Daphne Padden Archives - Page 7 of 8

Owl Saving Time

designers

I did promise some more Daphne Padden posters in due course, so, now that I have managed to produce some reasonable photographs, here goes. One day I will discover thousands of pounds in my purse and pop out to buy an AO scanner, but until then, you’ll just have to make do with these.

To start, this is a rather eclectic selection, mainly because I haven’t seen any of these before now and it’s good to get them out into the world.

The GPO one is quite straightforward – and rather sweet – although I can’t find it in the BPMA’s catalogue.

The same is true of the ROSPA seat belt poster. (I distinctly remember having seatbelts very much like this, and I suspect the poster is just the right vintage for this to be true!)

But I can’t tell you the first thing about the Carlton Restaurant, other than that I rather like both their colour scheme and the look of their breakfasts.

Any ideas? I think this art work may have been for them as well, simply from the colours and the crockery.

All of these posters came from the sale of Daphne Padden’s work after her death, and sadly came with nothing that might identify them or what they were for. I don’t even know whether they were ones she particularly liked, or simply ones that had survived. So if anyone can tell me anything more, I’d love to know.

Also among them were a whole pile of Post Office Savings Bank posters, including this rather lovely pair promising you fairy-tale endings if only you’d save.

There are also some rather fine animals. I posted the rabbits last week, but the owls also get a starring role on their own.

These I can at least make a stab towards dating. The Post Office Savings Bank turned into the National Savings Bank in 1969, and Padden did posters for both of them in very similar styles and even colour schemes.

So I am guessing that the vast majority of these date from the second half of the 1960s, and perhaps the very early 1970s.

This one, though, feels a bit earlier and is probably my favourite.

That’s not all, either. Next time I’ll post the slightly more familiar, but still wonderful coach posters.

But before then, a couple of footnotes. One is that there’s quite a bit of confusion out there between Daphne Padden and her father, Percy, who also designed posters. If you go through Christies’ past lots, quite a few of them are ascribed simply to ‘Padden’, while this poster is sold as being by Daphne.

Which, given that she was born in 1927 and this poster is most likely earlier than that, seems implausible. But they’re not the only ones to make the mistake. The NMSI also ascribe this one to her (an error which probably goes back to Science and Society photo library cataloguing).

They date it to 1941, but I would have thought it more likely 1930s. Even in 1941, though, Daphne would only have been 14, so again, I think it’s most probably her father’s. There’s a nice tranche of work for someone in attributing out their posters one day, if anyone out there fancies taking it on.

On a more personal note, when the posters were sold, it was sad to see some sentimental items in with them. Here’s her father, in a self-portrait done when he was younger.

And here’s his portrait of Daphne in 1940.

I do hope the pictures went to someone who knew who they were.

Starting Small

designers

I did promise some more Daphne Padden a couple of weeks ago, but there is a vast mound of posters to photograph (forty or more, not counting the duplicates) and with all the windows open for a breeze to stop my brain boiling in the heat, it’s not the easiest job right now.

So, as a starter, here are some small things, but ones that you might not have seen before. (One or two of them might make it onto eBay in the next week or two, as we do now have quite a bit of her stuff…)

I’m guessing that this is another menu for P&O, but I can’t say for sure as it’s blank inside. There is also a rather delightful trident-load of little birds on the back.

Then there’s a BOAC children’s menu.

I don’t know when this was done, but the food police weren’t too much in evidence then; the menu includes chocolate biscuits, preserves and Madeira cake, but no mention of vegetables at all.

This equatorial certificate was for BOAC as well.

She clearly liked all three of these designs, as they’d been framed for display and kept that way.

Finally, there’s a jigsaw for Nestle. My guess would be that this came with a box of chocolates or biscuits.

The lions are particularly fine – and there will be plenty more animals when I do get round to photographing the posters properly. Here’s an owl and four rabbits to whet your appetite until then.

Throw a Coach Party

auctions

It’s here. The much anticipated Morphets everything-you-ever-wanted-to-own-from -the-sixties-and-seventies Malcolm Guest catalogue has arrived at The Saleroom and on their website.

Wales and Coach tours 2 vintage posters from morphets
Donald Smith, two posters for Hants and Dorset Coaches

My brain is going to take a while to absorb it all, especially in this heat – there are over a thousand lots, and with many of them multiples of between two and fifteen posters, I haven’t a clue how many posters are actually for sale. Really quite a lot I should think, and all I’ve been able to do is skim through them. So, for the moment, here are a few nice items chosen at random for your entertainment. And a few first thoughts too.

