posters Archives - Page 8 of 8

Big. But definitely not clever.

posters

Having mentioned posters the size of houses yesterday, I thought I might share with you one of my and Mr Crownfolio’s less sensible purchases. Which is this.

Although I might be less embarrassed if that were all there was. In reality, there’s rather more to it – here’s the top half.

And this is the bottom.

All of which put together is a giant 16-sheet billboard poster for National Savings. It’s stupidly big.

To give you an idea of exactly how huge it is, here it is with a real life (and hence uncooperative) black cat for scale.

What were we thinking of? Although, at the time we bought it, we were living in a flat with a double-height end wall that could have fitted this quite nicely. I think this was my intention. But Mr Crownfolio said no. He was probably right.

It gets worse, though. I dug the cardboard box out (which, I have to say, we haven’t really opened much since we bought it) only to discover – and I really hadn’t remembered this at all – that we seem to have bought three. Eh?

So we also own this National Savings billboard poster. Again, I’ve had to photograph it in pieces; I think I could just about spread it out in this room, but only if I removed all the furniture.

Finally, there’s this one, which I am rather delighted to find, although I am not sure whether I like it because of its Orwellian style or despite it.

There is another strip of text which goes along the bottom, but it doesn’t make sense on its own, and, again, I just don’t have the space.

The graphic bubbles are great though

Here is one with a (more co-operative) iPhone for scale.

I can’t tell you a whole heap about them, I’m afraid. Judging from the serial numbers, they are from 1951, and we bought them from eBay. And they’re not in quite as good condition as they look – there is a lot of foxing and watermarking on the back, and quite a few holes along the folds. But the colours, as you can see, are pin-sharp. More than that I do not know.

But now that I’ve rediscovered them, I feel a bit guilty about just putting them away and letting them sit when we’re never ever going to put them on a wall and I can’t imagine that many other people are daft enough to actually buy them. At the moment, our thought is to donate them to the History of Advertising Trust. Unless someone else has a better idea.

There’s no escaping this

other, posters

Not with BBC iPlayer, there isn’t. So for those of you who managed to be out there having a life on Sunday evening, and thus are still skipping around with joy in your hearts and a twinkle in your eye, here is five minutes of television to turn your gills green with envy.

It’s the Antiques Roadshow (available there for another 4 days or so).

At about 52 minutes in, you will find a man who accidentally bought 100+ vintage travel posters for 50p as an eleven year old. Watch away, then feel free to whine and gnash your teeth along with me in the comments box. And also tell me whether or not you think the valuation is just a bit on the high side.

For those of you who are outside the UK and thus barred from the wonder that is the BBC iPlayer, here is an executive summary. Man goes to auction as 11 year old, buys nondescript roll of paper which is part of job lot, ends up with 120 or so travel and other posters. There were only 9 of his haul on show on the programme; starting with two liner posters that I’m not that fussed about, but then moving on to two Frank Newboulds for the GPO, one of which was a close relative of this one, if not identical, and neither of which I’ve ever seen before.

Then there was a McKnight Kauffer of Buckingham Palace.

And four posters by Jean Dupas, all of which look to me like book covers for Evelyn Waugh novels,

but which are, if you want to be a bit nerdy about them, noteworthy for having the very short lived LPTB logo on them (public demand soon brought back the roundel).

Interestingly, all of these posters date from 1934. Even more interestingly, if you’re the owner, the show’s expert valued them at £30,000+. (I’d quite like another opinion on that, especially these days. Or maybe she buys all her posters from Mayfair dealers.) Then that was it, and we’re back to Fiona Bruce for another lame link.

There, now it’s just like you watched the programme, isn’t it?

The Shell Guide to auctions

auctions, posters

Not that long ago, I mentioned the Shell Educational posters in passing, with the intention of saying more about them one of these days.

But I’ve been rather pre-empted by the appearance of a whole group of them at auction on Thursday. (At first glance, I thought they were being sold by Alan Partridge Auctioneers, but sadly that isn’t the case).

Dorset Shell educational poster John Nash
Dorset, by John Nash

What’s on offer are four lots of the ‘County’ posters, each with five or six posters in each, all carrying an estimate of £60-100, and all photographed having a bit of a lie down.

Sussex Shell educational posters SR Badmin
Sussex, by SR Badmin

As well as a set of twelve Shell Guides to the countryside by Edith and Rowland Hilder.

Now, with my collectors head on, Shell posters can be very variable. They’re on gloss paper, which yellows and spots and then yellows some more. Plus at top and bottom they have black metal hangers which rust at the first possible opportunity, and also means that you can’t really put them in a frame. Having said all of that, a good one is still a lovely thing to have around the home (David Gentleman’s Ridgeway Path being my ornament of choice). And of course, because they come in sets, they bring out the worst of my collecting impulses.

With my thinking about posters brain engaged, they are interesting, not least because I’ve never seen anything written about them. They’re really a class apart, as almost all the artists who were commissioned are better known as illustrators rather than designers.; there’s more overlap between these posters and Ladybird books than there is with the rest of poster design. But some of them are beautiful, some – mostly by Tristram Hillier who was a surrealist artist when not producing these – are weird and strange, plus they are jolly informational things to have hanging on the wall. About which I will write properly another day.

Should you be interested, you can bid via the-saleroom.com if you don’t fancy the trek to Congleton.

Four posters in search of a story

posters

I’ve always been interested in the afterlife of objects – how things survive long enough to become collectibles or heirlooms or even national treasures. It’s generally a story of chance and – quite often – being so lost and overlooked that no one bothers to throw you away. It’s also a story that isn’t often told as part of design history; once an object has been created and made, that’s normally the end of it. But often what happens next is at least as interesting, and can also be very revealing about how we appreciate, or disregard, the objects around us.

So, following on from yesterday’s post about just how little survives, here are a few of our posters with the tales of how they made it through to the twenty-first century.

Tom Eckersley, Post Early for GPO, 1955, Crown Folio 15″ x 10″
Saved by a man who went into his local post office and asked them to keep for him all of the posters and publicity material that they had finished with. (I will write more about this one of these days as it’s worth a whole post in its own right.)

F H K Henrion, Changing of the Guard for London Transport, 1956, Double Royal 40″ x 25″
Kept by a tutor in graphic design who used it in his teaching.

Mount/Evans, Anti-Smoking poster for COI, 1965-ish, Double Crown 30″ x 20″
Bought at auction but I believe it came from the designers’ own archive.

ARP Poster, Edward McKnight Kauffer, 1938, Crown Folio 15″ x 10″
Found in the roof of a scout hut. The air rifle pellet holes had to be restored…

Patrick Bogue from Onslows also mentioned in passing that he once found original railway poster artwork being used as insulation in a loft space. Can anyone better that?