posters Archives - Page 2 of 8

Oh what an unprofitable war!

other, posters

Hello everyone. My attendance really isn’t getting much better, is it? We’ll have OFSTED round soon if I’m not careful.

Anyway, I thought I’d better post something about last week’s poster event at the National Army Museum. Lots of people who know about posters spoke; more frighteningly, lots of people who knew about posters also sat in the audience. And for light relief after lunch, they all got me, rattling on and trying to fit everything I had to say about Home Front Posters into 40 odd minutes. There were some very odd minutes in there too.

Much of the content wouldn’t have come as much surprise to anyone who has been reading my posts on here, but the basic thesis was that most of our shorthand generalisations about Home Front Posters are wrong. That in itself isn’t exactly news, but it’s all too easy to imagine that all Second World War posters came out of a giant, all-powerful Ministry of Information determined to tell the public what to think. I think we have George Orwell to blame for that, but the truth was rather less like 1984, and, well, rather more shambolic and British.

Most obviously, posters didn’t just come from the Ministry of Information. In fact they came from everywhere but. To start with, the two biggest-spending government departments, the Ministry of Food and National Savings, didn’t bother with the MoI and made their own.

Then there were the London Transport posters…

…the GPO posters…

…the railway posters…

And that’s before we’ve even mentioned Abram Games’ posters produced for and by the Army.

Or RoSPA’s innumerable workplace safety posters.

But the reason I’m telling you this, is that one of the people who attended, Kirill Kalinin pointed me at some Home Front posters I hadn’t seen before, posters which were produced by private companies.

Now why, you might be asking, would private companies spend money on advertising during war, when everything was rationed, production was centralised and it was nigh-on impossible to buy anything inessential? It’s a good question, and the answer lies in taxation.

One of the prevailing views then about World War One was that large companies had profiteered from the war, and it had made the rich richer. So, at the start of World War Two, a tax of 100% was levied on any company whose profits rose above their pre-war levels.. Clearly there was no incentive to make any extra profits, and companies looked for ways to spend the money rather than give it to the government.

One easy thing to spend it on was advertising. Hence the pages and pages of adverts like this in every wartime newspaper and magazine, either for goods that were in such short supply that they didn’t need advertising or, quite often, weren’t available at all.

Despite the restrictions on paper use, a few posters were also made. I’d included this one in my talk.

I think this is a result of Tillings donating poster space in their coach stations to the war effort, although in the absence of any real archives it’s hard to tell.

But Kirill has now introduced me to these, which are produced by the Motor Industry Association, and which I’d never seen before.

I have no idea where they were displayed or anything about them at all.

They’re also interesting because they show the ironmongery of war, something which most Home Front posters, with the exception of National Savings, avoided almost entirely.

All of which pretty much proves my overall point from last Saturday, which was that whatever generalisation you make about Home Front posters, it’s always possible to find a poster to disprove it. So if you have any more oddities you’d like to point out, please send them this way.

And if you like the Motor Industry posters, Kirill has them for sale on his website.

Correct Selling

posters

couple of years ago now, I wrote a long piece on here about why some kinds of poster seem to survive in greater quantities than others. In short, the argument was that where posters do survive in large numbers, this tends to be because the institutions concerned – London Transport, the railway companies and Shell – had a system for selling them to the public.

But I said at the time, that post was very much a work in progress. Now things have moved on a bit, because Rik Shepherd has been in contact through both comments and email with some additional information about how GPO posters were also sold. And very interesting it is too.

The reason for this is that Mr Shepherd senior, his father, was, in the best possible way, a bit of a chancer, something probably best explained by his son.

Dad did have a habit of writing to organisations on the offchance that they wanted to give/sell him something – the request for part of London Road station when it was turning into Piccadilly failed, the request for tickets from the closing Mumbles railway yielded a destination blind from one of their trams, and we’ve got a stack of timetables and promo brochures from oodles of US railroad companies.

One of the organisations that he regularly bothered was the GPO, as Rik explained when he commented on the original blog post.

