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Right, there is no way on earth that I am going to be able to do today’s auction justice. This is partly because I am tired (I had to get up at 5.45 am to go to Stonehenge, don’t ask) and partly because it is tomorrow, but mainly because it is just such a vast, sprawling and wonderful beast that it would be impossible to cover all the highlights in one blog post. So this is just a taster, and you really do have to go and look at the catalogue yourself.

The auction in question is the posthumous sale of the collection of Bob Date, who was a dealer in books and ephemera, and clearly blessed with exceptional taste. Along with the collecting gene, clearly, as there is tons of the stuff.

How do I know he had good taste? Well he liked Barnett Freedman, to start with.

Lot 219, est. £150-200

But there’s so much more than just catalogues. How about an accordion folded, peepshow diorama?

Lot 217, est £300-500

Or perhaps an entire archive of more than a hundred items of almost limitless Freedman glory?

Lot 221, est. £2,000-3,000

And there are also posters too, and not just by Freedman either, although he is of course represented.

Lot 846, est. £500-700 (two posters)

And not just by the known posters either. This – which I assume is for the Festival of Britain – is fantastic. If somewhat large.

Lot 911, £1,000-2,000

And there’s plenty of posters by other artists too, scattered throughout the tail end of the auction.

Andrew Power, 1933, lot 864, est. £500-800

Paxton Chadwick, 1933, lot 933, est. £100-150

Dame Laura Knight, lot 927, est. £50-70

And not just posters, but books about posters too, whole lots of them. And books about canals, and trains, and architecture, and books of designs for the Curwen Press. And then there’s the ephemera, which is here in industrial quantities. You could probably start up as a dealer just by buying one lot like this.

A collection of approx. five hundred and forty items, to include: labels; advertising; book plates; packaging; a few postcards; etc., 19th century to modern, largely in fine condition. (Approx. 540)

That’s lot 98, if you’re interested, estimated at £200-300. Although I have no idea how the values will work out tomorrow, it really could go either way. Possibly these are wild under-estimates and there will be a crazed frenzy of buying the like of which I have not seen for a while. Equally, it could go the way of Morphets, and people will be so boggled by the sheer volume of stuff for sale that some things will slip by for almost nothing.

I am, obviously, hoping for the latter as there are one or two things we’ve got our eye on, but I have to say I think it’s a pipe dream. Over the last few days, the estimate on one item I’ve been looking at – a Paul Nash lithograph since you ask – has risen from £150-200, to £500-700. Which means we won’t be getting that, or much else either I should think. But watch this space.

Highs and lows

auctions, London Transport

So, as previously advertised, it’s time to consider the Christies London Transport Sale. Mostly this boils down to just one thought which is that is was really very expensive, and if things carry on like this we won’t be buying very many posters in the future. A large chunk of what sold could be put up in support of this proposition, but the prime example has to be the Edward Wadsworth Imperial War Museum poster.

£37,250 of your pounds for that, which was the highest price in the sale. And an awful lot of money for a poster if you ask me.

Other winners include Charles Paine, with these two Boat Race posters going for £25,000 and £10,000 respectively.

Another popular choice was Andrew Power (aka Sybil Andrews), noted by Mr Crownfolio, who was watching the whole thing go by, as doing particularly well.

The top poster went for £25,000, the lower one for £13,000.

I’ve heard from a couple of sources that the London Transport Museum ‘are very pleased’. Well they would be, wouldn’t they.

I’m not sure if I’m pleased though, and this isn’t just because I might never be buying a poster again (and if I do, the odds are that it won’t be from Christies). I’m also bothered because I can’t make head nor tail of the results. There seems to be no pattern at all.

You see I look at this Misha Black/Kraber poster and go, ooh, prices for Modernism are up, given that it reached £5.250.

But then this pair goes for only £625 and blows my theory out of the water.

I’d like to say that Art Deco is going out of fashion, given that this Marty went for just £1,625, much lower than many posters.

But then others are holding their prices – thisDupas, for example fetched £5,625.

