Posts - Page 25 of 96

Missing in Action

At some point over the weekend, Mr Crownfolio and I happened across a BBC4 documentary about British war films of the 1950s.

The programme itself felt like a bit of a missed opportunity to me. The way in which the British had to come to terms with what had happened in World War Two by endlessly processing and reprocessing the history is fascinating – and something which continues almost to this day as stories like Bletchley Park are slowly revealed. But the programme got rather diverted by getting an interview with Virginia McKenna and giggling over Sylvia Syms’ cleavage instead.

However I’m rather glad we stuck with it as, towards the end, this appeared.

It’s good, isn’t it? But I have no idea who it’s by, and the internet can’t seem to enlighten me – something which isn’t made any easier by the fact that any search for League of Gentlemen inevitably gets confused by rather a lot of Royston Vaisey. Although I can tell you that the Swedish version is possibly even better.

But can any of you tell me who it’s by, as I’d really like to know?

Just to add to the confusion, there’s also a crown format version, which I am guessing is by a different hand. Although I can’t identify this artist either.

Answers, if you have them, to the comment box at the bottom of the page please.

To Sheffield, by dachshund

exhibitions

Whatever I was expecting to find in the Guardian yesterday, it certainly wasn’t this.

But thank heavens for the quiet of the New Year, because it allowed them to give almost a whole page to an exhibition in Sheffield of the works of none other than Leonard Beaumont.

Sadly – at least from my point of view – it is not going to be wall-to wall GPO dog illustration. But it’s still very interesting. The exhibition concentrates on Beaumont’s lino etchings – he donated over 80 pieces of work to the Sheffield Art Gallery just before his death.

They’re fantastic bits of Art Deco/Vorticist design, but all the more impressive because it seems that Beaumont was almost entirely self-taught, Working at the Sheffield Telegraph, he produced the prints in the evenings. By 1936, he’d moved to London and stopped making them.

So that’s the exhibition, but. at least from a Quad Royal perspective that’s where the story gets interesting. Because in London he joined Mather and Crowther as a commercial designer, and also worked freelance, producing (according to an interview in the Sheffield Star in 1983) wrappers for Nestle chocolate, posters and stamps for the post office, along with – and this was a surprise to me – the cover for the Festival of Britain catalogue.

Pretty much all I have known of his posters to date, and all the ones I have ever featured on here, have been for the GPO.

Now according to all of the articles, he then went off to Sainsburys in 1950 to sort out their corporate identity, and stayed there until he retired. That he worked for them is certain (here’s Shelf Appeal on his work there). But he was still producing posters for the GPO during the 1950s too – the last one above dates from 1957, and the example below from 1958.

He also produced one of my favourite mad GPO posters ever.

As one of the articles notes, it’s the use of type which distinguishes his work. To which I would also add the use of collaged photos and graphics together. For a self taught man, he was a very adept modernist.

Anyway, the upshot of all of this is that I can make a very confident prediction that I will be turning up in Sheffield at some point in 2013. The exhibition runs until September, so there’s plenty of time to make that come true.

Who let the dogs out?

Uncategorized

By popular request, it’s Christmas sausage dog time again.

Thanks to Lewitt-Him (above) and Beaumont (below), and of course to the presiding spirit of British Whimsy.

Dogs are clearly better that getting organised for Christmas than I am.

Deck the halls

designers, eBay, London Transport

I think it’s about time to get the Christmas decorations out, isn’t it? Or in this case, the Christmas posters. I’ve been saving this one for half the year – and that’s not a weird reflection on it, by the way, it’s part of the design.

This delight is a little 10″ x 15″ London Transport poster, from 1937 which popped up on eBay over the summer. And that was supposed to be the end of the post, until I decided to try and find out something about Raymond McGrath, who designed it.

Now the London Transport Museum website doesn’t have much information on him, and it appears that this was the only thing he ever did for LT. But a bit more delving on the web reveals a lot more. If I am honest it didn’t take that much, McGrath has his own Wikipedia page for heavens sake, and it turns out he was a really interesting chap.

Predominantly, McGrath was an architect and so rather falls out of the scope of this blog, but I’ll give you a brief summary because it’s such a fascinating and, it seems, infrequently told story. Coming from Australia in 1926, he quickly became one of the pioneers and champions of modernist architecture in Britain. His first major work was the remodelling of Finella, a house for the Cambridge don Mansfield Forbes (there is a comprehensive and wonderful article about this if you would like to read more), and this got him known, to the extent that he was put in charge of the remodelling of Broadcasting House in 1931, so at the age of just 27 he was overseeing architects like Wells Coates and Serge Chermayeff. He also designed a stunning modernist house in Chertsey, St Anne’s Hill House.

(This was later owned by Phil Manzanera of Roxy Music, and there is a great discussion of the area’s modernist rock heritage here.)

Despite these works, a combination of the war, a lack of work and his wife’s mental problems led McGrath to take a job in the Dublin Office of Public Works, where he became Principal Architect in 1948, a job he held until the 1960s. While he did much notable work there, the move meant that he effectively disappeared from the architectural record in Britain.

