Bromfield Archives - Page 2 of 2

The New Wave

I thought I’d said pretty much everything I could say about Sotherans by now, in particular about the unlikelihood of being able to sell posters at such prices in a world where, thanks to the internet, everyone should agree on what a poster is worth. But it seems that modern technology has made precisely no difference at all to their business model, because this year they have once again produced a new catalogue, and the prices are just as jaw-dropping as they have ever been.

Anglesey Norman Wilkinson LMS Poster 1930
Norman Wilkinson, 1930, £1,995 – sold

So far, so not news. But this set of posters is worth taking a look at, because it marks an interesting change in the focus of the company, and so perhaps also a movement in the market more generally.

It is true that they still begin with the traditional railway landscape/Terence Cuneo favourites that we have come to know, like this Somerset poster by Jack Merriott.

Jack Merriott Somerset British Railways vintage poster 1960
Jack Merriott, 1960, £1,500

I do also have to note that this Somerset British Railways Map is apparently £760, unbacked, mostly because we bought one for £16.99 on eBay a while back.

JP Sayers British Railways Somerset Map
J P Sayers, 1937, £765

And then sold it for £56 a few years later. I thought we’d done well, but clearly not.

But there aren’t as many of these as you’d expect. Very soon the catalogue shifts into an entirely different gear, one which might be called cheerful British kitsch.

Bexhill on Sea vintage british railways poster 1961
Anonymous,1961, £800

In fact a few pages in the catalogue look more like a romp through Quad Royal than an up-market poster sale.

There are some good posters in here – I did actually type great and then deleted it, because mostly they’re not. They’re bright, they’re very 1950s, but what they are not is classic graphic design (although I might just have to make an exception for a this stick of rock).

Eastbourne vintage travel poster 1950 Bromfield British Railways
Bromfield, 1950, £685 – sold

What’s really interesting though is that almost all of them have sold, and for prices that they just wouldn’t reach anywhere else.

Southport, vintage British Railways travel poster 1965
Anonymous, 1965 (??), £485

The interest in this style is not entirely a new thing. When I first started going to poster auctions in about 2002, Christies had just started selling these kinds of poster, and they were doing very well in the their auctions too. But when Christies introduced their new £800 minimum lot price, this rather ruled them out. Clearly though, as this catalogue shows, the demand for them hasn’t gone away.

R M Lander come to hastings by train vintage british railways poster 1962
Lander, 1962, £685 – sold

Sotherans could be accused of pushing it to the limit, mind you. As I’ve mentioned before, these two Harry Stevens posters are not exactly rare.

Harry Stevens vintage London Transport poster Travel Enquiries
Harry Stevens, 1974, £85 – sold

HArry Stevens litter vintage 1974 London Transport poster
Harry Stevens, 1974, £85 – sold

In fact they have been swilling all over eBay for some time. Right now you can buy a framed copy of the top poster for £21 should you wish, and a portrait version of the lower one for £23. Which does make me wonder whether Sotheran’s buyers are too foppish and tweedy to have come across the internet at all.

But it goes further. There are a slew of posters on there without much in the way of merit.

Birthday Savings vintage post office savings bank poster Rex Moreton 1960
Rex Moreton, 1960, £195 – sold

Happy and Carefree vintage Post office savings bank poster GPO 1960
Anonymous, c.1960, £125

They’ve sold too, when you’d struggle to get a tenner for them on eBay. Really, who are these people? And how can I sell them some posters?

To be fair, there are also one or two nice GPO posters in there too, like this Eric Fraser.

Eric Fraser, vintage GPO poster, Neutron generator c1930-40
Eric Fraser, c.1930-40, £225

Along with one or two good LT ones too.

Peter Roberson London Museums vintage London Transport poster 1956
Peter Roberson, 1956, £500

Enid Marx vintage London Transport poster 1965 The Science Museum
Enid Marx, 1965, £500

Although this William Fenton has to be in the ‘stretching it to get a tenner on eBay’ category.

William Fenton dull bus vintage London Transport poster of dull buses
William Fenton, 1969, £250

While you’d have to pay me to take this one away.

Bus Stop Poster 1970
Anonymous, 1970, £55

Worth noting too is this Mount Evans, which has to be one of the better pieces of post war design in the whole catalogue.

Mount Evans Britain CoI poster 1967
Mount/Evans, 1967, £350

The style is modern rather than kitsch, but it still represents the same movement away from landscapey railway posters and towards something more interesting (at least if you’re me).

So what does it all mean? My first guess would have been that the world is running out of railway posters and so dealers like Sotherans have been forced to diversify. But in fact, it’s the more modern posters which have been selling for them, leaving more traditional fare like the Somerset posters still for sale. So this must be what people, even the rareified breed who go to Sotherans want these days. Which is probably worth noting, not least because it gives the rest of us a good chance to do some upselling from eBay.

