Uncategorized Archives - Page 16 of 24

On the buses

Last week, Mr Crownfolio and I scored that increasingly rare thing, a bargain on eBay. Although this did involve us chancing a reasonably large sum of money on what was described as

a lot of old railway posters that i got when i was turning out my grandparents old house they are at a ruff guess about 25 plus

along with a picture that didn’t give a lot away.

A bit of additional description says that there were some half-page posters as well as some full page ones, but we had no idea what would turn up. Well apart from this, of course.

And the knowledge that at least some of the posters would have tatty edges.

Fortunately we weren’t disappointed. As a starter, this Alan Durman on its own would have been quite enough to keep us happy.

Fortunately there were more goodies even than that.

But what I don’t think we’ve ended up with is a set of railway posters. The Butlins one does say ‘Travel by Train’ at the bottom, but there’s no British Railways logo or anything. More importantly, they’re all 20″ x 30″, so standard advertising display size, Double Crown, rather than British Railways standard display size of 40″ x 25″ or Double Royal. To prove my point, here is the Alan Durman Butlins poster as a Double Royal with the British Railways logo on.

I don’t think I will be complaining about the misdescription though. Because Double Crown wasn’t just the preserve of commercial advertisers. The other big advertisers who used it as standard were the coach companies, and that’s what I think we’ve got here, a batch of coach posters. Which isn’t a very difficult deduction to make looking at a set of posters like these.

The bottom one is by Lander and is I think particularly nice. If you needed any more persuading, this one even says coach on it, with a handy picture too.

That seems pretty certain then. Even better, there are some good posters amongst the lot, not least of which is this Daphne Padden.

There are also some artists I’ve not come across before. These two posters are signed Greene.

I think this is John Greene, quite possibly working with his wife Margaret too. But I’m not going to go off on a research digression for once, they can wait for another day. Meanwhile one of my favourites isn’t signed at all.

There are few more as well, and among them a set of these oddities.

Mr Crownfolio reckons that these must have been put up by the various stops at bus stations so that people knew they were getting on the right coach. But if there’s a transport historian out there with a better theory, do let me know.

Now we just need to decide what to do with a whole heap of posters with a lot of blank space on. Perhaps we’ll frame them on magnetic backing and use them as notice boards. Even then, we’ve probably still got quite a lot…

Informative

auctions, Uncategorized

Today’s post is crowdsourcing, Quad Royal style, because lots of very kind people have been sending me links to posters on sale or sold recently. So the least I can do, of course, is share them.

The first, and following on nicely from my last post, is this Daphne Padden poster for British Railways, which is up for sale in America via eBay.

It’s a great poster, and one that I have never ever seen before and can’t find much trace of either, apart from the fact that one sold in the Midlands about three years ago. Despite all that, and an attempt at a frame, the price seems a bit steep to me at £300+ for a starting bid. But thank you to Mike Jacob for putting that my way nonetheless.

Also forthcoming, and emailed to me by Mr Crownfolio upstairs, is a Christies poster sale. But don’t get too excited, this is an Olympic special, and there are very few Olympic posters I can get enthusiastic about, with this Richard Beck from 1956 perhaps the only exception.

Richard Beck 1956 Olympic poster
Richard Beck, 1956, est £800-1,200

And I definitely don’t want to buy an Olympic torch (there are a surprising number on offer too). Given that, there isn’t a great deal else to report from the catalogue. All I can point you towards are a handful of McKnight Kauffer’s.

McKnight Kauffer, 1937. est. £700-900

The one below has to be my favourite, although this is less a result of the image than the estimate.

Edward McKnight Kauffer (1890-1954) ENO'S "FRUIT SALT" lithograph in colours, 1925,
McKnight Kauffer, 1925, est. £1,200 – 1,800

We got another one of this series on eBay about eighteen months ago, only for a small fraction of what Christies thinks it is worth, an experience which never fails to please me. And it’s a nicer image, to boot.

There is also a classic Abram Games.