As the poster shows, McGrath was also a talented artist and draughtsman. Below is one of the set of drawing about aircraft production that he contributed to the War Artists scheme before he left for Dublin.

But this piece of his design has to be one of my favourite things, just for its pure modernist quirkiness.

It has an interesting provenance, apparently.

This elegant design for a wallpaper was only one element in an entire design scheme presented by McGrath for a house called “Rudderbar”, commissioned by a British female pilot of the 1930’s. It had been conceived as a combination “house and transport hub” having “an aircraft hanger and a garage built alongside domestic quarters surmounted by an observation/control tower”! It was to be built nearby the historic Hanworth Airplane Field, Feltham, Middlesex, England. And all of this in McGrath’s signature Modernist style.

Rather wonderfully, the paper is being reprinted, so you can now buy it to paper your flying room should you wish. Although McGrath is interesting enough to warrant more of a memorial than even this, I think.

Hither and thither

auctions

In the immortal words of Smash Hits, I am back. Back, back back. Admittedly I am typing this from amongst a forest of boxes, and if you asked me to lay my hands on almost anything we own, I wouldn’t be able to, but I am here. And with a rather snazzy new network connection too, which probably isn’t going to make much difference at your end, but is certainly an improvement from where I am sitting.

But enough of my domestic arrangements, it’s time to turn back to the world of posters, and in particular next week’s Onslow’s sale. What are we going to say about this – or rather what am I going to say as my attempt at crowd-sourcing some opinions on this didn’t really get enough of a response to constitute a post. So here goes.

My first impression on flicking through the catalogue is that there are an awful lot of Shell educational posters; I haven’t actually counted them, but more than enough to fulfill all your county needs. Here’s Rowland Hilder’s Warwickshire and David Gentleman’s Somerset by way of a sample.

Now these have estimates of £70-100 and £100-150 respectively and I am going to say once again what I always say when Shell posters come up, which is that I do not understand what the market is for these and thus have no idea what they are worth. They’re lovely things to display, but both the educational text and the metal hanging bars do rather get in the way of the value I think. What is a fair price for these – other than just what people are prepared to pay? Any thoughts?

There’s also the usual tranche of World War Two posters, including this old friend.

Abram Games, 1946, est. £70-100

It’s current ubiquity is affecting the estimate I think, which is a shame as its a lovely design. Of the rest, this Dame Laura Knight has to be the best drawing, if perhaps not the best poster.

Dame Laura Knight, 1940, est. £250-300

While my personal favourite is this modernist take on Coughs and Sneezes Spread Diseases.

Anon, c. 1940, est. £50-100

I do like the variety of design styles you get in the Home Front posters; there was a way of persuading you to use a handkerchief to suit almost every kind of taste.

Then, of course, there are the railway and underground posters that you’d expect too. Contrarian that I am, this is the kind of thing I like.

F Donald Blake, est. £70-100

But if you’re after countryside and representation, that is of course available by the yard as well.

Claude Buckle, c. 1950, est. £400-600

John Greene, c. 1960, est. £400-450

Those two are both later examples from British Railways, when the line between poster and landscape painting is getting a bit more blurred, but for some reason I rather like them both. There’s plenty more of that kind of thing available. Then there is also this Austin Cooper, which is a rather unusual item in that it’s a British poster for a furrin destination.

Austin Cooper, 1930, est. £100-150

But pick of the pops for me has to be this Hans Unger, for just being great.

Hans Unger, 1957, est. £100-150

The London Transport posters are fewer in number and less immediately engaging, although this James Fitton always deserves a mention.

James Fitton, 1937, est. £300-400

Finally, something which is both interesting and rather lovely.

R Coxon, 1940, est. £150-200

Here’s the blurb from the catalogue about it:

R Coxon (1896-1997) October Tree Felling, original poster printed for CEMA (later became Arts Council) circa 1940

I’m guessing – looking at the design and format – that these are in some ways related to the post-war Schools Prints, but I don’t really know and right now don’t have the time to get lost in the internet and find out. Is there a good book written about CEMA anywhere? You would think there ought to be.

And if there is anything I have missed out that you think should be included, please let me know. The comments box is just down there and waiting for your thoughts.

Pause

Uncategorized

This post is basically me waving the white flag of surrender for the next week or so while the house move finally takes place. But instead of a white flag I thought I would offer you a pale poster instead.

I know this isn’t in the best condition ever, but it’s interesting enough to be worth looking at anyway. I know precisely nothing about it (the Post Office Savings Bank posters aren’t archived on line yet) except that it is good and that I don’t think I’ve seen very many pre-war POSB posters before now, if indeed any. Oh and the signature says, I think, Coombs, but I am none the wiser for that either.

I’m hoping to be back within a week, not least because the Onslows catalogue for the December sale is now up. But perhaps you could all go and have a look and crowd-source some opinions for me in the meantime.