Bruce Angrave, Party Travel for 8 or more, vintage rail poster morphets sale
Bruce Angrave, Party Travel, British Railways poster

There are huge numbers of posters which I certainly have never come across at auction or illustrated before, from, the whimsical to the modern.

Longman Party Outings By Rail vintage railway poster from Morphets
Longman, Party Outings By Rail, British Railways

John Wright, Rail Rover Tickets, British Railways

And a few which seem to have fallen off the first sale, like this rather lovely bit of GWR modernism.

Ralph Mott Factories and Factory Sites, GWR

There are also a lot of coach posters in addition to the railway collection – well over three hundred.

Studio Seven, Hire a Coach

Karo/Jacques, Luxury Coach Tours; Send Your Parcels by Bus

But mostly it’s the sheer quantity of posters itself that I find overwhelming. I could – and probably will – do a whole post just about the Royston Coopers that they have, most of which I’ve never seen before.

I should also point out that, once again, the estimates are insanely low. That Royston Cooper is estimated at £50-100, as are the two Daphne Paddens below.

If even half the lots go for close to these estimates I will a) eat my hat and b) need a removal van to bring all of my purchases down from Harrogate.

It gets even madder when you start to look at the multiples.

Anyone fancy the Games, Eckersley and two Ungers above for £100 to £150? I do, but I also don’t rate my chances too highly on that.

A full appraisal will follow in due course, but it really is worth going to take a look yourself – and then please do come back and tell me what you think.

Daphne Padden

designers

After posting briefly about her a while back, I’ve been trying to find out more about Daphne Padden and her very individual poster designs.

Some of my favourites are the ones she created for British coach companies in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

They’re almost child-like in their simplicity and delight – I’ve never seen such an unthreatening bunch of Vikings out on the rampage – but are nonetheless sophisticated pieces of design.

To my surprise, although plenty of people really love her work, I couldn’t really find anything on the web about her, so I’ve been forced into doing some proper research. Sadly, what I discovered is that I’d begun just a bit too late, as she died in September last year. I really hope she knew that people liked her earlier work so much.

But I have been able to find out a few more details about her life. Daphne Padden was born on 21st May 1927, and was the daughter of Percy Padden ARCA who was both a fine artist and a poster designer himself. Here are a couple of his designs – the bus poster is from 1921, I am guessing that the railway one is from the late twenties or early thirties, but I can’t find a date.

As for most of the rest of the story, perhaps it’s best if she tells it in her own words – quite literally. This is the information which she produced for exhibitions of her work.

She worked as a graphic designer from the mid-fifties until, I think, the mid-1970s. Here are a couple of poster designs from 1956 and 1957 respectively.

As her work evolved, she developed a very sharp and distinctive graphic style, mostly created using cut-paper collage.

Here’s one of her originals.

Unfortunately the glue hasn’t aged as well as the design.

As she mentioned above, she also did some more corporate design work. Here’s some in-store display material for M&S, in a world where sell-by dates were an exciting new invention.

But sometime in the 70s, she changed direction and became a fine artist, producing wildlife paintings on a miniature scale.

These barn owls are only 6″ x 5″ in real life, and if you want to see more, her gallery has some here.

It’s not a completely surprising departure, because there are animals in quite a few of her posters, from this cat,

to this oddball collection of travellers (I am a particular fan of the mole driver).

She didn’t do much work in the last five or six years because of ill-health, and she died on 21 September 2009.

Now I have to confess that I’ve been sitting on this information for a few weeks now, because Daphne Padden’s own archive of designs and posters has been up for auction. I’m pleased to say that we did win some, but unfortunately it’s all still in transit and so I can’t show you any of them yet. So there will be another post in due course when they arrive. I’m also hoping to be in touch with some of her friends as well, in which case I will post a more extended biography when I can.

Thanks to Lincoln Joyce Fine Art and Gumersalls Solicitors for help with information, and to Allison for the borrowing once more of her Daphne Padden Flickr set.

The ghosts of Notting Hill Gate

London Transport

I’m always intrigued by the afterlife of posters. Most design history – and indeed almost any kind of writing about them – concentrates on how they were made, who designed them, how they were printed and so on. But I’m just as interested in what happened to them afterwards. What did people think about them as they walked past every day? Were there lots of ugly ones as well as the good designs we treasure now? Why do some survive and not others?

Which is why I was so fascinated to find this photo set on Flickr. Here are a complete wall of posters, just as someone might have walked past them (well, a bit dirtier) preserved, not in aspic, but in a forgotten corner of the London Underground.

To be precise, they’re in a disused passageway at Notting Hill Gate Station.