Now, I would send you off to the Sotherans catalogue to take a look at what’s sold for yourself. But literally while I was typing this post, they took that page down, although you can still see an online version of the print catalogue. So I think that more of the posters than I have listed are sold, but I’m not able to check that any more. They have, however, replaced it with a new set of posters for sale, including a very interesting set of GPO Savings posters. I’ll take a proper look at them (and their prices) soon, but if you want to take a peek before then, you can find them here.

By Eck

auctions

Hurrah, an auction; it feels as though we haven’t had one of those for ages. Even better, an interesting auction too. It’s Great Central Railwayana (9 April, Stoneleigh Showground, just in case you’re in the area). As it’s a railwayana sale, there is of course a lot of this kind of thing, here by Claude Buckle.

Because it’s a railwayana sale, there are also no estimates (why is that?) or dates either, so I can’t tell you very much about any of these posters. I can tell you that I quite like this one, more for its use of ‘twixt’ than its slightly archaic style.

And that I had to post this one, if only so that I can say by Eck.

Which is of course exactly what the picture shows.

Other than that, there is an early example of a photographic poster, which is rare, but not exactly pleasing on the eye.

Although I do rather want one of those swimsuits.

And another chance to revel in the delightfulness that is the camping coach.

As well as this Bromfield poster, which is simply good.

But the real reason that I’m enthusiastic about this auction is that they seem to have stumbled across a previously unknown treasure trove of kitsch, advertising Dublin, Blackpool and Bognor Regis for starters.

The Ladybird school of illustration is quite well represented, with not just Bognor above, but also this classic.

There are more besides, but my poster of the sale, for its pure distillation of 1950s camp has to be this one.

Oh I do wish there were estimates so I knew whether or not I could afford it.

Travel Safely

exhibitions

Karen at Travel on Paper emailed earlier this week to say that they are having an Open Studio this weekend.

Now, we don’t advertise just any old event here on Quad Royal. But she swayed me by including two fabulous Christmas coach posters along with the invite.

Father Christmas at the wheel, above, is by Clarke, and the reindeer by Bromfield.

Which makes a couple of excellent bonus images for the advent calendar, so thank you very much to them. There will be more from the coach companies later this month, once the GPO have calmed down a bit.

Should you want to turn up and see more of this kind of thing in the meantime, their Open Studio is:
10-12 DECEMBER – Friday evening 6-9pm Saturday & Sunday12-5pm
and they live at:
Clockwork Studios, First Floor, 38B Southwell Road Camberwell SE5 9PG

This is half a mile from where I used to live, but over 100 miles from where I live now, so sadly I won’t be there. But have fun if you are.

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.

Auction thoughts

auctions

Once the dust had settled, I had hoped to come up with some conclusions about the Morphets bus and train extravaganza of last week. But the more I look at the results, the more my brain becomes addled. This isn’t just the result of the scale of it all, although that hasn’t got any better, it’s also because I’m not entirely sure there are that many conclusions to be drawn.

So let’s start with some simple thoughts. Expensive posters sold for lots of money.

This went for £2400, which is pretty much what I’ve seen it go for every time.

People still like to buy pictures of trains. It seems that they also like to buy pictures of motorbikes too.

Any other reason for that fetching £300 rather escapes me.

People like pictures which look like real things in general. So this Riley fetched £500,

while the Amstutz of the same subject only went for £240. (Apparently it is possible to go and stay on restored camping coaches even today. I must investigate further.)

Most of all though, what people like to buy most of all are nice pictures of landscapes which look a bit like proper art. So posters like these,

are highly desirable and go for £600 and £750 respectively.

This rule seems to work for bus posters too – this Lander reached a very respectable £340.

Although even I can see the appeal of that one.

But as I mentioned before, things which looked less like fields and more like design didn’t do so well. The Paddens, Coopers and their like didn’t reach anything like the prices I expected. There were a few exceptions to this which are worth taking a look at.

Firstly, kitschy 50s graphics seemed to be selling well – this Bromfield fetched £440.

While at a lower level, this rather nice Studio Seven pair fetched £70, more than most coach posters were managing to do.

Even more odd was that, in a complete reversal of the normal situation, artworks fetched more than the original posters. Royston Cooper’s airport artwork went for £320,

when you could have picked up the poster, as one of a pair, for £38.

While this Daphne Padden ark-work sold for £240, more than any of her individual posters made. Go figure.

But there was one big exception to the rule that good design didn’t sell – although perhaps not quite so much of an exception considering that it is a picture of a field as well.

Tom Eckersley’s Lincolnshire reached £550. Two readers of this blog battled with us over it – we lost but it’s going to a good home over in Norfolk so I don’t mind. Not too much anyway.