‘up-coming’ area; fine during the boom, but rather harder to sell in a recession.

But not all of this is Christies’ fault; to some degree they are just reflecting what is happening anyway. Going through their catalogues has made me realise just how much prices have dropped from the peak of a few years ago. Take this rather wonderful Hass poster,

That sold for £1,500 in September 2007, but just £375 two years later. And the cheaper one was in better condition too.

Plus it’s not even all doom and gloom for us either. As collectors, we could now afford things that would have been out of reach before (that Hass poster, for example). It’s just that the posters under the bed may not be our pension fund for a while yet.

One final note of cheer. Here’s an Eckersley for sale in a posh auction – Bloomsbury Auctions on 25th March. From the description, I’m pretty sure it is this,

from 1976, estimated at £100-£150. So life could be worse really.

Art for all

auctions

Tracking down a bargain is hard work these days. There aren’t many to be found at Onslows any more, and even on eBay, something has to be pretty well hidden not to make good money. So pretty much the only pleasure left are the local auctions.

For example this picture and description in Battle:

E R BARTELT London Transport poster print Circa. 1960s, and MENGUY, Colour lithograph poster print, (2), unframed.

also hid this 1961 gem:

Yours for £45, which isn’t bad. And if anyone knows anything about Mr Bartelt, please let me know, as I don’t. (The sale also had a smattering of original railway poster artwork, but it’s hard to get worked up about that at the best of times, and especially not after the art-fest that was Morphets day two.)

There on the other hand, not everything that is hidden turns out to be treasure.

This listing in Essex:

A 1966 Underground poster, by Hans Hunger
30 to 50 (GBP)

(I make no comment)

Could have been one of these two:

Mmm, lovely John Nash architecture. I got quite excited for about ten minutes.

But what was on offer was this.

Still went for £42 though, despite the nibbled edges and unprepossessing frame, which goes to show something, even if I don’t know quite what. Does anyone have any views on what Unger is worth? I rather like the late 50s and 60s underground posters (with the exception above), but perhaps that’s just me.

But of course the real lesson from all this is that, thanks to internet listing and on-line bidding, because we can find these things , everyone else can too. So soon there won’t be any bargains at all. Then what shall I do?

Matching poster to artist, one local auction at a time…

auctions

A few interesting posters are coming up for auction next week at Dreweatt’s Bristol salerooms (if I remember rightly, they’re the ones in the converted church right at the top of Clifton).

Seven lots of posters have come from the family of the artist Percy Drake Brookshaw. I’d never heard his name before, but this poster is very familiar.

That’s mainly because it has come round at specialist poster auctions a few times. It’s a good bit of 50s near-kitch, and so will probably go for rather more than the £60-80 estimate. And now I know who designed it, so that’s something.

If you follow the above link to the London Transport Museum, you will see that Brookshaw designed some rather wonderful pre-war images for them. Sadly, the posters that his family saved belong to his rather more whimsical post-war style, like this 1956 eulogy to Torquay.

The only other image which made me raise an eyebrow was the Post Office poster below.

That’s mainly because the more I look, the more of these ‘properly packed parcels please’ posters I discover. We’ve got four to start with (I don’t quite know why because they are giant 40″ x 30″ Quad Crowns and I don’t think we’ll ever have the wall space for them), and they’re unusually good bits of 60s design. I’ll blog about them properly one day.

6RP7324X32BP

The biggest poster auction ever. Perhaps.

auctions

As mentioned below, the Morphets sale last month was a one-off spectacular the likes of which may not be seen again for some time.

This was certainly true in the Crownfolio household, where the event involved three computers (two downstairs for watching while child-minding and cooking, one upstairs for actually placing bids) and an entire day spent in front of screens watching one poster after another reach what seemed to be eye-watering prices. I don’t think my nerves can stand anything like that again for some time to come.

Morphets themselves are trumpeting it as “The biggest and most important sale of posters that has ever been held…” But was it really?

It certainly wasn’t the biggest in terms of turnover. The sale realised £410,000, which Christies, and I am sure many other auctioneers, have definitely surpassed before.

Then what about the prices? I for one had hoped that a combination of the recession and the sheer quantity of posters on offer all at once would mean that on the whole prices might be low (subtext, and we could pick up a bargain or two). But as poster after poster flashed past, the overwhelming impression was of new highs being reached with almost every lot going for at least a hundred, sometimes several hundred pounds over its estimate.

£400

Now, however, in the cold light of day, the prices don’t seem to have been breaking records, more at the low end of average. (Disclaimer: I’ve only checked the items I was interested in, along with a few star lots – if other things did perform well, please do let me know!) But what did make the achieved prices seem dramatic were the surprisingly low estimates. Perhaps they had also thought that the recession would have left everyone too broke to buy so many posters.

So sale volume, good but not exceptional, prices good too – but so far no cigar. And probably not the greatest poster auction ever held.

But what was genuinely extraordinary was having so many railway posters being sold in one place. Whereas your average Christies or Onslows sale might have twenty, thirty, perhaps a few more in amongst the Mucha and friends, here that’s all there was: different periods, different styles and different destinations all the way from the first lot to number 593 ten hours later. So yes, if you like railway posters, it was probably about as big as it’s ever going to get.

But as we slowly worked our way through every region of Britain and Ireland, I gradually came to realise one thing. Which is that I don’t really like many railway posters very much. And the more I saw of them, the less I liked them. I’ll try and explain why in my next post.

What’s wrong with this picture?

auctions

At some point I need to write properly about the giant Morphets poster auction, even though it had been and gone before I got this blog going. The sale was so big and so insane, and the prices so stratospheric, that it really can’t be ignored*, but to be honest I still haven’t quite got my head round it yet. So let’s start with something simple. This lovely poster.

Now I love this. It’s an original architect’s drawing of one of the great buildings of the post-war reconstruction, and the typography is smart and of the period too. If you showed it to an architect or a design historian (or just someone who is a fan of fifties graphics and wants something good – if rather large – to hang on their wall), they’d fall over themselves to buy one. Or so you’d think.

Because in fact it’s not worth very much at all. There were three of these on sale at the Morphets auction, all A condition. One went for £140, one for £75, and the third didn’t sell at all. And this in an auction where pretty much everything else made mincemeat of the estimates.

So what’s the problem? Is it just that railway poster collectors (whoever they are) are traditional folks, who like pictures of countryside, historic buildings and of course trains on their walls? Am I actually one of only about twelve people in the country who like 50s graphics. Or is there something else very wrong with it that I can’t see? Any thoughts or answers very welcome, because I certainly don’t know.

Oh, and I didn’t buy one because we’ve got one already. Bought for £100 a few years ago, and it felt like a bargain. Clearly I was wrong.

*For those of you whom it did pass by, there were almost six hundred railway posters for sale, the vast majority in boxfresh condition, and many of which I’d certainly never seen before. But it was the sheer volume of stuff which was overwhelming. Want a poster of Somerset? That’s fine, there’s about twenty five to choose from. Devon? Oh, just another thirty or so. And so it went on. Perhaps I’ll write about it properly next time.