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Pictures down the telephone line

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Today, dancing about architecture. Or at least its close relative, podcasting about posters.

Actually, I’m being a bit unfair here. What I’ve been listening to is historian Scott Anthony on the BPMA podcast about Stephen Tallents, the man who brought artists to the GPO poster and Night Mail to the nation. Although the lecture did still have slides, and yes, I couldn’t see them.

poster by Barnett Freedman commissioned under Tallent’s watch at the GPO

Nonetheless, this was a useful listen, not least as a reminder of just how huge and influential the GPO was in the inter-war years. The largest employer in Britain, with over quarter of a million employees, it had a monopoly of communications which is almost unimaginable today, including oversight of the BBC. So Tallents, as their head of public relations, had enormous influence to wield and a huge audience for his efforts.

McKnight Kauffer airmail vintage GPO poster
McKnight Kauffer Airmail Routes for GPO 1935

What fascinates me most is how much the great poster art of the pre and post war periods depended on the individual patronage of a few idiosyncratic individuals. This does not only mean Tallents – who first started using talented designers when he was at the Empire Marketing Board before joining the GPO.

Austin Cooper for Empire Marketing Board, 1933

Also following a remarkably similar track were characters such as Jack Beddington at Shell,

Graham Sutherland Swanage Shell poster
Graham Sutherland, Swanage for Shell

and of course Frank Pick at London Transport.

So why did they do it? It’s a question that I think is important, because their attitude lingered on well after the individuals themselves had left their jobs. Major companies and institutions employed great designers and artists to produce their publicity right up until the 1960s, simply because by then it was the done thing. So how, and why did it start?

Anthony believes that this is mostly the corporate expression of the age-old notion of patronage. Great designers and artists were employed because that’s what important people have always done; it’s just that, after the First World War, the important people happened to be companies and public institutions rather than dukes and kings. There is some truth in that. Nikolaus Pevsner said of Frank Pick that he was the “Lorenzo the Magnificent of our age”.

Man Ray London Transport vintage poster
Man Ray for London Transport

It’s almost possible to justify this as a logical business decision: great artists = great corporate image, which is how Anthony sees it. But I also think that there is more to it than that. In particular, there is a very particular belief in this period, associated with British modernism-lite, that design can be Good For You. The lower orders will be morally improved, or at very least will stop liking chintz and veneers and pictures of kittens, if we just expose them to what great art and design is. In its later incarnations, it brings us Utility furniture (the nation’s taste will be improved by good design because we won’t let them buy anything else) and tower blocks, which will make them happy people via the medium of modernist architecture. But before the war, its main expression was in the commissioning of posters.

Both Jack Beddington and Frank Pick were trying to create art galleries which, while making Shell and London Transport look like forward thinking and enlightened companies, would also enrich the cultural lives of the people who saw them.

BEn Nicholson for Shell vintage poster
Paul Nash for Shell

And as a result they both – unlike for example the railway companies – tended to commission artists at least as much as designers. Shell used Paul Nash, Graham Sutherland, Duncan Grant and Ben Nicholson. While London Transport commissioned Man Ray as well as McKnight Kauffer. Even Stephen Tallents commissioned Vanessa Bell to produce a poster for the GPO (although it was never used)

Shell explicity referrred to their lorries which carried their posters on the sides as a travelling gallery, and as John Hewitt notes, they are displayed in a ‘frame’ of white space, with the text not allowed to encroach on the image, allowing viewers to see the design as an artwork as well as advertising.

Shell Lorry with poster billboard
Shell lorry with billboard, 1925

For London Transport, Pick was even more explicit. In 1935 he described the whole of London Transport as a work of modernist art.

…underneath all the commercial activities of the Board, underneath all its engineering and operation, there is the revelation and realisation of something which is in the nature of a work of art…It is in fact a conception of a metropolis as a centre of life, of civilisation, more intense, more eager, more vitalising than has ever so far obtained.