Abram Games, 1941, est. £2,000 – 3,000

Along with this Peter Roberson, which I am guessing only slips through Christies minimum lot requirements thanks to the Festival of Britain interest.

Peter Roberson (1907-1989) VISITOR'S LONDON, FESTIVAL OF BRITAIN lithograph in colours, 1950
Peter Roberson, 1950, est. £1,200 – 1,600

My favourite British poster is probably this obscure and slightly pallid Victor Pasmore.

Victor Pasmore, 1948, est. £600 – 800

Note the use of British in the sentence above. Because once again, the local talent is having to compete for my attention with a small but lovely set of David Klein posters.

David Klein, 1960, est. £800 – 1,200

David Klein, 1958, est. £800 – 1,200

That first one in particular is fabulous, if a touch unaffordable.

The bad news is not just the small selection of posters I want to look at either. As far as I can tell from Christies’ Calendar, this will be their only poster sale this spring. And eBay’s gone into the doldrums too. There’s nothing left for it, I may have to start trawling the railwayana catalogues to keep my hopes up.

There are still a few glimmerings in the provincial auction scene as well, although I might have to get my act together a bit in reporting them to you. James Manning pointed out that Dreweatts have been selling more Percy Drake Brookshaws in a recent sale.

Now I say more because one of my first ever posts on here was about some of his posters being sold at the same auction house. Both then and now they seem to have come from the artist’s family, who have clearly been disposing of what they have in dribs and drabs. And also saving the best stuff until last.

What’s most amusing about these lots is the discrepancy between the estimates and the results. I would have been very happy to get the poster above for the £50-60 that Dreweatt’s estimated. Sadly it went for £550. Although perhaps not sadly, given that I missed the sale.

That wasn’t a freak occurrence either, all the posters reached similarly high prices. The boat race poster below was estimated at £100-150, but sold for almost ten times that, £1,100.

While this classic would have been the bargain of the century at its £60-80 estimate.

But it too went for £1,100.

I swear I will never ever fully understand the poster market. Prices like that make me think that the internet is doing its job in flattening out the market, as anyone with an interest and a tiny bit of understanding of searches on websites can find almost any lot up for sale and bid on it. But why doesn’t that work with eBay then? Why can we buy a McKnight Kauffer on there for a tenth of its Christies price? I think we might need to write a specialist piece of poster market theory, so if there is an economist in the house, can they get in touch? And for anyone else, please do keep sending the auction links and anything else that takes your fancy, they’re very much appreciated.

Lions in My Own Garden

Uncategorized

Ebay can still, sometimes, come up with the goods. Like this.

For once it is possible to judge something by its cover, and so this is indeed a wall frieze by John Burningham, from 1966. Mr Crownfolio watched the auction like a hawk for the ten days it was on, and was pleasantly surprised to get it for not that much money at all.

What’s more surprising is that inside, the whole thing is intact.

Even though I can’t really photograph it in a way that shows you that. At least not without turning the blog by 90 degrees. So here goes anyway.

It is the story of how the lion king and his family are tamed by a girl and a boy.

But I’m sure that much of the fun was in having it on your bedroom wall and making up stories to fit the pictures yourself.

What the whole thing looks like together can be seen on the front and back cover (furnishings by Heals, children’s clothes by Pollyanna).

It seems, from the brief amount of research I have done, that he did a number of these including Birdland, Storyland, Jungleland and Wonderland.

Jungleland and Wonderland were approved of by the Design Council, and I have the slides to prove it.

While this very comprehensive John Burningham blog also has pictures of Birdland, which I do like the look of a lot.

One is probably enough though. It being all in one long strip does raise some rather interesting framing problems. Well, either that or blutack it to the wall.

On Show

Uncategorized

For those of you in or near London a public information broadcast. Friend of this blog, Neil Jennings is mounting an exhibition next week at the Art Workers Guild in Queen Square in Bloomsbury. The cast list looks wonderful, including as it does Edward Bawden, Barbara Jones, Barnett Freedman and Kenneth Rowntree. And this poster too, apparently.

