Posts - Page 82 of 96

The poster in the hat

designers

Recently, Crownfolio junior and I were in the library together and found this.

Now, surely this has to be the same Andre Amstutz who was designing posters for British Rail, the GPO and others in the late 50s and 1960s. Posters like this one.

There just can’t be that many people called Andre Amstutz to start with, never mind ones who can draw such delightful people. Here’s another scan from the book, to compare and contrast.

The progression makes sense as a career path; when posters weren’t being commissioned any more, that designers went into illustrating books instead. It looks as though that’s what Fritz Wegner (see yesterday’s post) did, and it looks as though that’s what Amstutz did too. Here’s his biography from the Penguin website.

Andre Amstutz was born in Brighton. He studied art and design at Brighton School of Art and then joined an animation film company. He later began a career in advertising, becoming Art Director at an advertising agency. Since 1960 he has worked freelance, designing posters and illustrations for a wide variety of clients, and more recently has moved into publishing, primarily as an illustrator of children’ books.

Now, I think Amstutz is a very under-rated artist. This may be because he didn’t do that many posters – I can only find a handful of British Railways ones.

Along with a few for the GPO.

(He also did a Properly Packed Parcels Please one, which I’ve posted previously.)

And this BEA poster, which is the only one of his which I can track at auction anywhere. Doesn’t go for a lot, but comes up regularly.

But the ones he did do are great, so I can’t understand why he is so overlooked. Perhaps making cheerful posters doesn’t necessarily do a lot for your reputation; people see them as cheesy and a bit uncool.

But however dour and serious you are about posters, how could you resist this? It’s from 1947-ish, and is utterly wonderful.

This isn’t the best picture of it ever, I’m afraid (the colours are much crisper in real life) but ours is framed, and I’ve never ever seen it anywhere else, so I’ve had to photograph it through the glass. Apologies.

But if anyone is able to tell me anything about British Railways moving farm by train, I would genuinely like to know. Or, for that matter, if you can tell me more about Mr Amstutz himself. He deserves more recognition. And now you must excuse me, because I have a few pigs and a tractor to pack up.

Telegraphese

other

Such is the confusing nature of the modern world that telegrams have been arriving in my inbox. I’d rather they were delivered by a messenger with brass buttons on his jacket, but I guess that’s not really an option any more. Nonetheless, all of them are still very much worth looking at.

Laura Figiel sent me these two. The first, from 1957 is by Barbara Jones.

Excellent owl-work there. Just in case you were wondering as I did, the news is that the twins are now both 52, and one of them is Laura’s mother.

This 1956 example, meanwhile, is by Fritz Wegner.

Now I can’t tell you very much about him, I’m afraid, except that he has quite possibly gone on to illustrate children’s books, including some by Allen Ahlberg. Which might lead me on to a post tomorrow. I shall say no more until then.

This isn’t strictly a telegram, but it is a greeting. It’s by Patrick Tilley, and was designed to send postal orders in.

Now these do come up on eBay every so often and aren’t expensive at all – the Wegner sold a couple of months ago for just £6. So if you want lovely graphics for not very much money at all, the telegram is your friend. And no one will ever say that about an email.

Clean as new

other

Now it’s not often that I get to discover a whole new genre of posters, but today I can share just that with you. Dry cleaning posters.

This whole collection from, I am guessing, the 60s and 70s, was sent to Quad Royal by Roly Seaton. I think the Kenneth Williams-a-like here is one of my favourites.

Roly acquired them when a dry cleaners in Leeds was closing down, and left them outside the shop for any takers. I imagine them having been very dapper in Leeds in the 1960s.

And very well textured. But, quite apart from the kitsch amusement value, I’m interested in these posters for a couple of reasons.

One is that they do, once again, show just how the overall standard of graphics had declined by the 1970s. This poster was clearly done by someone whose day job was illustrating Simplicity patterns.

While all that this one has going for it is the fabulous 1970s image of modernity that it wants you to believe in.

Shagpile, smoked glass, round TV; truly this has to be the future.

Now I wouldn’t claim that any of these posters are design classics, and I don’t suppose I’ll ever know who designed them or when, but they do illustrate once again just how little we know of the visual past. Even after just forty or fifty years, so much of the graphic design that people saw on a daily basis has entirely disappeared. And not just from the dry cleaners. Every greengrocer, every chemist, every corner shop would have been full of posters and signs, hand drawn or printed, good or bad, but almost all of which have gone.