And how better to express that than in the modernist forms of McKnight Kauffer, for example?

Even the GPO was not immune. Anthony pointed out in the podcast that there was a Poster Advisory Group, set up by Tallents, which was there to ensure that the artworks were only of the highest quality. Its members were Kenneth Clark, art historian and general arbiter of taste, the art critic Clive Bell and Shell’s Jack Beddington (Kenneth Clark opened exhibitions of Shell posters for Beddington; the world of good taste was a small one). Now, this for me is a real give away about the purposes of these posters. This committee isn’t a group of people who are going to have an opinion about the commercial effectiveness of posters, they are simply there to make sure that they conforms to the highest possible standards of prevailing artistic merit. The GPO, being such a huge national institution, has a moral duty to improve the quality of Britain, and Kenneth Clark and co are going to make sure that they stick to the task. (I’d quite like, incidentally, to read the minutes of this august body. Perhaps I’ll turn into a historian and do that one day).

(This, by Theyre Lee Elliott was the first design they approved in 1935).

But now those attitudes have almost completely disappeared. We are too cynical to believe that good design, or indeed anything done by a corporation, can improve us. The only national institution which has a vestige of these attitudes remaining, is the BBC, which we still believe should do us good rather than make a profit. Whenever people talk about the BBC, though, these attitudes are always described, somewhat disparagingly, as Reithian. I think that’s a bit unfair on poor old Lord Reith. What Scott Anthony and all these posters have shown us is that the idea that great national institutions should improve our lives in some way, was all around between the wars. It’s just that Lord Reith’s ideas of how this should be done are pretty much the only ones which remain.

As if to demonstrate how much the ideas of what institutions should do for us have changed, an ad for the Post Office came up on Spotify while I was writing this. Twice. They’re giving away iTunes gift cards to coincide with stamps of great album covers. But the end line of the advertisement is “Win enough free music to annoy loads more people”. Need I say any more.

The next BPMA podcast, meanwhile, is Paul Rennie, talking about GPO posters. As someone who relishes a challenge, I’m rather looking forward to it.

Eckersley discovered (twice)

designers, eBay

I hadn’t meant to return to Tom Eckersley so soon, but Mr Crownfolio came across this on eBay.

“What do you think?” he said.

“I think it’s very expensive,” I said. With a starting price at £100, it certainly is, even if it is a limited edition of 500.

“Do you know what,” he said after we had stared at the screen for a few more minutes. “I think we’ve got this on the bookshelves downstairs.”

I looked blankly at him, certain that I have never seen this book before in my life. But it turns out that he’s right. Which means that we can’t have paid £100 for it as I would definitely have remembered any transaction of that sort (to put this into perspective, I could count the number of posters that we have paid more than £100 for pretty much on the fingers of one hand). Perhaps it isn’t the limited edition, we thought – but it is too, copy number 100. You may consider me surprised.

While this whole episode may have left me wondering how close I am to utter senility, the upside in terms of the blog is that I can show you some of the book – in particular a few images that don’t seem to be in the Eckersley archive. (Apologies, incidentally, for the slightly poor quality of the scans; I am terrified of damaging the spine of a book that is clearly more valuable than I thought – and I’d also say that the colour reproduction in the book isn’t as bright as it might be).

Cover for The Director, 1954

National Bus Company Poster, 1974

Imperial War Museum Poster, 1981

Apparently the image above Eckersley himself thought to be amongst his best work. I think I can actually remember seeing it displayed on the tube when I visited London, back in the day.

But the book has also made me look at a couple of other designs properly. Like this one, for an exhibition in Sweden in 1960, which is almost impossibly modern for its date.

As well as this, from 1973, which is nothing short of genius in its minimalism.

The other really useful thing about the book is that it has a slightly more detailed and personal biography of Tom Eckersley than you might find on the web. So I’m going to revive my long-lost copy typing skills and put a slightly edited version of it on here for you at some point this week. Illustrated with a few more images from the book. You’ll hardly need to buy a copy yourself.