If I’d known there was interest in cut-down & framed posters in-situ, I’d have taken pictures of my parents bedroom before we started clearing the house.

They had trimmed and framed copies of the GPO “Use Your Correct Address” posters of Eilean Donan (John Minton) and Brookland (David Knight) on the wall for at least the last decade. We’ve also found a trimmed copy of Minton’s Iwerne Abbey, a trimmed and framed Minton Greenwich which I vaguely remember being on the walls in the 60s & 70s, and what we think is a trimmed David Knight Polruan.

Dad seems to have got the Minton posters in April 1957 by writing to the Mount Pleasant offices. The three cost 3s 0d in total (1/6d for Iwerne, 1s for Greenwich and 6d for Eilean Donan) and were sent out with a note from a Mr R. Weeber giving the prices and the rather polite request “Perhaps you will kindly forward a remittance for 3s.0d. in due course.”

What’s even better is that Mr Shepherd Sr also kept the correspondence.

(I’ve put these images in quite big, so just click on them if you want to read the text properly)

I love the fact that they’re only asking for payment after the posters have been sent out. Those were the days.

Mr Shepherd senior didn’t give up at with that, though. Go forward ten years, and he is once more trying to order some posters from the GPO.

But as you can see, times have changed, and the GPO now have an order form available – and what’s more, here it is.

I would like to order all of those please, with a particular emphasis on the last one which is new to me and splendidly moody.

And I used to live there too.

Now all of this would be fascinating enough on its own. But what makes all of this even more important is that there doesn’t seem to have been many records of this kept elsewhere (a fact that possibly we could have guessed from the slightly ad-hoc nature of that order form).

I asked Anna Flood, archivist at the British Postal Museum and Archive, what they knew about the poster selling, and she couldn’t find anything about this in the books or in their records. Which is rather exciting really, as it means that Quad Royal has – thanks to Rik Shepherd – managed to uncover a brand new historical fact here. I’m quite chuffed.

The only reference Anna could find in their archives is one which doesn’t shed any light on Mr Shepherd’s poster buying, but does stretch the timescale back quite a bit, in fact to this series of posters.

POST 33/4722 – Publicity: supply to school, posters, leaflets, first issue – 1934

Re the H.S. Williamson series of posters:

–          PRD 88 – Relays carrying the King’s messages, 1482

–          PRD 89 – Mails for the Packets arriving at Falmouth, 1833

–          PRD 90 – Loading mails at the docks in London, 1934

–          PRD 91 – Loading air mails for the Empire, Croydon 1934

‘It is likely that the issue of these posters [to schools] will give rise to further demands for them….c) from private individuals, who want one or more of the posters for nursery or other house decoration’………’As regards c), posters will be sold, so far as stocks permit, at the following prices, to include packing and postage:- Single posters 1s each. Set of four posters 3s.’…..’Persons desiring to buy posters should be advised to write to the Controller, Post Office Stores Department, Mount Pleasant Depot, EC1, [Public Relations Department, GPO, London, EC1 – crossed out] specifying the title of the poster or posters they desire to buy and enclosing a postal order for the necessary amount.’ 13^th November, 1934, Public Relations Department.

A later memo states ‘ copies may be obtained on personal application to the Public Relations Department, Armour House, 40 St Martins-le-Grand, London, EC1’. Dated 28/11/34.

And she comments,

So indeed, as early as 1934 the Post Office PRD was allowing members of the public to purchase GPO posters (maybe because of the costs involved in producing runs of posters, hence they didn’t want the expenditure to go to waste, and maybe also because the PO was intent in raising its public profile at the time, hence the ‘schools’ campaign). However, it may have taken a while for the process to become formalised, with the issue of ‘for sale’ lists and order forms, such as those Rik Shepherd has.

I don’t think we’re in a position to write an entire thesis on GPO poster survival from these small scraps of information. But what this does show is that, although they may not have advertised the fact, the GPO did sell posters to private individuals and this is most likely the way that GPO posters, in their smaller numbers survive today.