What we think of as the appearance of the 1960s is a very partial construct, made up of London Underground posters, a few high end pieces of graphic or corporate identity design which are now collected and revered, and perhaps a few films. But what most people saw on a daily basis was very, very different – and perhaps as hard to recreate now as the mindset of the Middle Ages. It’s a sobering thought.

Country pleasures

designers, London Transport

The car broke down on the way home last night, and real life is generally intruding in one way or another, so proper posting will resume tomorrow.

In the meantime, have this by way of an apology.

It’s by Sheila Stratton, it’s from 1954 and it’s one half of a pair poster, thus.

And that’s pretty much all I can tell you about it, other than it is completely wonderful.

I tripped across it by accident in the LT collection a while back, and was so taken with it that I saved it for a day like today. But I can’t seem to find out any more about Sheila Stratton, and this seems to be the only poster design of hers I can turn up, so if anyone has any more information, please do let me know. And, even better, if you’ve got a spare one, the contact form is on the tab above. I have a very good bit of wall just waiting.

Sepsis, fuel and dark beer

auctions

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, the Onslows catalogue is now up and complete – eighteen lovely pages of posters for you to look at it, and all of which you can bid for via the internet.

So with the sale less than two weeks away, I thought I’d better take a proper look.

If you are a fan of a) World War One and Two, b) Guinness or c) French posters, you’re in luck, as there’s plenty of all of those.

This Mount/Evans salvage poster is probably my favourite of the WW2 lots – and one I’ve never seen before as well. Large tranches of the rest – unless you like H.M. Bateman cartoons – are more of historical than graphic interest. Although, having said that, I rather like this railway fuel saving poster too.

As well as this fantastically stark warning – also from the railways.

At an estimate of £70-£100, I might even think about that, were it not for the fact that I’d never ever put it up on the wall.

Then (lots 246 – 250 should you be looking for them) there are a small cache of classics, including Henrion, Keeley and three by Abram Games.

Every one a classic, but all also sufficiently grim that I can’t see any of them going up around the house any time soon.

In the world of Guinness, meanwhile, there are a few Gilroy classics on offer, but I rather like this 1962 one by R Peppe, not just for being different, but it does help.

And after that, I just got a bit overwhelmed. There are film posters, London Transport posters – including this 1953 gem by Sheila Robinson.

We once sold a poster of hers once; with hindsight I have no idea why.

There’s also this 1964 design for Kew Gardens, which is by Tom Eckersley’s wife, Mary Kessel, poster trivia fans.

There are of course railway posters, including Terence Cuneo’s Pictures of Trains, lots of 1972 Munich Olympic posters about which I know nothing, and – as mentioned in my last post – industrial quantities of Shell educational posters, at least 22, although I might well have missed some. The Hillier is still the best one on offer, although I am also a big fan of the David Gentleman series on The Roads of Britain.

There’s at least one missing here – The Great West Road with his wonderful image of Silbury Hill – and quite possibly more, but they’re still a great set on a deeply under-rated subject. But I will not digress.

If your a fan of Kraftwerk, you might want to buy this.

And finally (because I am rambling furiously and must stop) I like this, for no good reason at all.

Surely that prize specimen has to be worth more than the £30-40 estimate.

This is of course a fantastically partial review of what’s on offer, and has almost certainly left out all the most valuable posters. So please do and take a look for yourselves, and I’ll come back once the auction’s over and see what I missed out first time around.

Great Northern Games

designers

Today, a public information broadcast for those of you in the North of England.

No, not that the London Underground is more efficient than trams. Rather, Abram Games : Maximum Meaning, Minimum Means is opening at the Dean Clough Crossley Gallery in Huddersfield (actually the gallery is in Halifax I am told, sorry about that) on Saturday.

This is a Design Museum touring exhibition, of posters, sketches, product designs and so on, and has to be well worth the price of admission, because it’s free. Rude not to if you ask me.

A couple of caveats though. One is not to look at the Dean Clough website if you want to find out about it, as there’s nothing there – I got the information about the exhibition from here instead.

And I also can’t promise you that any of these posters will be there; I’m afraid that I’ve just been pleasing myself and finding some less well known of his designs. But do let me know what they are showing if you do go.