Posts - Page 58 of 96

Radiowl Times

designers

You may have noticed by now that not only do I like Barbara Jones, but I perhaps like her owls best of all. Which means that I have been wanting a copy of this, the apotheosis of all her owlery, for quite some time.

It’s a late children’s book from 1970, and given that the only time I’d ever seen it on offer was for £650 on Abebooks, I didn’t think we’d ever own one. But, finally, eBay came up with a copy. And at a price which meant that we didn’t have to mortgage the cats to buy it, either.

Now, as a set of illustrations of owls by Barbara Jones, it can’t be bettered. Here are the family having their nightly row about the correct colour balance of the television set.

And here are Twit and Howlet themselves.

This is their house.

And here is a passing cat (owls and cats are, of course, deadly enemies).

But it’s not just the drawing which make the book delightful, some of the page layouts are a total joy as well.

This is perhaps my favourite.

The details are also brilliant, like the sand in the illustrations above.

Along with the provisions the two owls buy for their trip.

But having said all that, I can see why there aren’t many copies available, because it doesn’t really work as a children’s book.

The plot is quite simple – Twit and Howlett build a hot air balloon and accidentally fly across the Channel and win a French balloon race with it. Organised by French owls, obviously.

But most of the book isn’t concerned with what happens, it’s all about building the balloon. And it’s done with a sense of humour (and a few long words) that is probably beyond the average picture book reader.

Thinking about what there was left to do, Howlet got depressed. ‘Critical Path Analysis,’ he said. Twit looked startled. ‘That means start the longest problem first and our longest problem is the gunge for the envelope.’
‘What’s gunge?’ Twit asked.
‘Oil, rubber or mastic,’ replied Howlet, importantly.
‘What’s mastic?’
‘Gummy stuff, I think.’
Twit gave Howlet a withering look. ‘Same as gunge, in fact; what a one you are for complicating things.’

Meanwhile the owl family are still arguing over the television set.

Next morning Howlet went back to the library and then on to the Chemist’s. He came back at last with a tin of something that the books and the Librarian and the Chemist all said would be suitable.

They started to treat the envelope, first with elation, then with stickiness, and at last with a creeping immobility that had to be felt to be believed; but it was all done at last and hung up to dry.

The Chemist had prudently given Howlet a bottle of gunge-solvent, so they had a long gruesome preen before dinner.

I love it, but I don’t think that’s quite the point.

I also think that she lost interest once the balloon had been built – the later illustrations do rather tail off in quality and detail. But you will be relieved to hear that the owls do get home safely in the end, and they get to see themselves with the cup on television.

It was the best colour-row ever.

And quite possibly the best owls ever too.

Modern selling

auctions

The auction season really is upon us; no sooner do I promise you the Christies highlights, than the Swann Galleries catalogue also pops into my email box. And to my surprise, the American auction is, I think, the winner. But let’s take a quick canter through both of them, and then you can make up your own mind, starting with Swann’s offering.

There are of course a lot of classics in there, which is all you’d expect from a catalogue calling itself Modernist Posters.

Abram Games, 1956, est. $800-1,200

Eckersley Lombers, 1936, est. $1,200-1,800

In amongst those classics are a considerable quantity of Zeros, which is always nice.

Hans Schleger, 1938, est. $2,500-3,500

Hans Schleger, 1935, est. $4,000-6000

Even better, there are some that I haven’t seen before, like this quiet and understated design, also for London Transport.

Hans Schleger, 1935, est. $1,500-2,000

There are some other interesting posters in there too, like this Willy de Majo for B.S.S.A.

William de Majo, 1948, est. $700-1,000

B.S.A.A. split from the British Overseas Aircraft Corporation (B.O.A.C.) to operate in the South Atlantic. Founded in 1946, it merged back with B.O.A.C. in 1949, after a series of unlucky incidents, in which two of their planes disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle.

All of which rather leaves me wanting to know more, both about B.S.A.A. and William de Majo, who has featured on these pages before. Other questions are also raised by this rather out of the ordinary London Transport poster.

Maurice Beck, 1931, est. $500-750.

Fortunately, the catalogue is here to answer them.

