auctions Archives - Page 7 of 19

Is Your Letterbox Efficient?

auctions

I was just thinking that it had all gone very quiet on the auction front, when what should come along but a whole auction full of posters at Bloomsbury.

It’s an interesting hotch-potch with almost every form of poster you can think of represented in the mix. So there’s foreign posters and railway posters.

Raymond Piper, est. £200-400

Alongside ski posters and London Transport posters.

James Fitton, 1937, est. £200-300

Hans Unger, 1972, est. £200-300

I’ve never seen that Unger before, although it’s not, in my book, one of his best. The pricing is a bit, well, interesting as I can’t see that the Unger and the Fitton are in any way comparable in quality, but according to the estimates, they are.

In addtion, there are plenty of poster types that have been mentioned on here before, such as David Klein posters and aeroplane posters with lots of blue skies in them.

Note the increasing prices for David Klein; had I had the foresight and money to buy some a few years ago, I would be thoroughly quids in. But I didn’t, and anyway, I would only have wanted to keep them.

David Klein, 1958, est. £1,400-1,800

Lewitt-Hi, 1948, est. £150-250.

Another poster that I keep mentioning on here is this McKnight Kauffer from 1938.

McKnight Kauffer, 1938, est. £140-180

As ever, it turns up with the matching Pat Keely.

Pat Keely, 1938, est. £140-180

My theory about this – and I have said this before but I think it’s worth repeating – is that these posters come up so often because they were deliberately saved. They were, I believe, the first propaganda posters issued by the government in advance of World War Two. So they were a novelty, and also a harbinger of a great event that I am sure quite a lot of people could see coming. So, if the chance arose, they saved them for posterity, or the grandchildren, or for all the other reasons that make people keep otherwise insignificant pieces of paper.

Move forward two years and the whole British population is drowning in slogans and propaganda, coming at them from newspapers, leaflets and the radio, as well as from posters. So the last thing they want to do is keep one as a reminder. In any case, there are so many, which one to choose? So the latter posters survive in dribs and drabs, mostly saved by accident. But these first ones, people knew they were important and they kept them.

Fortunately, not everything in the auction is something seen before. This, for example, has to be one of the least obvious posters ever.

Anonymous, c. 1960, est. £200-400

Artist not known, but more than that I have no idea what it is on about either. Nor, it appears, does Bloomsbury. Any ideas anyone?

Most exciting, for me at least, are these.

Tom Eckersley, est. £150-200

This is just one of five, yes count ’em, five sets of GPO posters, each with ten posters in them. Including, in this lot, a reminder of what a good designer Harry Stevens is at his best.

Harry Stevens, 1951, est. £150-200

I would bid on them, but judging from our last experience with the Dorrit Dekk lots, these will go for a lot more than the estimates.

Aitchison, est. £150-200

And I’m not surprised. This values them at £15-20 a poster; I reckon they’d go for more than that on eBay. Although I don’t, to be fair, know what the other posters are, they may all be dogs of the first order.

Bromfield, 1951, est. £150-200

We’ve emailed Bloomsbury to ask what they are, and when we get an answer, I’ll let you know.

Love and money

auctions, eBay

A proper post is brewing and will follow tomorrow, but this is just a brief appearance to let you know that all your Valentines poster needs are solved.

I’ve mentioned this Dorrit Dekk poster before, and now it has appeared on eBay, not once but twice. It ought to go really, it’s just the kind of thing that would sell for a lot more in the right kind of shop, even if it is mounted on some kind of board.

While we’re on the subject of eBay, can I also just remind you that the Quad Royal Daphne Padden prints are also now available on that esteemed shopping site.

They’re very competitively priced, especially when compared with this little gem.

The auction has ended, but until last week it has been on offer for £1,350. A figure which completely boggled my mind because in the auction at which we bought the Eckersley last week, a copy of this went for, I think, about £300.

Now normally, I would laugh and point, saying that this hasn’t even been restored and how much do you expect me to pay for a frame? But that’s not going to work here. For one thing, the auction has been ended because the item is no longer available, which I suspect means they have sold it. More tellingly than that, they received a Best Offer on it of £1,200. Really, truly I do wish I had the sheer gall to be a dealer. I’d make a fortune. But I have no such ability in me, so you’re all safe.

All of which means that I can make no comment on their one remaining poster, except to say that if you would like to buy this Norman Wilkinson poster for £1,850, you know where you can go.

Meanwhile, for those of us without the best part of two grand burning a hole in their pockets, this National Savings poster of Shipping through the Ages currently has no bids at just £3.99.

