eBay Archives - Page 10 of 14

Christmas bay

eBay

For once, eBay has come up with something seasonal. Even better, it’s a classic GPO post early poster.

This 1957 design by Huveneers has already come up on the Advent Calendar here, and now you can have your own if you like. Bidding starts at a moderately steep £22 (well I think it’s steep given that it’s 22cm x 15cm, which isn’t a great deal of poster) but they don’t come up that often, so the seller may be right this time.

Elsewhere on the bay, the delightfully named i.m.weasel has some London Transport posters to sell. Only a few, but some rather good ones. Shall we start with this Henrion?

Then there’s this Sheila Robinson too.

And a rather good William Johnstone that I haven’t come across before (the colours remind me of James Fitton’s post-war posters, for what it’s worth).

But the star of the show is this David Gentleman pair poster.

Now, I do have a few caveats about these auctions. One is that – in the case of the Johnstone and the Henrion – he illustrated them with the London Transport Museum catalogue image as his main pictures. Which is a bit cheeky.

The other is that all of these items have a reserve on. And I’d suspect that these are fairly steep ones too, given that the David Gentleman poster has a Buy It Now price of £1,000 attached. Which is, yes, what it has fetched at Christies earlier this year. But firstly that was with two Sheila Robinson posters (proof once again that these multiple lots make it almost impossible to value anything properly). Secondly, if you want a good price for a poster, putting it in an auction which ends on December 22nd probably isn’t the way to get it. And finally, I think that there is a more general point, which is that if you want a Christies price, you probably do still have to sell at Christies, and pay their premiums. But I shall watch and see what happens with interest. Although probably without bidding.

It’s also worth noting that this John Bainbridge is still floating about for sale on a Buy It Now too.

Currently on for £90, which is down from its original starting bid of £120, but still a bit tatty round the edges.

While, in the endless re-settling and rearrangement of the posters from the last Morphets sale, these two are also available on Buy It Nows.

Curiously, the Bigg (above) is at £100, while the Atkins, which I infinitely prefer (always the sucker for a chalk horse though) is only £75. But in both cases that’s significantly more than their auction price.

Tomorrow, more GPO admonishments but this time seen on their natural habitat of a wall.

Bread and excursions

eBay

While most people are thinking about Heston Blumenthal’s Christmas Pudding or cheap consumer electronics on Britain’s favourite online auction site, there are still a couple of interesting items to be picked out for our eBay watch.

Shall we start with this?

On the one hand it’s quite a nice railway poster, albeit one with a medium sized hole in the middle (see the listing for full details). On the other hand, I can’t find a single trace of it anywhere else. Which may be why it’s already got to £36 with four more days to go. I can’t read the signature, though, so I may be missing something vital here. Anyone got any more info?

While that seller hasn’t put the artist on the listing, this one hasn’t put the dimensions.

Although I’m guessing, partly from the size of the carpet pile on the picture, and partly from the fact that we’ve got one ourselves, that it’s 10″ x 15″. Which makes it a moderately expensive Buy It Now at £45. You may disagree, of course.

Tomorrow, a cold robin and some lovely blogs for your consideration.

Edge wear

eBay

And still they keep c0ming. Today – cue drum roll – it’s eBay Watch. Along with a bit of complaining from me.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got no problem with what’s out there. Because there’s loads of it.

Let’s start with this Aer Lingus poster, which is very stylish.

Although it’s in German it was printed in Ireland and is by Bainbridge. This is almost certainly the John Bainbridge whose London Transport poster I mentioned the other day (and about which more later).

Then there’s this lot.

They’re all by Beath, all from 1936 and they will cost you £49.50 a poster at the moment. I also think that they’re all rather good bits of modern typography.

But what pains me is that the descriptions say that they have all three been mounted on canvas. Now it may just be that they’ve been stored badly (that’ Mr Crownfolio’s theory) but even if that’s so, they’re in pretty poor condition for a mounted poster. I also can’t see any of the mount around the edges, which is a bit odd.