I could therefore conclude that people are silly, perhaps, as the Marty posters are much better, but that’s just my opinion and clearly not borne out by actual prices.

The same is even true in the case of individual designers – or pairs. This Eckersley Lombers was £3,500

But this one went for just £688.

They’re both teeny-tiny bus posters; admittedly the cheaper one does have mad staring eyes, but I’ve never seen it before, so it’s more interesting. Isn’t it?

There was the same variation in prices for McKnight Kauffer too, with this 1931 design fetching £12,500.

While his Buckingham Palace design of three years later went for just £688, and earlier works fetched even less.

What is it possible to conclude from all this confusion then? Mostly it looks like people who are considerably richer than me throwing money at posters and seeing what sticks, in a sale where mass hysteria had the upper hand over exhaustion. A few people have emailed me with examples of posters which sold for way over their ‘usual’ prices in the sale. One obvious one for me was this pair of Wadsworth designs for the South Kensington Museums, posters which are dear to my heart.

These have been up for auction recently, in good condition, and fetched well under £1,000. Go, as they say, figure.

Before the sale, I wondered on here whether the London Transport Museum was selling because they thought that the market for this era of posters was at its peak. I have no idea whether they believed it or not, but the sale would seem to suggest otherwise. What was also interesting was the number of foreign bids too. So I don’t think we can call the top of the market yet.

But a different question is whether these prices now set the standard, or whether this sale will be a one-off freak event in which people have paid over the odds because of provenance, over-excitement or whatever. Interestingly, we won’t have to wait too long to find out. The next Christies Poster Sale is, to my surprise, on 1 November. I’ll take a look at that next week. In the meantime, please put your thoughts on this sale in that nice box beneath. Thank you.

Collectors and cows

auctions

I don’t normally bother you with auction results except for the biggest sales. But Swann Galeries sent me the results for their 15 November poster sale which I wrote about a few weeks ago. And it’s noteworthy for two things.

Number one is this.

It went for, wait for it, $24,000 – the second most expensive poster they sold at that auction. Which is a fairly extraordinary result for a London Transport poster. Almost everything else in the list of high-fliers is a trad tourism poster from the 1920s or a picture of a cruise ship. I’m surprised and impressed.

Although this did also make $10,800 t00.

The catalogue text could only have been written by an American. One who has never seen the English seaside.

Here, in a visual snippet worthy of Brideshead Revisited, Higgins’s exceptional Art Deco style captures the perfect essence of an elegant evening at a British holiday destination.

If only.

The other brilliant thing about Swann’s results, though, is that they tell me just a bit about who bought the poster, at least whether it’s a collector or a dealer. So both of those ones above went to collectors, for example.

One of the real sadnesses about internet bidding, is that I just don’t know who’s bought anything any more. Back in the old and draughty days of Onslows at Marble Arch, I knew exactly who had beaten me to a gem, and who else was hoovering up all of the odds and ends for £20 a lot like us. I can’t even see who’s bought a poster on eBay now. So it’s always good to hear even just a little bit about where these things are going.

Elsewhere, Onslows have put up a preview for their December sale. The auction advertises itself as ‘Important Railway Posters’ so it is perhaps no surprise that the preview features more pictures of trains than I consider strictly necessary in one place (a detailed image of a train being repaired at Crewe being perhaps the apotheosis of this). Although, as pictures of trains go, this one isn’t bad.

It’s by Zec, it’s from 1932, and Onslows are estimating that it will go for £10,000-15,000 in the sale. Which could make it the most expensive railway poster they’ve ever sold. We shall see how hard times really are then, shan’t we?

The only one I can muster up any real enthusiasm for is this Bromfield from 1956.

Although I didn’t buy it for £440 at Morphets, so I rather doubt that I will buy it at Onslows’ estimate of £700-1,000 either.

Finally, Sotherans have put a new(ish) catalogue of posters on their site. It’s all digital and so fully carbon neutral, whoop de doop.

It is, of course, still eye-achingly expensive. I’ve gone on about them often enough before, so you can take my complaints as read this time. Although I am starting to get inured to their prices. To the extent that £195 each for these seems really quite reasonable.

