auctions Archives - Page 5 of 19

New Kids on the Block

auctions

The auctions are coming thick and fast now, so much so that this may end up being a bit of a hasty canter through what’s on offer. But never mind, the pictures are pretty.

First in our sights is Great Northern Railwayana Auctions, who deserve a particularly warm welcome not only because they are a brand new auction house, but will also be holding their auction this weekend at Poynton Civic Centre, home to many teenage discos for me back in the days. Although things have clearly changed since then, as the directions say that the Civic Centre is on the left after Waitrose, rather than turn left after the tatty newsagent and the Indian takeaway.

That notwithstanding, it’s interesting to see a new auction coming in, I think it’s a sign of a healthy market. And for a first auction, they’ve got a good haul of posters. Particularly if you’re a fan of Mr Lander, as there are three of his on offer.

GNRA have taken the lead from all other railwayana auctions sadly, so there are no estimates for any of these and mostly no dates. Can anyone explain to me why this is? But the Landers are good, and that last one is new to me and almost migraine-inducing in its feverish technicolour.

Elsewhere, they also have a rare Terence Cuneo picture of something that isn’t a train.

Along with a ‘rare’ Daphne Padden that I have to admit I haven’t seen before.

I like the pink, but not enough to bid on it, so it’s over to you lot.

If you’re prefer classics, they’ve even got a few of those too, like this Fred Taylor.

All in all, a good show. I will watch with interest to see how the prices go.

That’s not the only new auction house either. London Transport Auctions will also be holding their very first auction on October 26th.

Sadly, there aren’t quite so many posters in this one, of which my favourites are probably these two 1960s London Underground posters.

Anthony Rossiter, 1964, est. £75-100

John E Kadshan, 1962, est. £75-100

I am also very fond of this Galbraith too, in part because we’ve already got a copy.

Galbraith, 1958, est. £50-75

Most expensive poster in the sale is probably going to be this one, I should think.

Anna Zinkeisen, 1934, est. £250-350.

More interesting, at least I think, is this McKnight Kauffer survival.

McKnight Kauffer, 1936, est. £40-50

It was originally designed to go on bus stops, and so is the proportions of a bus timetable. And I’ve never ever seen one as old as that before, never mind a good-looking one designed by McKnight Kauffer. So although it’s a bit battered, it’s a really fascinating thing – and a bit of a bargain if it does go for £40.

What the London Transport auction does do, however, is lure me into looking at lots of really rather lovely London Transport leaflets. But I will be strong-willed, and show you just one.

MCKK, 1932, est. £30-40

Fortunately its full title is “Overhauling London’s buses at the Chiswick Works of the London General Omnibus Company Ltd.” and it is “lavishly illustrated with photos of every stage of the overhaul process, showing NS, ST & LT-type buses and including a large plan of the Works showing the overhaul paths”, so I shan’t be tempted to buy it.

The Clever Housewife

auctions

Auction time is upon us once again. In fact we are currently so beset by auctions that I’m unlikely to get them all into one post and (oh the shame) I’ve even missed a couple. Nonetheless, we will persevere.

The very lovely Swann Auctions in New York have sent over the catalogue for their sale of Rare and Important Posters on Occtober 18th.

N Cramer Roberts, 1928 est. $800-1,200

It’s all very lovely, while at the same time being not really my kind of thing, and also really quite expensive.

Peter Irwin Brown, 1932, set. £7,000-£10,000

For the sake of both my taste and my bank balance, I’m probably better off waiting for their sale of Common and Insignificant posters instead. I suspect the contents would be much more my kind of thing.

All of which probably explains why I forgot to tell you about Christies’ auction of October 2nd, with the even more portenteous title of Graphic Masterworks: A Century of Design.

This was the sale of a single collection, amassed by Martijn le Coultre (and if you want to read a sensible piece about it, Paul Rennie has written just the thing). The Games above is not even remotely representative, because the bulk of it consists of highly influential european works. A bit like going to a design history lecture in short.

Unfortunately, because the sale has been and gone, I can’t get at the online catalogue any more. Which makes things quite tricky, because as the results page shows, a significant number of the posters on offer don’t appear to have sold, including this Bauhaus poster which was being touted in advance as the highlight of the sale, and had a corresponding estimate of £150,000 – £200,000.

This Donald Brun poster from 1928 did sell though, and so it should have done because it’s fantastic.

Much as I love British design, I do sometimes wish that we’d taken just a bit more notice of what the Swiss were up to.

Anyway, we’ve missed that sale, but not the regular Christies October poster sale which is on October 30th.

David Klein, 1963, est. £800-1,200

However, with the exception of a handful of David Klein and Stan Galli midcentury bursts of colour, there isn’t much to linger over. At least half of the two hundred or so lots are film posters, and quite a lot of the rest are foreign, which doesn’t leave a great deal. There are a heap of early underground posters, most of which are by Charles Paine.