An extraordinary montage of photographed letters and numbers designed by Maurice Beck. He was both a designer and a photographer, often incorporating photography into his work. In the 1920s he was the head photographer for British Vogue, and he is credited with designing 18 posters for the Underground, all photomontages. One in a series of four posters based on the unusual premise of informing the public how much “the Underground group (U.E.R.L.) pays in petrol tax. The information highlights the success of the company, still profitable in spite of so many taxes, and the fact that U.E.R.L. contributes significantly to the Treasury and therefore to the London’s economy” (http://www.20thcenturylondon.org.uk).

I have to say, I really do like this catalogue. While I’m not normally a fan of online catalogues,with their pretend turning pages and interminable loading times, I am prepared to make an exception for this one, which is well worth the investment of time and bandwidth. This isn’t just because of the layout, which makes almost every poster desirable.

Including that McKnight Kauffer at the left, which I don’t remember having seen before now.

But even better is the text, which, as the examples above demonstrate, is consistently interesting and informative. Take this BOAC poster by Henrion, for example.

FHK Henrion, 1947, $800-1,200

In post-war Britain, competition between the different airlines was fierce, and as a result, the airline companies hired the best graphic designers in the field for their advertising, such as F.K. Henrion, Ashley, and Abram Games. At the time when Games was creating a series of posters for B.O.A.C., the trend among artists was not to illustrate the actual airplanes (as had been the style in the thirties), but instead, to advertise the advantages of flying, such as saved travel time. They did this by creating beautiful, symbolic and surrealistically inspired images that captured the abstract concepts poetically. Here, Henrion incorporates the company’s Speedbird logo into the design.

All poster catalogues should be like this, why aren’t they?

You may be feeling that you saw that Henrion poster quite recently, and you did; there is a lot of overlap between the various auctions. Like the PosterConnection sale mentioned in my last post, Swann also have a fair number of airline posters of one kind and another.

Lewitt-Him, 1948, est. $800-1,200

Theyre Lee Elliott, 1935, est. $700-1,000

But there’s an even more interesting overlap between the Swann Galleries and Christies sale, which is this.

It’s by McKnight Kauffer and dates from 1931, but it’s worth $12-18,000 if you’re Christies, $15-20,000 if you’re Swann Galleries – and the Christies one is purportedly in slightly better condition, too.

It will be interesting to see how that pans out. Will the existence of two depress prices? Or does the fact that they’re on opposite sides of the Atlantic mean that this doesn’t matter. I shall watch with interest.

Sadly, that’s about as much excitement as I can muster up for the Christies catalogue. While there are plenty more unseen gems at Swann, where I can even get enthusiastic about German posters that I’m not supposed to be interested in.

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Hymmen, 1949, $400-600

At Christies, everything feels a bit more familiar, with only a very few exceptions. Best of all, I like this Herbert Bayer.

Herbert Bayer, 1940, est £800-1,200

And I probably would like this Night Scotsman classic if only I could afford it.

Alexeieff Night Scotsman Kings Cross vintage railway posters 1931
Alexeieff, 1931, est. £15-20,000

Ditto this Paul Nash, which I suspect will go for a bit more than the estimate. If only suburbia had ever looked like that.

Paul Nash vintage London transport poster come out to live 1936
Paul Nash, 1936, est.£800-1,200

But other than that the catalogue seems to be both rather thin, covering the same old ground, and without pithy texts to make me care about particular posters. So there are railway posters, of course.

Frank Sherwin, est. £700-900

With an honourable mention going to Frank Newbould for his impressive impersonation of McKnight Kauffer.

Frank Newbould, 1924, est. £1,000-1,500

And London Transport too. But a lot of these are similar to or even the same as items from the last sale, and so feel like they’re riding on the coat-tails of that last set of high prices.

Marty, 1931, est. £1,000-1,500

Jean Dupas, 1933, est. £3,000-5,0000

Of course no auction this year would be complete without airline posters, particularly those for BOAC.

Abram Games, 1949, £600-800

The only good news is that there don’t seem to be too many multiple lots this time, which is a relief. But I wonder if this is policy or accident? And where are all the nice, inexpensive London Transport posters going to be sold these days? Surely they can’t all be on eBay?

Small World

Uncategorized

Just a quick post today, between the merry whirl of activities that is the Easter holidays, to point you at a poster auction over in the States at PosterConnection.

There isn’t a huge amount of British interest, but what there is covers a lot of rather high-quality ground. So there’s a Henrion and a Lewitt-Him for starters.

FHK Henrion, 1947, “suggested bid” $240

Lewitt-Him, 1948, $240

Along with this BOAC Eckersley, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen before.