It’s also interesting to note that the posters that the GPO thought that people were interested in buying in 1967 (as shown on the order form) and indeed the posters that Mr Shepherd was actually interested in buying in 1957, were the ‘artistic’ ones, i.e. the ones in which a fine artist had been commissioned to create a painting which was then turned into a poster. Because in 1957, the GPO was also producing posters like these:

Admittedly they weren’t quite scaling the same graphic heights in 1967, but there was still Daphne Padden and Kenneth Bromfield on show in your local post office.

But these weren’t the posters that people were meant to buy or wanted to buy. So fewer of these survive than of the ‘artistic’ ones. A quick trawl through Onslows’ archives does seem to support this theory, as many more of the painterly posters seem to come up for auction than the more graphic ones. Which is of course a great shame, as it’s the graphic design that I at least would rather be buying nowadays. But I can’t really blame the public for buying what they liked at the time. At least I don’t think I can.

That’s not the important point though, I’m still very happy that we’ve managed to find another small piece of the jigsaw and discover how a few more posters survived. So if anyone else out there has something that they think might be interesting, please do get in touch. You never know, it might be a piece of information that no one has known until now.

Oh, and GPO correspondence wasn’t all that Mr Shepherd kept – more on his archive next week.

String Theory

other, posters

This has recently arrived in the post, contradicting my previous assertion on here that there are no more eBay bargains to be had.

Admittedly it is not an outstanding piece of graphic design history (although I quite like it) and is rather battered round the edges too. But it’s by Lander, which is always a good thing, and it’s also a rather intriguing bit of social history. Because it’s a reminder of the days when things had brown labels and were tied up with string, or in this case cord.

Nobody does that any more, do they? I have sometimes been known to wrap a parcel up in brown paper, but I don’t think I’ve ever tied it up with string. This is something I’m sure that my mother could do though, coming as she does from an age before jiffy bags and sellotape.

Without all these modern parcel technologies, it was clearly possible to wrap a parcel very badly. At least that’s the only conclusion I can arrive at from the sheer volume of posters that the GPO put out on the subjects. Most of these are quite general, and I’ve written about the Properly Packed Parcels series on here before. But there were plenty of other similar exhortations too, and here’s just one.

Actually, seeing as it’s Tom Eckersley, let’s have two.

Judging from the posters though, (these are all from between 1950 and 1953) there was a Post Office standard approved way of packing parcels carefully.

So that’s two pieces of string round the long side, one round the other, although I still have no idea how to knot it. Hans Unger, meanwhile, is even more specific about rigid boxes and string in 1950.

This one, though, is the most instructional I have managed to find (it’s artwork by the way, artist not known).

I think even I could have had a go at the process now, although I still don’t know how to knot the string.

Of course (and you might have guessed that the whole post has been leading up to this) the real challenge that faced the Post Office was blackberries. Sent in a non-approved fashion.

Did people really send them in a basket? And expect them to get there? I am boggled at that thought. But the GPO weren’t, they produced more than one poster, which means that it must have happened at least twice…

The GPO weren’t alone though, British Railways also had problems with parcel packing and addressing.

The problems might have been similar but it has to be said, the GPO’s poster design was infinitely superior.

You also get the feeling from their posters that they don’t actually like parcels that much. They’re just trouble really, when your main business is really running trains.

That, incidentally is apparently a late Frank Newbould from 1960, It’s also quite mild in tone compared to some.

But nothing gave them an excuse like the war. At last they could say what they really thought.

Can you even send a parcel by railway now? Probably only if it is tied up with string.

Something fishy going on

posters

I had a theory when I started on this post, but after some research I have now authoritatively blown it out of the water (the pun in that will become apparent later on). However it’s still an interesting journey to travel, so this post will mostly be me showing my workings in order to prove myself wrong. Never mind.

The starting point is this rather wonderful object that arrived in my inbox over the weekend.