It’s by Michael Middleton, who’s new to me, and dates from 1936, apparently.

Anyhow, the show is open Mon, Thursday and Friday for the next couple of weeks, starting on the 5th and you can go and see it if you like.

Without linen on backside

eBay, Uncategorized

At last. I’ve been banging on about PosterConnection’s shop on eBay for quite a while now – its selection is enough to persuade me to be interested in foreign posters every so often. Now, finally, they are also selling some British designs. And good ones too. Pick of the pops has to be this Daphne Padden.

They are asking about £250 for it, and I can’t work out whether that’s a reasonable price or not. This is mainly because the last time I saw one of these going past an auction was at the final Morphets sale, where the prices were definitely depressed by the sheer quantity of what was on offer. What is this worth? Do any of you lot know?

A few other British posters are on offer, of which my favourite is this poster by Harry Stevens from 1960.

Once again, there is also the chance to see Britain from the foreign point of view. Which can be quite different, because I definitely don’t remember Manchester ever looking like this. With the possible exception of the air colour, that is.

But I do rather like this cricketing lion.

He could almost be by Royston Cooper, but in fact he’s the work of one Host Buzas in 1960. Good show.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering about the title, that’s how all of these posters are described.

There’s good stuff elsewhere on eBay too at the moment. Perhaps most urgently, I need to point you at this Abram Games poster, which is a lovely joyful one without bullets or dead people or blood in it. I know that’s not his fault, he was working for the Army so it was part of the job description, but I do find the results quite hard work sometimes.

The bloke who is selling this had the experience which I can only dream of; they bought a new house and found a whole roll of these posters up in the attic. They’re in very good condition too. I know this for certain because we’ve already bought one, and very lovely it is too.

While we’re on the subject of attic finds, you might want to watch the Antiques Roadshow on Sunday, because a Scottish woman brought in fifteen Keep Calm and Carry On posters – story here, and indeed everywhere else. This brings the total known to exist to somewhere round about twenty and they are apparently worth £1,000 each; although how they’ve worked that out when no one has ever auctioned one before and the rip-offs are plastering the internet like bad grafitti I don’t know. And if they say on the show – as I am pretty sure they will judging by the news story – that they were produced for use in the event of invasion when this is not true I will shout at the television. So there.

Rant over, back to eBay. A couple of posters we are probably not going to buy are these two Festival of Britain designs. They are wonderful, but their prices are already soaring into the stratosphere with a couple of days to go.

Festival of Britain is such a lovely searchable term, isn’t it.

For those of us without a bottomless wallet there is both this Amstutz, from 1967 (the sellers has a number of other GPO posters but I can’t quite get excited about them).

And then this psychedelic oddity.

They’re both being sold abroad, so might not go for that much.

Finally, this is not a poster, but might be of interest to one or two of you.

I’d like to be able to draw just like that. Now off you go, I’ve got a television to shout at.

People, bishops and mumbly-jumbly latin scholars

Uncategorized

A bonus extra today. I almost lumped this little treasure in with yesterday’s eBay news, until I decided that it deserved a post all its own.

Not that I have a huge amount to say other than this is rather wonderful.

It is a portfolio of posters from about 1965, designed by Bob Gill (there’s a good interview with him here too) with words by Keith Botsford and printed by the Curwen Press. So top notch stuff, which just happens to be designed for children.

There are nine posters in total (or at least there are nine posters in this portfolio, perhaps there were more originally).

The instructions are pretty self-evident: arrange the posters to make the parade of your choice.

With my design head on I think its fantastic; from a more parental point of view I also wish we could still buy things as idiosyncratic as this now. I sometimes think we under-estimate what children can take in these days. Here are some 1960s children enjoying it for the benefit of the camera.

Right now it is on eBay, although just for another day and a half, and with a starting price of about £65. So we probably won’t be buying it, but I am very glad to have seen it anyway.