Or this slightly more appealing example of the National Savings genre could be yours for £6.99

Or we could all just give up and collect thimbles.

Location location location

auctions

I’ve said this many times before, but what makes a poster valuable or not is not just a mystery to me but a source of constant puzzlement. As far as I can tell, condition, fashion, the name of the designer, the kind of auction and much else besides are all fed into a whirling vortex and a price pops out the other end, but how the process actually works I do not know. But I do now know a bit more about at least one of the variables, and that, bizarrely, is house prices.

Mr Crownfolio and I were watching an evening auction go by at the end of last week (if you are wondering why it’s not one I’d mentioned before, more later). Everything was going for a bit more than the estimates, which were rather pleasingly cheap. Then we were very surprised to see this seemingly unremarkable poster go for £400 (I don’t have the exact prices I’m afraid as the auctioneers don’t list them online).

This was a bit mystifying as it’s not a known poster, not by a known artist and generally didn’t have a huge amount to recommend it it over any of the other similar posters which had already gone past. Until we started to wonder whether it was down to the location. That bit of North Norfolk is now Notting-Hill-on-Sea. So, we figured, there must be lots of very rich people with the pressing need to buy a poster to decorate the holiday cottage. Fortunately, the very next lot allowed us to put our theory to the test.

As a poster it’s neither better nor worse – the colours are perhaps nicer but I’d probably mark it down for the rhodedendrons. But the big difference is that Colwyn Bay doesn’t get that many visitors from West London. So we watched, and lo and behold it went for £150.

There were lots of other posters of that ilk in the auction, which mostly went at around about the £200 mark.

And then there was this one.

A rather lovely Tom Eckersley which just happens to be the reason that I wasn’t flagging up the auction on here in advance. For a change, too, it’s good news as we won it. And for £160 too. Which only goes to show that however much I generate theories, there’s just no telling with poster prices.

For more proof of that, do you want a look at another auction from today? Up for grabs were five out of the six Sunday Times posters by Patrick Tilley. (These by the way are old pictures for illustration, not the ones that were actually for auction, but they don’t look much different to me.)

We either have one set of these (Mr Crownfolio’s theory) or one set and some spares (my belief) but anyway, we thought we’d put a low bid in, just in case they went for very little (and there’s always an appeal in cornering the market). But I’m not going to tell you how low a bid because we were very, very wrong.

The posters went for a somewhat boggling £1550. Which is actually only £300 per poster but is still a lot of money. Especially when the estimate was £150-250 for the lot. I wonder where this lot came from? And the bids too come to that?

Snowed out

auctions

Apologies for the slight gap in postings; it is, I am afraid, down to the white stuff. Well to be more precise it’s down to the reluctance of anyone to take Small Crownfolio off my hands while there is snow on the ground. The situation will, I hope, return to normal very shortly. In the meantime, have a Daphne Padden poster of snow by way of apology.

This poster will appear in Christies Ski Sale on Wednesday, should you be interested and have £700-900 to throw its way.

Not only is it the only Padden poster to appear regularly in their auctions, I would also hazard a guess that it must be one of the few cigarette posters to do that either. I can’t imagine that tobacco promotion is that sellable these days (or has it already made the trip round to ironic?). But clearly in this case, like a game of Rock Scissors Paper, winter sports trumps cigarettes.

The skies willing, I shall be back tomorrow with a competition, and perhaps even some proper posts later in the week.

Great Central Ladybird

auctions, Uncategorized

The New Year has hardly begun, but the first auction is already upon us. Held by Great Central Railwayana, it takes place on 19th January – and there are quite a pleasing crop of posters included. Although, as ever with railwayana auctions, there are no estimates and very little in the way of dates either. I will persevere regardless, although not without saying once again that if they did include estimates I’d probably punt a few more bids their way. But that’s their loss and, in the most part, my gain. I think.

Anyway, if you’re sitting comfortably we’ll begin. I will skate over the vast numbers of topographical posters.

They are there, they look like this kind of thing, I have nothing much to say about them really. Well, except that the catalogue pictures are weirdly washed out. I’ve fiddled with the exposure and saturation a bit, simply to stop this post looking like it’s been produced in Sepiatone, but I have no idea what the actual posters look like. They can’t all be that insipid, can they?

Although if you do want a classy bit of topography, you could do worse than this Fred Taylor, I must say.

The Ladybird school of mildy kitsch retro illustration is also very well-represented. I offer you just a couple of samples here, there are plenty more where these came from.