Oh that the object itself had turned up.

It’s a version of Daphne Padden’s Royal Blue fisherman, painted onto glass for some coach office somewhere. Having been kept by an employee of Royal Blue, it’s been bought by a transport collector. I am very envious.

But it got me back to thinking about Daphne Padden and fishermen. As I’ve posted relatively recently, she liked them quite a lot, and kept going back to them as a motif.

I’ve tended to think of them as being Cornish fishermen, but as it turns out, they’re not. Here’s another one of hers, for example, advertising the delights of East Anglia.

I don’t own this poster and have had to borrow it from The Lark’s Flickr stream, so thanks to them.

But these fishermen weren’t just a quirk of Daphne Padden’s. At about the same period, Harry Stevens was also mining a very similar vein of imagery.

Both to advertise Cornwall (the artwork above) and East Anglia as well.

Mr Crownfolio has always reckoned that this poster is Harry Stevens’ affectionate pastiche of Daphne Padden’s Royal Blue poster. But I’m intrigued that they’re both starting to use the same imagery at about the same time.

Because either side of the war, the attraction of fishing ports was always the red-sailed boats themselves. Here’s Ronald Lampitt in 1936 and Frank Sherwin, possibly from 1946.

The red sails are, it will not surprise you to learn, also used to advertise East Anglian destinations, in this case by Frank Mason.

Now this is where I was all prepared to work out a neat little theory about the evolution of nostalgia. There must have come a time when the red sails had so completely disappeared that they could no longer be used as a sign for the fishing port, not even in a past tense kind of way. But the fishermen were still there on the quay, so they came to be the new signifier for this kind of place.

Except there is one great big fly in this ointment, which is that one particular fisherman had been extolling the joys of the seaside a long time before any of these posters were designed. It is of course this one, John Hassell’s jolly fisherman for Skegness.

That version is from 1926, but he goes back as far as 1908, and also persists for a very long time. Here’s Frank Newbould reworking him in 1935.

While here’s another one from 1962.

So my theory is, well, not exactly watertight. Please feel free to prove it wrong in any other ways you choose.

Going Postal

other, posters

The blog has been a little bit overlooked lately. Apologies for that, I’ve had a rather urgent appointment with some wallpaper that needed to be removed. It’s been a bad time to be distracted as well, because people – well the readers of this blog to be precise – have been sending me things. And they’ve been rather good.

Let’s start with these, mostly because I asked for them. ‘Did Daphne Padden design any other leaflets for British Railways?’, I asked the other day. The answer is a resounding yes.

And here’s another, although I’ll be blowed if I have any idea what a ‘Radio Cruise’ is. Can anyone enlighten me?

She even designed the insides of this one too.

Which include this rather fine map.

Are there more out there? I hope so, although I am anticipating that I might have to do something frightening, like attend a transport ephemera fair, to find them.

Meanwhile through the actual mail box came a small set of these little London Transport prints – I’m sure there is a precise art historical word for what they are but I’m afraid I don’t know it. Anyway, they were a fantastic gift all the way from America so thank you very much.

What I got was four little folders, each containing a small print of a London Transport poster from 1953. Here’s St James’ Palace by David Lewis.

Each print was the pictorial half of a pair poster, so making the transfer to prints quite well. I can’t decide whether my favourite is the John Bainbridge or the Sheila Robinson (both artists who deserve further notice on this blog one day).

I have no idea, however, what the purpose of these were. Were they bought by the public and framed, or where they sent out by London Transport as a form of publicity? Or some other reason that I can’t even guess at. If anyone can enlighten me, please do.

While we’re on the subject of London Transport, this is also rather good.

This also reminds me that I’ve been meaning to mention the work of artist Micah Wright for a while. He’s been working on ironic modern versions of propaganda posters for a while, and got in contact with the blog to say that we might like this take on Pat Keely. He was right.

Most of what he does is American in origin, but it’s still very much worth taking a look at his PropagandaRemix website.