Tom Eckersley, 1947, $460

It’s interesting seeing Eckersley doing his own version of someone else’s design, in this case Theyre Lee Elliott‘s Speedbird logo. The result is still a classic, but it doesn’t quite warm my heart enough to make me want it, for some reason.

Unlike this Zero design for London Transport, which I do rather covet, probably more than any other poster in this auction.

Zero, 1947, $200

But in case those aren’t quite what you’re looking for, they’ve also got a Shell poster,

John Armstrong, 1932, $750

and some classic railways posters from both before and after the war,

Schabelsky, 1935, $500

Maddox 1958, $280

as well as a delightful piece of 1950s kitschery – once again for Norfok. Is there something in the air over there?

Anon, 1958, $170

All of which makes a pretty good whirlwind tour in a very few posters. And then there is also this – a chance to see Britain through the eyes of our fellow Europeans.

Miessen, 1956, $220

Although I’m not sure that Dover was ever that alluring, not even in 1956.

Next time on Quad Royal, more auctions, as the new Christies catalogue has just popped through the letterbox. But don’t get your hopes up too high, it’s definitely not as exciting as last time…

Ham-fish-ted

designers, eBay

We didn’t just buy this for the pun potential, honestly.

Although that was quite a big part of why we did. It is, of course, another lovely Daphne Padden for P&O, from the S S Empire Fowey in 1959.

Along with it came this, which is the menu for what looks like the children’s party on the same day.

I can’t see too many modern children going for the Petit Bouchee of Sweetbreads at the start, although the jellies, celebration cake and lemonade are pretty timeless. Sadly, this one isn’t signed, so if anyone has any ideas about who might have designed this – particularly the determined ship’s cat, do get in touch. This may well become Small Crownfolio’s party invitation later this year.

In addition to being wonderful though, this also turns out to be a window into a bit of social history that I didn’t even know existed. It was sold on eBay as a cruise ship menu; which it sort of is, but at the same time isn’t.

The design was certainly produced for a cruise ship – it was used on the SS Arcadia in 1957, and probably also elsewhere. But the S S Empire Fowey wasn’t going cruising in 1959. It was a troopship, operated by P&O but transporting British soldiers (and their families, hence the children’s menu) to postings in Cyprus, Aden and elsewhere. Apparently there was even school provided for the children aboard, as the journeys could last up to a month.

The Empire Fowey herself had a fascinating life – she began life as a German liner, was taken over as a troop transport and then gunship. But in 1945, with the Allied victory, she was taken by the British as part of the war reparations, at which point she became a troop ship, but operated by P&O. Then, in 1960, once air travel was becoming the norm for army postings, she was sold to a Pakistani cruise firm, who used her to take pilgrims to Mecca, until she was finally scrapped in 1976.

The Fowey’s odd status, half cruise ship, half transport ship explains a couple of things. Like the fact that the menu has no printing on the back (unlike the others we have for ‘real’ cruises which have a design on the back as well). And the way that the menu itself isn’t as lavish as I’d come to expect from P&O in the fifties. Still, it’s rather nice to think that the army and its families got a small taste of the cruising life, even if it was just for one night only.

And f any of this has whetted your appetite for troopships, menus or even indeed sweetbreads, another near-identical set is available on eBay from the same seller.

life : henrion : rabbit

exhibitions

I called up this book out of our library’s reserve stores the other day (you can easily enough find it on Amazon if your library isn’t so obliging).

It’s from 1972, so I wasn’t hoping for too much from it, but actually I was surprised. There’s a short introductory essay, but then the bulk of the book consists of short biographies of some of the designers who produced propaganda posters during World War Two – not just those from the UK but also Russians, Europeans and Americans as well.

Reading them has been a salutary lesson for me. I tend to assume that all of the knowledge in the world is out there on the internet for me to find. And if it isn’t there, it’s not known. Well I’m wrong. Because there is plenty of information in here which is new to me. Like a proper biography of James Fitton, for example, which told me that he left school at fourteen and worked on the docks in Manchester, attending art school in the evenings. All of which makes me admire him even more.

So today’s post was going to be all about the these biographies. But then I got distracted by this.

Which is fabulous, and by FHK Henrion. In fact it’s so fabulous that it’s currently on display at MoMA in New York, along with some of its brethren. (Well rabbits will breed, won’t they).

