Edward Wadsworth Archives

Highs and lows

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.

Going Underground

auctions

So, the Christies auction. Which is coming up on 5th November.

I do have to admit that I was a bit hard on it last week when I said that it didn’t containg anything I was interested in. This is not true, it just doesn’t have anything I can afford.

Austin Cooper 1933 London Transport Poster
Austin Cooper, 1933, est £800-1,200*

I think my cynicism might have been caused by Christies’ brand new ‘cool wall’ technology, which does let you browse through whole swathes of an auction at once (screenshot below). It moves and tilts and does all sorts of other fancy things too that I can’t show on here.

All of which has the side-effect of reducing the posters to small coloured blobs which are quite easy to dismiss. But I now have a PDF of the catalogue, which means that I like it a great deal more.

Picadilly express McKnight Kauffer London Transport poster 1932
McKnight Kauffer, 1932, est £600-800

What I like most is the first hundred lots or so. These are a stunning collection of pre-war London Transport posters, which all come, apparently, from one collection.

Vintage London Transport poster Betty Swanwick 1936
Betty Swanwick, 1936, est £600-800*

Lucky them, because it’s an incredible selection. I can hardly pick out my favourites. But I rather like the type on the Pears boats below.

Charles Pears London Transport poster 1935
Charles Pears, 1935, est £600-800

While this is just fantastic in every which way: subject, image, title and general un-Britishness.

Vladmir Polunin 1934 London Transport poster
Vladmir Polunin, 1934, est £700-900*

What’s interesting (if you’re me, at least) is that I had several of these posters on my wall when I was a student – only as postcards mind you.

Alan Rodgers London Transport poster 1930
Alan Rogers, 1930, est £600-800*

Frederick Manner, 1929, est £800-£1,200

Annie Fletcher, 1926, est £1,500-2,000

But I don’t think there has ever been a time when I could have afforded them (or indeed anything else nice from the period) so I ended up collecting, and interested in, post-war design. It goes to show how much taste is formed by necessity as much as pure aesthetic appreciation.

I shall also, have to mourn, once more, that I never bought one of this pair when it was for sale for considerably less than that at Rennies.

Edward Wadsworth London Transport pair poster 1936
Edward Wadsworth, 1936, est £1,00o-£1,500

It is also my duty to point out that there are not one but two rather good Edward Bawdens up for sale too, should you have a couple of thousand pound burning a hole in your pocket.

Edward Bawden London Transport poster 1936
Edward Bawden, 1936, est £800-1,200

Edward Bawden, 1936, est £600-800

Other than the swathes of London Transport joy, there are some railway posters, which are generally the usual suspects, apart from this Tom Purvis, from a series that I have always rather liked.

Tom Purvis 193o LNER poster
Tom Purvis, 1930, est £600-800

And this train-nerdy one which looks like a vision of the future rather than anything to do with British Railways. Does anyone know if it ever actually ran? And can I go on it?

Then there is the usual miscellany of Mucha, foreign travel and other odds and ends, of which these two Herbert Bayers are probably the most interesting.

Herbert Bayer 1930 Exhibition poster
Herbert Bayer, 1930, est £1,000-£1,500

Herbert Bayer, 1953, est £1,000-£1,500

Despite all of these wonderful things, I am nonetheless still going to complain. And, as usual, my complaint is about Christies’ minimum lot price. It’s supposed to be £800, although given the number of posters estimated at £600-800, they’ve clearly softened their line a bit these day.

It has two rather unfortunate effects. One is that there is very little post-war design about at all – and what there is ain’t British. Apart from the Herbert Bayer above, there are a few kitschy railway posters and then these two rather fabulous American posters by Stan Galli from 1955 and 1960.

But that’s your lot, and I, for one, am disappointed.

The other, and perhaps more serious one, is that there are far too many multiple lots. For example, the Alan Power Speed poster above, also comes with “two posters by T. Eckersley and E. Lombers”. Eh? Surely these are things of value in their own right? And that’s not the only one – Electricity Supercedes St Christopher comes with six, count them, six other London Transport posters. While this fabulous Herry Perry comes with four.

Herry Perry, London Transport poster 1930
Herry Perry, 1930 est £700-900

I’ve asterisked all the ones which are parts of multiple lots, just so you can see precisely how many there are.

Now, why does this annoy me? One reason is that there are tons of posters in this catalogue that I just can’t look at. Being based in the sticks, I can’t just wander down to South Kensington and take a look at the other parts of the lots. Yes, I could interrogate someone at Christies and ask for pictures of all of them (I have their name, and I may just do that), but it rather takes the point out of there being a catalogue. Furthermore, it seems rather a retrograde step. One of the great things about the internet is that auctions not only all over Britain but internationally too have become available to everyone. You no longer need to be there to see what is on offer, and to bid. But the Christies catalogue takes some of that away from me, and I think it’s a shame.