And now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a wall that needs demolishing. But if you’ve got anything else to send me in the meantime, please feel free.

All join hands – panic!

posters

Two things have sent my thoughts along the same path recently; an obituary of Eric Sykes in the Guardian, and this Goons record from 1956.

Mr Crownfolio insists that you press play, please, before reading any further. Thank you.

Bloodnock’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Call is worth considering in its own right; this was one of the first chart records with ‘rock and roll’ in the title and got to number 3, but it’s now almost completely and inexplicably forgotten in favour of the Ying Tong Song.

The connection between the two, and the probable reason that the record has been neglected, is the army. The listeners to the Goon Show record probably knew very little of rock and roll, but the lyrics assume they all understand military language and mores, and furthermore will enjoy their subversion.

From the Guardian obituary, meanwhile, here’s Eric Sykes on the importance of the army to comedy in general.

Sykes [… ] believed that the only way Britain would get another crop of writers like Milligan, Frank Muir, Denis Norden, Speight and himself would be through the reintroduction of conscription. “Take ‘away the necessity of earning a living,” he said, “provide food and bed so that you can just sit on your backside for two years and you will find that the violinist will practise his violin, the language student will learn a language and the comedian will create comedy. It’s no good expecting it to come from people who are in boring, undemanding jobs, for they have already half-settled for what they’ve got. Conscription is an obvious staging post. A war is even better if you can keep alive.”

This connection between army life and comedy is interesting in its own right, but it’s also a way in to a very different take on the 1950s. It’s easy, from here, to draw that decade and it’s reaction to the war in very simplistic terms. Here are happy people, happy to take simplistic pleasures now that the conflict is over.

Here are are a legion of housewives, driven back to the home but secretly discontented.

Here are cheerfully bright colours in reaction to the porridge colours of the preceding decade.

We imagine the whole population, used to being ordered about, partaking of this life without dissent. A conformist decade, in short.

But for almost the entire male population of the country, and a considerable proportion of the women too, the experience of war is also the experience of the army. While this means discipline, it also breeds a kind of insubordination and irrationality in reaction, even if it’s not actually spoken out loud at the time.

This bubbling up of silly voices and absurd responses is an important facet of the Goon Show. It takes even clearer form in Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim, where Jim Dixon’s interior monologue is precisely this kind of anarchic response to authority figures and the comedy relies on the gap between expected deference and the desire to say something very stupid indeed.

In many ways this kind of hysteria feels like a much more authentic reaction to the stresses of war than simply choosing to paint the living room tomato red.

So, then, of course, I started to wonder whether the same impulse made itself felt in posters. And of course it did.

I’m sort of used to this Henrion poster by now, but it is really, very odd indeed. In fact the whole set is.

They’re all from 1956, so contemporaneous with Jim Dixon and the Goons. This pair of Ungers come from the same year too.

The last one is particularly peculiar if you ask me.

Now I know that this kind of nonsense rhyming has a long tradition in English, but I still think that the urge to put it onto posters is a sign of the times. Although I would guess that the commissioning process didn’t let much of this kind of oddity and anarchy into print.

But I also think that its influence can be seen more widely as well. Take this Abram Games, for example.

Or this Tom Eckersley.

They’re both examples of classic 1950s poster design, in the way that they engage in a kind of visual punning, making a shape or an object mean two things at the same time. It’s a style that owes something to surrealism, certainly, but I would also argue that its original impulse comes from the same place as Bloodnock’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Call, the desire to do the opposite of what is expected.

What’s gone wrong with our version of the 1950s is the 1960s. Because we see that as the decade of youth, rebellion and subversion we, almost without thinking, need to make the decade which came before it conformist and rather dull. While large swathes of it probably were quite a lot like that, it’s still unfair on the people who weren’t to forget them entirely. And if we do remember the desire to answer back to the sergeant-major in a silly voice, perhaps it can also help us to look at the graphic design of the times in its wider cultural context.

Remember, send only 2/6 for a copy of this record.