Or for the full kitsch blow out, there’s always this.

But if you like the 1950s, there are better things to spend your money on. Like this Lander, for example.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before, and I rather like it. Also included in the sale is this, which must be among his earlier works.

Although I have to say, this poster raises more questions than it answers. It’s not that it doesn’t look like his other stuff – I’m quite happy to believe that he was working in this kind of style in the 1930s. But up until the Second World War, and possibly beyond, Lander was head of the Ralph and Mott drawing office and, as far as I know, not signing things with his own name. So what’s going on here? Was this one of the few posters produced in the name of the old railway companies just after the war? I have seen one or two of those before. Or is he moonlighting? Or what? I may never know.

I also like Alan Durman‘s somewhat sidelong take on 1950s topography too.

But for once, my two favourite posters date from before the war. If we weren’t saving up our money for new windows, I’d definitely be bidding on this Frank Newbould.

If I thought we could afford it, we’d might well be bidding on this Tom Purvis too. But fortunately we’ve got one already.

Once upon a time ago on eBay, we were lucky enough to get a chewed up copy to restore. But that was many years ago, when posters were cheaper. I doubt we’d even be able to afford that these days.

Hither and thither

auctions

In the immortal words of Smash Hits, I am back. Back, back back. Admittedly I am typing this from amongst a forest of boxes, and if you asked me to lay my hands on almost anything we own, I wouldn’t be able to, but I am here. And with a rather snazzy new network connection too, which probably isn’t going to make much difference at your end, but is certainly an improvement from where I am sitting.

But enough of my domestic arrangements, it’s time to turn back to the world of posters, and in particular next week’s Onslow’s sale. What are we going to say about this – or rather what am I going to say as my attempt at crowd-sourcing some opinions on this didn’t really get enough of a response to constitute a post. So here goes.

My first impression on flicking through the catalogue is that there are an awful lot of Shell educational posters; I haven’t actually counted them, but more than enough to fulfill all your county needs. Here’s Rowland Hilder’s Warwickshire and David Gentleman’s Somerset by way of a sample.

Now these have estimates of £70-100 and £100-150 respectively and I am going to say once again what I always say when Shell posters come up, which is that I do not understand what the market is for these and thus have no idea what they are worth. They’re lovely things to display, but both the educational text and the metal hanging bars do rather get in the way of the value I think. What is a fair price for these – other than just what people are prepared to pay? Any thoughts?

There’s also the usual tranche of World War Two posters, including this old friend.

Abram Games, 1946, est. £70-100

It’s current ubiquity is affecting the estimate I think, which is a shame as its a lovely design. Of the rest, this Dame Laura Knight has to be the best drawing, if perhaps not the best poster.

Dame Laura Knight, 1940, est. £250-300

While my personal favourite is this modernist take on Coughs and Sneezes Spread Diseases.

Anon, c. 1940, est. £50-100

I do like the variety of design styles you get in the Home Front posters; there was a way of persuading you to use a handkerchief to suit almost every kind of taste.

Then, of course, there are the railway and underground posters that you’d expect too. Contrarian that I am, this is the kind of thing I like.

F Donald Blake, est. £70-100

But if you’re after countryside and representation, that is of course available by the yard as well.

Claude Buckle, c. 1950, est. £400-600

John Greene, c. 1960, est. £400-450

Those two are both later examples from British Railways, when the line between poster and landscape painting is getting a bit more blurred, but for some reason I rather like them both. There’s plenty more of that kind of thing available. Then there is also this Austin Cooper, which is a rather unusual item in that it’s a British poster for a furrin destination.

Austin Cooper, 1930, est. £100-150

But pick of the pops for me has to be this Hans Unger, for just being great.

Hans Unger, 1957, est. £100-150

The London Transport posters are fewer in number and less immediately engaging, although this James Fitton always deserves a mention.

James Fitton, 1937, est. £300-400

Finally, something which is both interesting and rather lovely.

R Coxon, 1940, est. £150-200

Here’s the blurb from the catalogue about it:

R Coxon (1896-1997) October Tree Felling, original poster printed for CEMA (later became Arts Council) circa 1940

I’m guessing – looking at the design and format – that these are in some ways related to the post-war Schools Prints, but I don’t really know and right now don’t have the time to get lost in the internet and find out. Is there a good book written about CEMA anywhere? You would think there ought to be.

And if there is anything I have missed out that you think should be included, please let me know. The comments box is just down there and waiting for your thoughts.