The photos come from Mike Ashworth, who has the rather wonderful job of ‘Design and Heritage Manager’ for London Underground, and so is best placed to explain how they came to survive.

They were discovered during the modernisation work we’re carrying out at the station – and the project team found their way in when some partition work was uncovered. The original Central line station was abandoned, along with the original lifts, during the installation of escalators that took place c1956/9 when the Central & Circle line stations (once separate on either side of the road) were combined after many years of planning. This passageway is one of the remnants of the passageways leading to the lifts that were ‘sliced through’ during the reconstruction.

So, what would I have been looking at as I waited for the lifts in Notting Hill Gate in the late 50s? This rather wonderful Daphne Padden to start with (this week on Quad Royal is rather being brought to you by Daphne Padden, as there will be more on Friday too). The Ideal Home Show as well.

And Pepsodent toothpaste.

If you’re feeling a bit more cultural, there’s also a new exhibition about Iron and Steel at the Science Museum,

And a rather wonderful invitation to cruise the River Thames.

Once again, though, these posters are a reminder that not everything published in the 1950s was a design classic, as these posters for the Evening News and the Chain Garage in Hangar Lane prove.

But for me the real lesson from these posters is just how little survives from the period – and what a selective sample it is. Admittedly, I’ve not done the most comprehensive search ever, but, apart from the Daphne Padden, I can only track down one other of these posters on the web. That’s the elephant that you can see three copies of on the first picture, which is a London Transport poster by Victor Galbraith (thanks to Mike Ashworth for pointing that out too).

It’s a salutary reminder of just how much chance determines what we see, study and collect today. And if anyone can tell me any more about any of these, then I’d love to know.

But please don’t go to Notting Hill Gate expecting to see these posters. They are totally inaccessible in a disused bit of the station – which is probably why they have survived – and there is no way that you can get to them. But the flickr set is there for everyone, which I do think is a great way for London Underground to share them.

Meanwhile, I forgot to mention yesterday that the art of the poster got a very thorough two page write up in the Observer on Sunday. You can read the full text of it here, although without most of the images that accompanied it in the paper version.

It is of course prompted by Paul Rennie’s Modern British Posters book, and the exhibition which accompanies it from next week in London. I’ve had a copy for a few weeks now, and it is a fantastic overview of the evolution of the modern poster, which I am feeling very guilty about not having reviewed properly yet. The problem is that it’s so comprehensive and well-informed that it’s hard to know where to begin. But I will try next week.

6RP7324X32BP (admin code, please ignore)

By coach to Harrogate

auctions

In the immortal words of Smash Hits, it’s back – back, back, back.

Tom Eckersley British Railways Paignton poster 1960
Tom Eckersley, Paignton, 1960

What else can I be talking about but the gift that keeps on giving, the Morphets auction of Malcolm Guest railway posters. Part One was in January, Part Two I mostly ignored because its main attraction was a set of Heath Robinson drawings. But I’ve been anticipating Part Three – all the posters from 1960 and later – for some time now. The catalogue still isn’t up yet, but Morphets have now put a few more teasers on their site. And, to my relief, there are some real gems.

The relief is because I’d heard that there were a lot of letterpress and otherwise dull posters up for sale – although with more than 2,000 posters in the auction, there may well still be. I was also in fear of this kind of thing.

As well as this this too.

But the good news is that, in this preview at least, they seem to be in the minority. Not only are there some fairly entertaining railway posters,

Brighton and Hove British Railways vintage poster 1961
Brighton and Hove, Joseph McKeown, 1961

in varying degrees of kitsch/Ladybird books style, but what brings me real joy is that Malcolm Guest clearly went a bit off-topic and started collecting coach posters as well, seemingly quite a few if this preview is anything to go by.

I reckon that these three at least are by Daphne Padden (of whom more later this week).

But I don’t know for definite, because there’s nothing but the images up at the moment. Any names and identification are my own guesses or research, which could be proved very wrong when the catalogue comes out.

There are two definite Royston Cooper’s as well, with a probable third too.

The last one I’ve never seen before, either.

And then there are just some great posters about which I know nothing. Like these.

Any ideas? In particular, if anyone knows who the artist of the last one is, please do let me know as it’s driving Mr Crownfolio insane right now. He reckons it might be someone associated with Private Eye, if that helps at all.

And there is a rather nice Abram Games from 1967, which may well be a coach poster too.

The sale itself is on 21st and 22nd of July, which by my reckoning gives me just six weeks to work out how I am going to afford any or, ideally, all of this. Right now, I have no idea.