Finally, one further benefit of all of this is that I have looked at our bookshelves properly (generally they are Mr Crownfolio’s domain) and discovered all sorts of contemporary design and poster annuals, so I will, gradually, get round to scanning and posting about them all.

We’re all going to the zoo tomorrow…

eBay

Now I don’t normally do European posters. I know nothing about their styles or their designers, and I have no idea what anything is worth. This is mostly self-protection; rather too much of my brain is already cluttered up with images and facts about British graphics and posters, when it should be more worried about paid work and what’s for dinner, never mind adding all of Europe to the load. And anyway, if I started finding out about them, I’d discover lots of ones I liked, and then I’d have to buy them and where would it all end. Etc.

But this one has got through the defenses today, mainly because it is such a great bit of photomontage.

Who could fail to like that? I still don’t know anything about it mind you. It’s on eBay, and the listing says it’s by Studio Peso. The listing also says that it’s “fifties”. I have a slight raised eyebrow at that, but then that, given my ignorance, is probably of no consequence. So if anyone reading can tell me anything about it, please do. My mind could be broadened here.

It’s being sold by someone in Belgium who wants €95 for it. Now I think that’s quite reasonable, but please do tell me if you think otherwise. He’s also got a surprising range of other classy posters on offer. Including another one that I am almost tempted to buy.

Apart from the great colour, this is mostly because I visited the Atomium a couple of times as an impressionable teenager, at a time when it had been left to moulder gently since the 1958 expo. So the entire interior, signage and exhibitions inside were all shrines to high 50s design (and optimism about atomic power). This experience of being dipped straight back into the atomic 1950s must be one of the reasons I’m still so fond of the era now. And it is also one of the weirdest structures ever built. (Fancy travelling on an escalator along the arm of an iron crystal? The Atomium is probably the only chance you’ll get.)

But if you haven’t been converted to the world of the Belgian poster, here is something more traditional. And cheaper, even if it is in the States.

I’ve investigated this poster before, and come up with a blank, so if you know anything about it, please do say. But my main observation is that it’s a single sheet, and so impossibly big which, along with the damage at the bottom, will probably keep its value down. Personally, my money’s on the seal, or it would be if I dared dip my toe into European waters.

Find me an artist. From 1953 please

Fun and Games

eBay

Nice and simple today. A high quality poster, in good condition, on sale on eBay.

Here it is, not occluded by the frame as it is in their picture.

It’s a very high quality item* to come up on eBay, and so I’m guessing that the price will end up being rather more than its current £3.45 when it ends on Sunday. Either that or someone’s about to get the bargain of the century. Watch that space.

*People probably do hold back from buying on eBay, especially when something looks as good as this does, fearing that it will be a reprint or a fake. It’s a fair point, especially considering how many modern prints. fridge magnets and postcards come up every time you search. But eBay are getting stricter these days, and the dealers are getting wise to this. So any reprint or new poster will, generally say so somewhere in the listing, even if the print is tiny.

With something like this, expressly described as ‘vintage’ and ‘original’ in the listing, if it didn’t turn out to be the real deal, and you’d paid by Paypal, I think your case for getting a refund would be pretty watertight.

Which isn’t to say that there aren’t scammers, and that it’s safe to buy anything which looks half-way plausible. Just that if I had the slightest thought this was going to go for under £150, I’d have a go myself, because it smells right enough to me. But it won’t. Anyone for a sweepstake on final value here?

And also, for those on a tighter budget, a poster that I’ve never seen before, but rather like despite myself:

It’s an RAF poster, and I can’t find it anywhere else, other than on eBay here for just 99p as it stands today. Something for every pocket, then.

Not laughing, in a perfect world

other

Now I began this post, if I’m honest, intending simply to poke a bit of fun at poster dealers, and in particular the prices they charge.

Because now and again something comes my way which makes this almost irresistible. Like this.

Or to be more precise, this.

