bus posters Archives - Page 5 of 5

Art for all

auctions

Tracking down a bargain is hard work these days. There aren’t many to be found at Onslows any more, and even on eBay, something has to be pretty well hidden not to make good money. So pretty much the only pleasure left are the local auctions.

For example this picture and description in Battle:

E R BARTELT London Transport poster print Circa. 1960s, and MENGUY, Colour lithograph poster print, (2), unframed.

also hid this 1961 gem:

Yours for £45, which isn’t bad. And if anyone knows anything about Mr Bartelt, please let me know, as I don’t. (The sale also had a smattering of original railway poster artwork, but it’s hard to get worked up about that at the best of times, and especially not after the art-fest that was Morphets day two.)

There on the other hand, not everything that is hidden turns out to be treasure.

This listing in Essex:

A 1966 Underground poster, by Hans Hunger
30 to 50 (GBP)

(I make no comment)

Could have been one of these two:

Mmm, lovely John Nash architecture. I got quite excited for about ten minutes.

But what was on offer was this.

Still went for £42 though, despite the nibbled edges and unprepossessing frame, which goes to show something, even if I don’t know quite what. Does anyone have any views on what Unger is worth? I rather like the late 50s and 60s underground posters (with the exception above), but perhaps that’s just me.

But of course the real lesson from all this is that, thanks to internet listing and on-line bidding, because we can find these things , everyone else can too. So soon there won’t be any bargains at all. Then what shall I do?

On the buses (or not)

eBay

I keep planning posts, but then they get taken over by events. Like this, another interesting poster that’s popped up on eBay.

This isn’t, I will freely admit, a classic piece of design, but it is an interesting piece of social history. I can’t explain much better than the seller has.

This is one of a series of 3 posters issued by London Transport in 1958 to encourage passengers back onto the buses after a disastrous strike by crews. All 3 posters were drawn by Lobban and featured humorous scenes of people in inclement weather being encouraged onto a bus by a figure with its head made up of the London Transport bullseye.

A brief bit of investigation means that I now know that the 1958 bus strike went on for seven weeks and, everyone seems to agree, had a huge impact on London commuting. In an age of increased car ownership, many people went to work in their car, and never went back to the buses (hence the slight desperation of this poster).

Because of this, many less popular bus routes were axed and garages closed, driving even more people onto their cars or the Tube. And so we arrive at the overcrowded and gridlocked London of today.

So there you go. I have been educated by eBay and now know something I didn’t before. Even if I don’t necessarily want to buy the poster.

A lesson in poster sizes – from Tom Eckersley

useful

I got told off the other day for being poncey, because I described the Post office ‘Properly Packed Parcels Please’ posters as Quad Crowns. Now this is close to being a fair point, but at the same time I think the proper names for poster sizes are lovely things and should be used more.

So, in the spirit of inclusivity and fairness, here is a brief guide to the commonest poster sizes. Then I can keep being poncey when I talk about posters, and everyone will know what on earth I mean. And there’s the added benefit that the title of this blog, and my posting name, may make a bit more sense if you’ve just stumbled here at random.

Our tutor for this lesson will be Tom Eckersley OBE (courtesy of his 1954 book on Poster Design).

The most general proportions of poster sites in Britain are illustrated here:
Extreme lower left: Crown (15 x 20 inches)
Lower left: Double Crown (30 x 20 inches)
Top left: Quad Crown (30 x 40 inches)
Right: Double Royal (40 x 25 inches)

Most of the advertising, GPO posters, film advertising, public information posters and so on were made in the left hand sizes and their variants. They also went bigger – many advertising posters were a 60″ x 40″ single sheet. (We accidentally bought one on eBay once. It’s big. Very big.)

Mr Eckersley has also left out the half size Crown Folio, which I love so much that I have not only taken as my name but will blog about properly one day. This seems to have been the default size for display advertising in Post Offices, and so you find National Savings posters this size, as well as the GPO’s own.

Meanwhile, on the right, the Double Royal (and its bigger sibling, the 40″ x 50″ Quad Royal) were mainly used by the railways and London Transport. I believe that LT posters are still Double Royal these days, although I haven’t actually ventured onto the tube with a measuring tape to verify this. So pretty much any railway or LT poster will be one of these sizes.

Eckersley also mentions two other poster sizes which don’t fit these proportions. One is the London bus poster (as seen for sale elsewhere), which is 10″ x 13″.

And the other is a “long van strip poster”. I’ve only really mentioned this so that I can include a colour version of the poster he uses as illustration (with thanks to the BPMA once again).

It’s by Lewitt Him, from 1940 and I want it. But I’ve never ever seen one of these van posters for sale – they were presumably just chucked out when they went out of date. Unless anyone happens to have one that they might want to get rid of…

And a final word from Mr Eckersley. This is how he illustrates lithographic colour printing. It could have been a poster in its own right.

Why would you want to buy a poster?

eBay

I could say quite a lot about railwayana and other transport obsessives. And even more about eBay. But for now, it’s enough just to say that one reason to buy a poster might be to decorate your bus. Yes, you heard me right there.

That’s why this eBay seller is suggesting you buy these. The left hand one is a pretty grim bit of 1970s brown, but the other one isn’t bad at all, particularly for £1.99 + postage. And there are nine, so you can all have one. Even if you haven’t got a Routemaster.

The Lord Mayor’s Show poster is by Peter Roberson who did a fair amount for London Transport, including this

which is about as wonderfully 1956 as it is possible to be.