Category: Uncategorized

Last year saw the Quad Royal Advent Calendar, a festive poster for each of the 24 days.  Unsurprisingly, most of the posters came from the GPO, the institution most keen that  you should get your act together before Christmas.  So keen, in fact, that not even an entire advent calendar could do justice to the quantity and quality they produced.

So, every so often before Christmas, I am going to have a festive wallow in the BPMA archive: because it’s Christmas, because I can, and because there are so many wonderful posters to be seen.

Today’s set come from Barnett Freedman, who was improvising around a theme in 1937 and 1938.

I particularly like the peremptoriness of this pair, but they are all beautiful.

Although Barnett Freedman was definitely a poster designer (producing well over 30 for London Transport alone), I never really think of him as one.  I think that’s probably because the detail of his typography and design is always worthy of a closer look rather than the quick glance a big poster might only get.

But that’s why these four work so well. They’re little Crown Folios, designed for display at the counter, so people would have had plenty of time to look at them as they queued for their stamps.  I did that last week; there wasn’t a single thing as nice as these anywhere to be seen.

For Sherlock Holmes, the essential clue was the dog which did not bark.  In the case of this blog, the attentive observer might have noticed that not every auction gets a mention on here.

Studio Seven, 1957, for sale at Onslows est. £500-600

Sometimes this is simply because I can’t think of a thing to say about them; sometimes, however, there is a motive.  Which is usually that there are some posters that we want to buy up for sale and I’d rather not be pushing up the prices by broadcasting their desirability all over the internet.  Sorry about that.

Hence my stony silence about the most recent Van Sabben auction on November 12th.  While this was mostly the usual cornucopia of foreign posters and Dick Bruna (which is of course allowed, they are Dutch after all), in amongst that were a handful of interesting British posters, with the added bonus that, being sold abroad, they might actually be affordable.

Prize exhibit was this, which is yet another example of posters that I have fallen in love with as a result of blogging about them.

I’m slightly concerned that the ickle fluffy bunny being presented as food may turn Small Crownfolio vegetarian if we get it framed, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Even better, though, it wasn’t a single lot.  Along with it (and not illustrated on their website) came this classic too.

And as if that was not enough, there was an Ashley Havinden too, albeit with slightly less wall appeal.

Once we’d decided to buy that, it only seemed sensible to put a couple of other bids in too.  With the result that we now also own this Reginald Mount, which I think is just post-war.

That also wasn’t alone, but came with this related Mount/Evans.

Along with a third that I’ve never seen before but rather like.

Oddly, this lot cost us more than the Henrion/Lewitt-Him triple bill, which is a bit strange if you ask me.

Now you might think it a bit stranger that this Unger GPO poster, however stylish, was the most expensive lot of all, especially as it is only 10″ x 15″.

But then just look at what it came with.

The total bill was a bit eye-watering but the chance to get posters as good as these doesn’t come up very often.  At least that’s what I’m telling myself, even if we have to buy a slightly cheaper house as a result.

Disclaimer: Mr Crownfolio pointed out that a reader of this blog might think that we were over-monied plutocrats just buying posters hither and thither because we can.  This is, however, not the case.  We don’t own yachts, right now we don’t even own a single house never mind one in every resort.  We don’t even go out to dinner that much.  We just buy posters.

This day, sixty years ago.  The Festival of Britain site has already closed down for the winter.  But only two days ago the new Conservative Governement has been re-elected, and one of their first actions in office is to announce that the South Bank site will be demolished.

There is still time to write one or two more letters, if you wish.

But it’s very hard to think of anything to say.

A perfect charity shop find today.  Three of my favourite things – County Shows, 1950s graphics and old cookery books – all together in one small leaflet.

That picture on the front is apparently the Stork Demonstration Van introducing people to a lot of new and interesting recipes on its visits to the country’s agricultural shows.  The big supermarkets still do exactly the same thing at County Shows today.

If you spread out the whole cover, the real business of the agricultural show is going on at the back; marquees, stock judging and shiny new tractors and mowing machines.

I think that is a really wonderful piece of work.  Sadly, there is not a lot more inside, only one small depiction of the Demonstration Van itself.

The rest is the usual food photography of the 1950s, with the colour saturation turned up to 11.  Oh it must have been good to have colour printing back after the war.  So good that they were prepared to overlook the fact that it didn’t really make the food look tasty.

The booklet is anonymous, with no one taking any credit for that wonderful cover.  In a way, I find that quite pleasing, because this booklet is a great example of a particular type of British food advertising. There are line drawings, usually in black and white, more often than not there’s a sense of humour about it too (just go back and look at Mr Stork in his tweeds on that front cover).  It often spills over into recipe books and pamphlets from the newspaper and magazine advertisements where it really belongs.  I suspect that a great deal of it springs from the relentless Ministry of Food campaigns during World War Two.

40 million of their advertisements were printed every week throughout the war, and it was one of the most successful Home Front campaigns.  So no wonder it set the style for more than a whole decade afterwards.

I did get another Stork booklet at the same time; sadly it’s not quite so exuberant.

But its little graphic inside is even more of a direct link to those wartime illustrations.

This kind of work isn’t glamorous or valuable.  It probably isn’t even noticed  very often (the fact that these kind of designs were produced for women, and for the home, probably doesn’t help their case either).  But it is important.  These graphics were everywhere for at least fifteen years, quite probably much longer than that (I have a whole heap of this kind of ephemera, but sadly it’s all in storage so I can’t dig it out for an answer).  They were everyday graphic design, not something that people stepped back and pointed at, but part of the warp and weft of daily life, creating the sense of place and time even if they mostly went unsung.

Not all graphics are produced by heroic designers, and not all design has to stop you in your tracks.  Everyday design can be just as important.  And more often than you expect it can be as good as well.