Charles Paine, 1922, est. £1,000-1,500

Along with a small quantilty of railway posters, of which the following is noteworthy simply because of the difference that a picture of people with sticks makes.

Andrew Johnson, 1930, est. £7,000-9,000

At least five thousand pounds it seems. Compare the estimate with the Frank Newbould below.

Frank Newbould, 1935, est. £2,500-3,500

There are also a selection of Fougasse posters too.

These – there are actually eleven in the lot – are the most interesting, because they’re interesting examples of private wartime propaganda. I believe that they were issued by the Tilling Group of coach companies, presumably for display in their own coach stations. How they negotiated for the paper I don’t know.

Finally, if you’re not completely exhausted by all that, PosterAuctioneer over in Zurich have an auction. As ever, the posters are almost entirely Swiss, but this gives me a second excuse for giving you some more Donald Brun.

Donald Brun, 1954, est. 140 CHF

That would cost about £100 of your Britsh pounds to buy. I might have to start rethinking my UK only poster strategy.

There are more auctions to go, but I thnk we’ve all had enough for now, haven’t we?

Beck again

auctions, London Transport

I’m in the middle of writing a big long post about, well, things, but it’s hard work in the heat, and now Mr Crownfolio has been distracting me with interesting posters. Two to be precise, both of which are coming up for sale in American auctions, and both of which are worth five minutes of your time.

The first is being sold by Swann Auctions, and is noteworthy not because it is the greatest poster ever produced by London Transport during the 1930s – it isn’t – but because it’s a poster by Harry Beck, best known of course for designing the diagrammatic London Transport map.

I had no idea he’d produced posters at all, so there you go. The London Transport Museum collection tells me that he did two others as well.

Although it does rather appear that he only had one good idea overall. Well one good poster idea, and then the flash of genius that was the tube map.

A tip, though. When you are searching the LTM collection, don’t just put ‘Beck’ into the search box, otherwise you will be convinced that he was an unrecognised modernist designer of genius. The results are muddied you see, because they also include the works of Richard Beck, who is very good, and has been written about on here before.

But that’s not all, because the search also brings you those of Maurice Beck, who hasn’t come to my attention until now. It turns out that he was the photographer for British Vogue in the 1920s, and did a rather nifty line in photographic and photomontage posters as well.

Together, though, the works of ‘Beck’ make a rather good modernist collection.

Meanwhile, somewhere out there on the American internet, this is going to be auctioned in September.

Mr Crownfolio partly pointed it out because of the rather, um, excitable write up.

London Transport poster on Greenwich – 1962 Amazing condition, quality and colors ! ! ! Greenwich was early in the space business… Object: Poster Place of origin: Greater London, England (issued) Date: 1962 (issued) Artist/Maker: Kenton, Warren, born 1933 (designer) London Transport Executive (issuer) Materials and Techniques: Colour lithograph Credit Line: Given by the London Transport Board This poster is actually house in the London museum ! Museum number: E.802-1963. Gallery location: Prints & Drawings Study Room, level C, case Y, shelf 69, box 1 Features the Greenwich Observatory !

It’s in a museum! It features a building! Wow!

But once you’ve recovered from the hyperbole, it’s actually a rather wonderful poster and further proof of my thesis from just the other day that there are lots of under-recognised London Transport posters out there.

I was going to say that I can’t tell you anything about Warren Kenton, because the whole internet is clogged up with an astrologer of the same name. Except it turns out that he’s one and the same person. He designed one fantastic poster, then did a quite comprehensive career swerve and became a Kabbalistic astrologer. Full biography here if you don’t believe me.

Undated

auctions

On 16th July, Bloomsbury are holding their Poster Sale, in what I’m hoping will be the last auction for a while – I say this mainly because I want to write about other things for a chance.

I’m not so jaded that I am going to do this, but I am aware that I could almost substitute what I wrote about Onslows in here with different illustrations, because the two sales are following a very similar pattern.

In particular, they both have a big selection of GPO posters, although in the case of Bloomsbury, they sell them in lots of ten so the estimates, although nominally higher than Onslows are actually cheaper on a per poster basis. Which is confusing, in a trying to work out which brand of cornflakes in the supermarket is actually best value kind of way. Perhaps we should price posters per square centimetre for the sake of clarity. Anyway, these are what’s on offer, but bear in mind that each one comes with nine unphotographed others.

PIeter Huveneers, 1954, est. £150-250

Browning, 1955, est. £150-250

Gapp, 1951, est. £150-250

This also connects up with the Onlows sale in that these – rather than the set on offer at Onslows – are the ones rescued from a skip when the Post Office were having a clear out. So it’s an interesting coincidence that two sets have come on the market at the same time. There is one more lot on offer at Bloomsbury as well, fronted by this Tom Eckersley classic.