This may of course be down to the fact that we own two of these cows already, and I really, really need the third.

Poster pot

auctions

As if last week didn’t give you enough posters to fritter your monies away on, there are still more. Really quite a lot more too.

First, Swann Galleries, whose auction is on 15th November. Usually the appearance of a whole swathe of high quality London Underground posters on the other side of the Atlantic would be worth making a fuss over. This time though, unfortunately for them, they’re in competition with the stellar collection on sale at Christies this month. With the result that theirs don’t look quite as enticing.

Alma Faulkner vintage London Transport poster 1928
Alma Faulkner, 1928, est. $1,000-1,500

This may just be because I am jaded. But I also think that there’s a different feel to this collection – a bit more pastel and bucolic, possibly even a bit more fey, which means that they don’t appeal to me as much.

Austin Cooper vintage London Transport poster out of doors 1923
Austin Cooper, 1923, est. $1,500-2,000

There are a few exceptions to this, though. One is this wonderful piece of modernism by Andrew Power (which, the catalogue tells me, was a pseudonym used by Sybil Andrews, something I didn’t know).

Andrew Power wimbledon vintage london transport poster 1933
Andrew Power, 1933, est. $4,000-6,000

There is also this fabulous vision of modern transport.

Harold McCready vintage London transport tram poster 1930
Harold McCready, 1930, est. $1,200-1,800

Although it does make me very unsure about taking a tram, for fear of the large explosion when they all reach the centre.

Even further away in San Francisco, Poster Connection have only a handful British posters at all in their auction on 6th November. Your starter for ten are two Frank Newboulds for the Ideal Home exhibition.

Frank Newbould 1928 vintage Ideal Home poster
Frank Newbould, 1928, est. $600.

My favourites are these two Lewitt-Hims for BOAC.

Lewitt Him vintage BOAC poster 1948
Lewitt Him, 1948, est. $400.

Lewitt Him, 1948, est. $500

And there’s also a Games.

Abram Games BOAC poster 1949
Abram Games, 1949, est. $500

Plus a couple of interesting McKnight Kauffers too.

mcKnight Kauffre vintage American Airlines poster
McKnight Kauffer, 1948, est. $700.

McKnight Kauffer, 1948, est. $800

The whole catalogue is worth looking at though, as they have put together a selection of the European greats, including Herbert Leupin, Donald Brun and Raymond Savignac.

Donald Brun 1949 Vintage poster
Donald Brun, 1949, est. $300

And I’ve rather taken a shine to these two by Max Bill, mainly because no one in Britain ever really did type like this and so I pine for it.

Max Bill vintage poster 1933
Max Bill, 1933, est. $1,700

Max Bill vintage poster 1933
Max Bill, 1933, est. $1,000

That’s not all, either. G.W. Railwayana have an auction on 13 November (with no estimates in the catalogue, in case you wonder why I haven’t attached them). For those of us who aren’t after Pictures of Trains, there are only a few curiosities, like this rather nice bit of early 1960s Ladybird book styling.

British Railways vintage poster barry 1961
Anonymous, 1961

Although this is rather nice – it’s half of a pair poster of London’s Street Markets, from 1949 and would be a lovely thing to look at every day.

London Street Markets vintage poster 1949 AR Thomson
A R Thomson, 1949.

I’m pointing out these GPO Schools posters, simply because they’ve come up for discussion here last week.

These (there’s another one too) are quite late, 1960s, and not very appealing if you ask me (we had some, no idea why, and sold them).

But, if you’re interested in piecing together the archaeology of poster display, this little lot is quite interesting, even though it isn’t a poster.

They’re poster paste pots, designed, I suppose, to be non-spill and to get just the right amount of paste on your Tom Purvis. What’s particularly interesting is that one, unsurprisingly has GWR on it. But the other says Waterlows – who were of course one of the great printers of posters. So is this a very early promotional gift? I need to know.

And finally, who wouldn’t want to be Babycham Coal Queen of 1980?

Yours with Scotland For Me (7 assorted); Visit Moscow; Manchester plus others. A bargain in the making.