Now if these were the only examples, I wouldn’t be so bothered. But it’s happening elsewhere. The Henrion and Bainbridge posters that I mentioned yesterday also claim to be linen backed. But the Bainbridge in particular is in even worse condition – take a look at the edges.

And again, no edges of linen to be seen.

So what’s going on? Is there just an outbreak of fibbing on eBay? Or, more kindly, of sellers who haven’t seen a mounted poster before. Or is there someone doing cut-price poster mounting and not doing it very well? Or have I just got the wrong end of the stick altogether?

And finally, this.

My beef here is with the description:

On offer here is a beautiful original Percy Drake Brookshaw travel poster dating to the mid 20th century circa 1950’s.

Yes, it’s by Percy Drake Brookshaw, yes it’s original. But no, it is definitely not beautiful. Just look at it.

They (an eBay based antiques dealer in Chippenham) also want £200 for it, which is a bit steep considering that I distinctly remember it going for about £40-60 at auction earlier this year.

There ought to be large signs all over the relevant bits of eBay, warning people that just because a poster is old, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s valuable. The same applies to the Beaths above. £49.95 isn’t as much, but it’s still a lot when you think that we bought a similar (and in fact better because nicely mounted on linen and therefore flat) Beath Winter Number for just £7.99 only last year.

Right, enough complaining. On the positive side, you could have this smiley chap by Daphne Padden for a mere £4 or so at the moment.

As well as a ton of WW2 posters from this seller. They’re not the most visually appealing – this is probably the best of the bunch.

Once more, they’re not cheap,with opening prices from £50 for this, to £200 for a fairly tatty Norman Wilkinson. Perhaps I’ll come back to this post next week and see how they all fared.

That’s Shell, that was

eBay

I really wish I hadn’t started this post now. It was meant to be a simple one about stuff on eBay, and now it’s gone and turned into a mystery.

The beginning was this poster, which ended two days ago. Along with a confession.

Which is that I didn’t actually mention it while it was on sale, on the off-chance that it went un-noticed and we could pick it up for a pittance. Some chance – six bidders and twenty bids pushed it up to £412. I almost wish that we’d gone that high.

So, piqued, I started investigating Denis Constanduros. It turns out that he also did this rather lovely rendering of Llanthony Abbey (one of my favourite places anyway) for Shell.

As well as this Farmers Prefer Shell poster too. Which, although very pretty, I find a bit odd because looks as though someone’s just being eaten by the machinery.

But that’s about it. His only artistic remains seem to be those three Shell posters, all probably pre-war. So what’s the problem, you say?

Well there’s also a Denis Constanduros who wrote a 1940s radio serial called ‘At the Luscombes’ about West Country village life (by coincidence, set no more than ten or so miles from here, in a place I drive through quite regularly). Who then – unless there’s a third Denis Constanduros which I have to say seems pretty unlikely – worked throughout the 1960s and 70s on adapting classic books for television, particularly Jane Austen. That Denis Constanduros died in 1978. But is it all the same one? Did he just do a few posters and then go off into writing, in the style of an earlier Patrick Tilley? I do not have the foggiest idea, the internet is just confusing me and the Shell Poster Book says nothing at all. Can anyone else shed any light?

I’m bothered not just because it’s not making sense and so needs sorting out, but also because these three posters are all really rather good. They’re very much of their late-1930s period, but in a good way, with echoes of Ravilious in the style and colours. And also in the subject matter of course; Ravilious wasn’t just a painter of chalk hills, but also drew the Long Man himself too.

So it seems a pity that Constanduros never painted much more than his Shell posters. But then, if it was him who went on to write ‘At the Luscombes” and adapt classic novels for television, his journey was very much that of his times. Before the war, the poster was king. But afterwards, the new, shiny, exciting broadcast media took all the glory; if you had the talent for it, who wouldn’t have made the switch. Posters were no longer the place for a smart young man to be any more, there were new and more exciting furrows to plough.