Perhaps even more problematic, though, is that multiple lots make it harder to value individual posters. When the Alan Power is sold, will its value be for itself alone, or for the two Eckersley/Lombers which come with it? How shall we tell what share of the worth comes to them – or perhaps they will be bought by an Eckersley collector who will sell the Power on elsewhere. Then who can tell what the value of anything is? Not me, that’s for certain.

Behind the scenes in the museum

exhibitions, London Transport

Now, I promise, the last word on London Transport reproductions. The discussion has rumbled on in the comments for a bit, but the big guns have now been called in to settle it.

vintage london transport poster imperial war museum austin cooper 1932
Imperial War Museum, Austin Cooper, 1932

This email is from Oliver Green, former Head Curator and Research Fellow of the London Transport Museum and so, more than anyone, the man who knows.

I think there’s some confusion in this discussion between a reprint and a reproduction, though LT may not always have been consistent about this.

An R in the print number would normally indicate a reprint, not a reproduction, and was carried out by the original printers using the original plates.

A reproduction would be a poster produced from a new photographic copy of one of the original printed copies. London Transport has been doing this since the 1960s, but mainly with posters from the pre-war period. As they were reproduced for sale, not display on the system, they are always smaller than the original standard 40 x 25 in double royal format used on the Underground.

Reprinting did not happen very often, although there have been a few exceptions like the famous Tate Gallery poster by Fine White Line which has gone through numerous editions since it first appeared in 1986.

There have also been very few attempts to go back to the original artwork to produce a new lithographic poster. Again there is the famous exception of the Kauffer poster for the Natural History Museum which he designed in 1939 but was never printed because of the outbreak of war.

McKnight Kauffer Natural History Museum 1939/1974 London Transport poster
Natural History Museum, McKnight Kauffer, 1939/1974

The artwork was rediscovered by LT in 1974 and reproduced as a poster for the system in 1975. It is a moot point whether this counts as an original or a reproduction since a printed copy did not exist in Kauffer’s day.

Many thanks to Oliver for that, although I think that LT themselves haven’t been exactly contributing to the clarity. They clearly did have a rare outbreak of reprinting in 1971 or thereabouts, producing the posters which stirred up this debate in the first place, but which they then labelled as reproductions in socking great black letters, confusing us all unduly. But now I understand.

Tom Eckersley Art for All London Transport exhibition poster 1949
Tom Eckersley, original Art for All exhibition poster, 1949

From all of which, two other things. One is that Oliver Green has contributed an essay to the book which accompanies the Art for All Yale exhibition which I mentioned last week. This, Art for All: British Posters for Transport has now arrived at Crownfolio HQ and I have to say is rather good, both readable and fact-filled. Perhaps the highlight for me (and probably almost no one else) is that they have reproduced this advertisement, from Modern Publicity.

I once saw a poster of this for sale on eBay and didn’t buy it, which I’ve regretted ever since, as it answers one of my ever-present questions, which is why do more London Transport and railway posters still exist these days? Clearly, the answer is because they were selling them as well as pasting them on the walls of the tube. Pleasingly, the book tells me all about this – and how the railway companies held exhibitions of their posters as well. Plus I have learnt lots about lithography, which can only be a good thing.

Vintage London Transport Poster natural history museum Tatum 1956
Natural History Museum, Edwin Tatum, 1956. In Yale collection

There’s lots more to like in the book too – including a complete catalogue of Yale’s poster holdings, which are much more modern than I expected, and which means that Mr Crownfolio and I own more than ten posters which are also in the Yale Center for British Art. Whereas I don’t suppose anyone can say that about their Constables, so hurrah for the world-wide democracy of posters.

But also, in searching out the McKnight Kauffer that Oliver Green referred to, I discovered a whole wealth of museum posters in the LT archives, including some really wonderful ones which I’d never seen before.

Smoke Abatement Exhibition Science Museum Poster, Beath 1936
Smoke Abatement Exhibition, Beath 1936

And then also one or two that I did.

Edward Wadsworth South Kensington Museums poster 1936
Edward Wadsworth, South Kensington Museums, 1936

The very first time I wandered in to the old Rennie’s shop off Lamb’s Conduit Street, this Edward Wadsworth poster for the South Kensington Museums was on the wall. I’d come in there quite by accident, wandering past, not even knowing that it was possible to buy old posters, but I fell in love with it. I’d like to say that this was entirely because I recognised it as a great piece of design, but the fact that I’d worked in the South Ken museumopolis, and that the blue was a perfect match for my sitting room wall colour also had quite a lot to do with it.

But it cost hundreds of pounds. I can’t remember exactly how many, but enough to seem like an awful lot then, So I spent several weeks in a state of indecision, coming back to visit it a couple of times. And then, finally, I didn’t buy it.

Which was, of course, a terrible mistake. Never mind the value and the fact that I couldn’t even think about affording it now, it’s a beautiful poster, and would have looked wonderful on my walls for all of these years in between.

Here, just to rub salt into the wounds, is its companion.

Edward Wadsworth London transport posters South Kensington Museums
Edward Wadsworth, South Kensington Museums, 1936

Sigh.