Tom Eckersley, 1955, est. £150-250

In another resemblance to Onslows, Bloomsbury also have a few fantastic Games posters tucked away at the end. I won’t go through them all, but mostly they are good but not news to me because they have been much reproduced, like this London Transport example.

Abram Games, 1950, est. £150-250

This one, however is both new to me and utterly wonderful.

Abram Games, 1952, est. £200-400

It’s apparently a British Railways poster – and given that it’s in the collection of the NRM I see no reason to doubt this – but it doesn’t say BR on it anyway. Which is unusual, but I imagine just the kind of thing Abram Games got away with and no one else was allowed to.

Onslows was full of Shell posters; Bloomsbury have but two. They are, however, this kind and so both preferable and more valuable.

Roland Suddaby, 1937, est. £300-500

After that, however, I start to run out. There are foreign posters (lots), film posters (just as many) and car posters (quite a few) but little to tickle my fancy. The best thing I could find is this Lander, and it’s not one of his best.

R M Lander, 1960, est. £200-400

The only other thing that is of interest, although strictly speaking it’s more of a print, is this item by James Fitton.

James Fitton, 1942, est. £300-500

Now I’ve come across one of these before. It’s a print by CEMA, wartime fore-runner to the Arts Council and the prints look to be precursors of the School Prints and Lyons editions. But I can’t find anything about them anywhere – do you lot know where they might be documented? Or even a decent history of CEMA itself would do. Anyway, there are actually a whole set available in the lot, so the estimate looks like somewhat of a bargain, if you like that kind of thing.

Even though it’s a bit short on my personal favourite kinds of posters, I still think the sale is good though, because I think Bloomsbury have answered the question that I asked a week or two ago, which was where are we to buy and sell mid range posters now that Christies have turned us away at the door? Here, it seems.

F M. 1960, est £200-400

That said, I do still have a couple of reservations. One is very simply that they are not trying very hard with their catalogue. For several of the posters I’ve illustrated up there, no dates have been given in the catalogue; in each case it’s been the matter of moments with Google for me to find out. And given that two of those posters are for the GPO and London Transport, who in each case have comprehensive online catalogues, with dates, it’s pretty poor.

The other is the estimates. They’re both wide and well, a bit vague. Surely that fantastic Games of Blackpool has to be worth more than the average Lander? So then I look at the catalogue and wonder how much they really know about their lots. Still, I don’t suppose it matters too much. This is, after all, an auction, and the market can judge for itself what a poster is worth. But I do still feel very slightly cheated.

Finally, in a shameless piece of self-advertisement, we are selling some posters on eBay. However, they are mostly world war two, mostly a bit shabby (OK, some a lot shabby) and surplus to requirements, so keep your expectations low and you won’t be disappointed.

Is it really efficient?

auctions

On we must go with the endless stream of auctions. Today it is Onslows, which takes place on Friday. What can I tell you about it?

Well the first thing that will strike you as you browse through the catalogue is precisely what a tonnage of Shell posters they have – and there are more too, tucked away at the end.

Keith Grant, est. £100-150

I really must take a look at what these actually sell for, because the higher estimates of £100-150 do always strike me as slightly fanciful, but then a few always manage to reach that. Certainly, I don’t see them going as high at other auctions or on eBay. Watch this space and I will report back.

That would, however, be an utterly reasonable price to pay for these Tristram Hillier items, which have the same estimate. I’ve written about them before but, frankly, any excuse.

What I haven’t ever written about properly, however, are the Shell educational posters themselves. Must do that one of these days.

Meanwhile back at Onslows, the other thing that will strike you about the auction is a job lot of GPO posters, some being sold singly, some as individual lots.

Harry Stevens, 1950, est. £70-100

Sams, 1954, est. £60-80

Now I happen to know the story behind these posters, and it’s one to make any archivist’s hair curl. Back in the early 1980s, the Royal Mail in their Mount Pleasant HQ were having a sort out. Sensibly, they decided that two copies of each of the posters they had produced should go to an archive – these are the ones which the BPMA have now. Rather more bogglingly, they put the rest in a skip. The seller rescued a selection that he liked. Some were sold at Bloomsbury in March, this is another batch.

Martin Aitcheson, 1950, est. £40-50

Other than that, the other two interesting items are two rather lovely sets of proofs, one by Barnett Friedman and the other by Edward Ardizzone.

Barnett Friedman, 1952, est. £200-300

Edward Ardizzone, est. £30-50.

I like them a lot, but what you’d actually do with them I’m not entirely sure.

Meanwhile the rest of what is on offer is the usual mix of foreign stuff that I am going to ignore, railway and travel posters, and, as ever, a fair selection of World War Two Home Front posters.