The exhibition is Counter Space : Design and the Modern Kitchen and if I could get over to New York to see it, I would. Every bit of it, from early functionalist design to artworks about domesticity sounds brilliant. And it’s on until early May, so if you do get the chance to go, please do and let me know all about it.

But for the purposes of Quad Royal, the really interesting thing is that there is a whole section of British Home Front posters about food. Hence Mr Henrion and his rabbits. There are in fact three, as they also have the pair of the first poster, which explains why that rabbit is looking behind so nervously.

Now under normal circumstances I’d just go on about these, but MoMA themselves have written an excellent blog post about these posters, which I really couldn’t improve on.

But fortunately for those of us who aren’t going to make it to New York this month, there is at least a handlist of all of the exhibits online. Which means that I can tell you that, in addition to the Henrions, they are also exhibiting a few old friends like the Vegetabull.

Which means that we have something hanging on our wall which is also up in MoMA. Get us.

In addition, though, the exhibition is displaying a really intriguing set of posters which I have never seen before.

By Herbert Tomlinson about whom I know nothing.

This pattern of absence and presence is really interesting. On one hand, it’s easy to see why these posters have ended up in MoMA; they fit very easy into the narrative of International Modernism which the museum itself has done so much to construct.

What I understand less is why these posters seem to have disappeared over here. This may be no more than random chance: these weren’t posters that anyone much wanted to collect or keep, by a designer that no one much remembered so they disappeared into oblivion as soon as they were torn down. Or perhaps a rat and mouse-infested world isn’t how we want to remember the war?

Whatever the reason, it’s yet another reminder of two important facts about posters. One is that the history which does exist is very much constructed, and that the story may differ wildly depending on who’s doing the telling. The other is that all of these histories are made from a very partial and unrepresentative sample. So few posters survive, and for such random reasons, that it will perhaps never be possible to tell the complete tale of posters at any point in time. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have a lot of fun trying in the meantime.

Ceci n’est pas un crease

eBay

Everyone has spent their weekend listing posters on eBay, it seems. Well, everyone except me. But there is a something for almost every taste out there this morning.

Quite a bit of it is, however, somewhat battered. Like this Tom Purvis poster, for example.

This series has been mentioned on here before, as an example of the shift in Shell advertising from technical to natural. Which it is, along with being by Tom Purvis. So I really ought to like it. But I don’t, not even a little bit.

Mind you, it’s in better condition than the next exhibit, this whole collection of posters in the States, apparently discovered in an attic in 1967.

The three above are the classics, but my favourite has to be this one.

In my head, I am now back in Manchester, to a soundtrack of the Smiths. And I’ve never seen that poster before either, so it’s doubly pleasing.

These are all a bit spotted and chewed, but there are other ways to mistreat posters.

My eyes, my eyes. It’s Out and About: Country Houses by Clive Gardiner from 1951, in case you can’t tell. Sadly there are several in this state up for sale, including Literary London by Sheila Robinson.

Although the listings beg more questions than they answer.

Unfortunately this poster has been stored wrapped in an obscure way, which has left it too unravel as shown.
However there are no creases caused by this, so once framed or flattened out it will look good as new.

No, there are creases, I can see them. Which leads me to suggest that it will take more than flattening to sort this out.

As is all the fashion these days, they’re all listed for £99, which I don’t really think they’re worth in this condition. While the Peter Roberson below wouldn’t be worth that if if were flat, mounted on linen and offering to make me a cup of coffee every morning.

Well, perhaps for the coffee.

There have also been a rash of Shell Educational posters turning up too. A complete set of S R Badmin’s monthly Guide to Trees is available for the rather eyewatering sum of £350.

Which compares rather unfavourably with both the full series of John Leigh Pemberton’s Life In… posters at just £1.99 each

and also these six County posters, which have an even lower starting price of £1.50.

I wish I knew, for no other reason than my own satisfaction, what Shell educational posters were really worth. I’ve seen auction houses really talk them up (although not always manage to sell them) while other auction houses won’t even take them these days. So I shall watch these sales with interest and see if I can draw any conclusions.

Finally, someone other than us is selling Daphne Padden posters. So if you’ve missed something you liked, here’s another bite at the cherry.

These ones are also signed in pencil, as were some of the ones that we bought from her estate sale, so I wonder whether they too came from her own collection. Perhaps I’ll email and ask.