One final note, and that’s the price. Its not remarkable for itself – it’s a fine poster and well worth the money. But it is remarkable for having been achieved where it was – I can’t remember having seen a poster match the price it would have reached at a specialist poster auction on eBay before. Not that many of that quality turn up, but still, it’s an interesting precedent. (I can’t be bothered to do the maths, but I wonder how the eBay selling fees compare to Christies charges. Not that well, I should have thought…)

And, having said that these things don’t turn up very often, there in fact a couple more classics out there right now. This Henrion,

And this John Bainbridge too.

They’re both from the same seller, and it will be interesting to see how they go.

The Bainbridge, meanwhile, is also being offered by Sotherans at the moment. for £895. If eBay can scale those heights, that really would be a turn up for the books.

By the book

eBay

As things stand this morning, this is a bit of a bargain.

And that’s even with £10 or so of shipping from the U.S, but then it does tend to go for £50 or so on Abebooks or eBay over here. When you can find it at all.

Although I’ve posted a few of my favourite images from the book before now, I’ve never really gone into much detail about it.

But the seller has photographed it well, and it shows one of my favourite things about Poster Design.

In it, Eckersley isn’t just writing about his own work, he’s generous in his praise of many of the other designers who were working at the same time (on this page Bernard Cheese, Pat Keely, Lewitt-Him and Cassandre as well as Eckersley himself).

And the book is like this throughout. Here’s another page of his generosity.

I like to think that this is a reflection of his personality as a whole; people who knew Eckersley say that he was both modest and kind. It’s good to know that we can still see that for ourselves.

While also remembering that he was also rather good at designing too.

[Addendum. Mr Crownfolio has pointed out that the Herbert Bayer looked rather familiar for something that was just in his portfolio. So he went and found it.

The artist is Kate Gibb, who doesn’t seem to have been too vocal about her appropriation of Herbert Bayer. But it has been noticed elsewhere.]

Right to copy?

eBay

We’re all about questions today on Quad Royal. Or rather, one question in particular: just how much of what is sold in the poster department of eBay is in fact legal?

The reason I’m asking is that, I was playing with the eBay app on the iPad, and so stumbled back into their bottomless pit of poster reproductions. Normally there’s a whole set of clever filters and searches (operated and maintained by Mr Crownfolio) which means that I don’t even notice that these items exist. But on the iPad, none of this is set up, and so an idle search for ‘vintage poster’ reminded me of the sheer volume of prints, giclee prints and A3 photocopies that are out there should you want them.

They range from reasonable quality,

to ones where even the seller isn’t convinced about the reproduction.

These posters are meant to be affordable reproductions of vintage posters that are rare and hard to acquire elsewhere. There are more expensive and higher quality prints out there. Our posters look great on the wall but may not stand up to a thorough examination. I fully admit the small print may be blurred and slight pixelation may occur on certain prints. These are fun items, not works of art.

Despite that write-up, he is still selling them. By the hundreds every month, judging from his feedback.

But I’m not asking philosophical questions about the relative values of reproductions versus originals this time. I’m just wondering how legal these are?

The basics of copyright are quite simple, that if an artist died after 1945, their work is protected for 70 years after their death. Which means that if a seller is selling a print of a 1950s railway poster (for £4.99, printed on a photocopier or bubblejet printer), there is a reasonable chance that they are infringing copyright somewhere along the way. The example above, incidentally, is by Jack Merriott, who died in 1968).

But what happens after that? Do you need to be the legal owner of a piece to have the right to reproduce it? Let’s take this 1923 poster by Grainger Johnson as an example.

No one seems to know much about him and his biography, so we will be generous and assume it is out of copyright. Does that then make it fair game for the eBay copyists? Or do they need to own a copy of the poster in order to have the right to reproduce it? I don’t know, and I would like to.

The next question is whether the nature of a commercial contract changes copyright too? (This link seems to suggest it does). So if a poster is commissioned by Shell, or London Transport or British Railways, do they still own the rights over the image? And for how long – for the same 70 years as the artist or until the company ceases to exist?

In other words, can these reproduce this 1930 Charles Burton as much as they like on their bubblejet printer, or should London Transport be consulting a lawyer?

Finally, is this also true of Crown Copyright, in particular where this applies to the huge number of World War Two posters which are being reproduced?

Questions, questions. But can anyone out there help me answer them?