This is probably the stand-out railway poster for me.

Frank Newbould, 1930, est. £700-1,000

Although, as even a cursory flick through this blog would reveal, I am always a sucker for this series.

L A Wilcox, 1960, est. £600-700

The main event in the travel poster section, at least if you are me, is a stream of these black and white British travel posters. A couple are quite interestingly early.

Anonymous, 1938, est. £50-70

The vast majority are not.

Anonymous, c. 1948, est. £50-70.

While this in no way constitutes a recommendation to buy one, these posters are quite interesting as historical artefacts. Take a look at the date: it’s just after the war has ended, and Britain is desperate to pay back the war loans. And one of the ways to do that, is of course American tourist dollars; so these posters wing their way over to the States to try and persuade our American cousins to come over here. But I often wonder just how well they worked. Because America is sleek, glossy and most of all technicolour, but Britain is broke. So our posters come in black and white and are printed on the cheapest, thinnest paper imaginable.

Of course none of this explains why the 1938 poster is equally as shoddy. Perhaps the British Travel and Tourist Association were just cheapskates, all the time.

The reason I’ve thought about these posters so much is that Mr Crownfolio and I, some years ago, bought a whole roll of these posters from America for about £30. We tried to sell a couple on eBay but basically got laughed at. But then, a couple of years later we tried again, and the prices started rising – so much so that one of the last ones went for over £100. And now they are at Onslows, well I never.

In the war section, meanwhile, this is probably the most classic poster.

Norman Wilkinson, 1940, est. £300-400.

While this is my favourite.

Anonymous, 1940, est. £40-50

Just look at the difference in prices, I am clearly in a minority of one on this.

For a change, there aren’t that many London Transport posters in there, but it’s worth persevering through the whole catalogue, because a pair of gems, both by Abram Games, are tucked away at the end.

Abram Games, 1976, est. £100-150

Abram Games, 1950, est. £400-500.

In fact that poster above is the very last one in the sale. And probably one of the best. But it’s an exception, and I am slightly worried by the general lack of good posters like that from the Onslows sale. Because with Christies having got so expensive, there’s a real need for an auction house selling the stuff that, well, Christies used to – the Games, the Eckersleys and the Royston Coopers to start with, never mind the Daphne Paddens. But they aren’t appearing here – so where have they gone? They haven’t entirely migrated to the railwayana auctions, so where have they all gone? Do any of you know, because I certainly don’t. And I’d like to.

Second Class Lentils

auctions

Every so often I complain that Mr Crownfolio and I haven’t bought anything for ages, but I always forget that these things come in waves. And this week just such a wave has come crashing in to shore.

I’ve already mentioned the Morecambe poster, but the main interest is two lots of posters that were up for sale at a general auction in Cambridgeshire. Lot one consisted of this Eckersley/Lombers masterpiece from the early years of WW2.

Twice.

Which is quite surprising, as I’ve only been able to track it down at auction once before (Onslows, 2004, fact fans). So I think it’s probably fairly rare. The second one clearly needs a bit of tlc, but I think it will be worth it.

The second lot was more of a rag-bag. People can do terrible things to posters sometimes, just look at what has happened to this Lewitt-Him Vegetabull.

But the two other posters that always, it seems, come together with it – a second Lewitt Him and James Fitton’s Turn Over a New Leaf are untampered with, I’m pleased to say.

I’m assuming that they always end up in a group of three because they’re all about the same date, but maybe it’s because they’re all very good pieces of design which appeal to a certain sort of person. Like me, for example.

We now have three copies of the James Fitton, which even I can see is probably too many, and a bit like hoarding food in an emergency.

A couple of the other posters have been mounted on board. In the case of this militant bread poster, that’s a bit of a shame.

Funnily enough I don’t feel too much sorrow over the state of this one.

Pleasingly, there were some other wartime posters in the lot which hadn’t seen quite so much service. Whoever collected them clearly had a thing about cod liver oil.

I also rather like this one, although interestingly it doesn’t have all of the usual HMSO/Ministry of Fuel information printed along the bottom.

I wonder if this was actually issued by the gas companies themselves, especially as it’s using their trademark in the form of Mr Therm. But with nothing written on the poster, that can only ever be a theory.

This, meanwhile, is not quite as exciting.

But I’ve saved you the oddest poster for last. It’s probably also the least valuable, because it’s hand made, collaged out of mostly bits of I don’t know what stuck onto card.

Except, strange to relate, we do know where some of the bits came from, as we’ve had this 1930s poster for a while now.

Full marks for recyling there.

Clearly we now have far too many posters, and some of these are going to have to be sold. But they’re not posh enough for Christies, which means I really don’t know where they should go. This is a problem that I will be returning to next week. But if in the meantime you have any thoughts on the matter, please do put them in the box below.