Now in my head, nothing, but nothing could make this 1960s railway poster worth £900, even if it is by Claude Buckle. Not the Piccadilly premises of these lovely dealers, nor their need to pay the legions of Sloane Rangers who stroke it daily, nor any other excuse they offer could ever justify that price to me.

And why am I so sure? Because we paid £80 for a lovely bright copy, with another poster thrown in to boot, last year. Although I’m not entirely sure why we did as it’s a bit drab to have around the place and I can’t imagine it will ever end up framed. Only a few edge tears distinguish it from its Mayfair relative. Should you feel like doing the same, it’s pretty easy to pick one up at the railwayana auctions for between £100-£250, and they appear with reasonable regularity.

So far, so quite funny. Although the more I consider it, the more I think the joke is less on the poster dealers than on their clients, who will, after all, have paid several hundred pounds more than they they needed to for this poster.

But then I did a bit more digging, and found the same poster had sold at Christies for £588 and then £657 there (in 2002 and 2004, since you ask). Which makes the Sotherans price look more reasonable, as well as forcing me to reconsider how hard I am laughing – and do some proper thinking to boot.

So, why are people paying £900 for a poster when they could get it for £600, or £250, or even £80? To some degree, they do this because that’s the way the antiques trade (or any branch of it like poster dealing) works. Things, whether they are Claude Buckle posters or undiscovered Rembrandts, are sold at provincial auctions where no one knows what they are and so they go for a little bit. They then work their way up the food chain via specialist auctions or middlemen, costing a bit more each time, until they finally end up in a Mayfair showroom for many, many times what they originally cost. And everyone is happy.

This works because (I’m dredging up my memories of A Level Economics here, forgive me if this makes no sense) the market is imperfect. To be precise, the market information is imperfect – the regional auction doesn’t know it’s a Rembrandt (or a nice poster), the man with bottomless pockets in Central London doesn’t know that he could get it much cheaper somewhere else. And these imperfections are what drives a whole chain of price rises and exchanges.

Except there is one problem with this model now, and that’s the internet. Should you choose to look for it, all the information you ever wanted to know about posters and their prices is out there on the web. And the proof of that is this blog post.

I’m not a poster dealer with twenty years experience, gained in hanging around every provincial and Christies auction, I don’t even live in London. And when I started writing this post, all I knew about that Buckle poster was that a) we had bought one for £80 and b) that there was a dealer in Mayfair pushing the boundaries of plausible pricing. Now, just an hour later, I’ve got its whole auction history at my fingertips, and I’ve also had a crash revision course in the theory of perfect markets.

In theory then, the old model shouldn’t work any more. Thanks to the internet, everyone with more than ten minutes to spare will know that they can get that Claude Buckle poster for £80-£200, they can see which auctions it’s coming up at – and they can even buy it without having to step away from their computers. So they don’t ever need to pay more than the market price. It’s nearly perfect, if you’re an economist that is. Rather less so if you want to make money dealing in posters.

In Piccadilly, people with bottomless pockets probably will still walk into a gallery and buy something for what a dealer says its worth. But elsewhere, I think this is more than just a theoretical model, it is already starting to make a difference. In my previous post about Christies, I’ve already noted the drop in auction prices for post-war posters. Here’s another example, Royston Cooper.

This went for £660 at Christies in 2005, just £200 three years later. There may be other factors involved – the collapse of the world economy, that kind of thing – but I’d still be prepared to bet that the internet and all its information paid a part in that. After all, why would you pay £660 for a poster when you could pick it up for £60 on eBay?

Having said all of that, the imperfect world did have its upsides. Sotherans also have this on offer.

It’s a Shell educational poster by David Gentleman, and they’d like you to pay £198 for it. Now Mr Crownfolio and I went through a phase of rather liking these Shell posters, which means that I’d really like them to be worth the sharp end of £200 each. Because that would mean that there is £7,000 sitting quietly under the spare bed. Sadly, I don’t think it’s really true.