GPO poster Archives - Page 3 of 14

Odd and odder

eBay

This week, Ebay seems mostly to be selling oddities. And the oddest of the odd has to be this, a redacted Daphne Padden poster for £9.99.

It would be rather nice if they hadn’t done that, wouldn’t it?

The listing does at least give a bit of provenance:

we understand that this advertisement was displayed in the Post Office Savings Bank Kew until it closed down , 1975 we believe.

My guess was that they rather liked this poster, and so when the Post Office Savings Bank changed its name, they just blacked it out and carried on. There’s another example from the same place and seller as well.

Neither, I’d suggest, are worth buying, but still an interesting object.

As is this. Which isn’t a poster so I strongly suggest that you don’t spend the best part of £30 on it.

I can’t tell you anything useful about the design either, other than that it is rather good and I would guess prewar. Does anyone know any more? I may also return to addressing youths in that way too.

Meanwhile this poster is odd in every which way: it’s a rare survival of a commercial advertisement, it’s for an event I’ve never ever heard of and I had no idea such things went on at the Albert Hall.

It also doesn’t look very British, by which I think I mostly mean that I’ve never really seen anything like it. It’s actually just finished as I was writing this piece, but sold for just £58, and I would think it’s worth a lot more than that to the right classic car owning buyer.

Is this Tom Purvis – well they say it is – World War Two poster odd or not? I can’t decide.

Perhaps the frame makes it look a bit strange, because it is after all a workaday poster which was just there to tell people what to do, not be a work of art. Good to see it, though, because very few of these kinds of things do survive precisely because they aren’t as good to look at as an Abram Games or Lewitt Him from the same period.

There are one or two sensible things too, like this British Railways poster for Right Labelling which the seller has down as 1960s but I might put a bit earlier.

Along with this pair of classic railway posters for Inverness and Somerset respectively.

There are a couple of other map posters being sold by the same seller too, so if that’s your kind of thing, you know where to go.

But I do wonder whether he’s going to get any offers. Recently I said that prices on eBay seem to be matching those at auction. This was a hostage to fortune, and eBay has since then concentrated on proving me wrong. Take this classic London Transport poster, for example.

It got plenty of bidding attention, but at £188 failed to reach its reserve.

Elsewhere, this British Railways poster failed to sell at just £48.

One of Frank Newbould’s more peculiar turns if you ask me.

What’s to blame for this? Is it the new Greek market turmoil, or just the good weather keeping everyone away from their computers? Answers in the comments below please.

Post Office Love

eBay

This picture arrived in the Quad Royal inbox a few weeks ago.

A very lucky man called Brian Shepherd had found this trio in his loft. They’re mounted on board, and so it seems that they’d been used as trays to store apples and pears up there in the dark. A waste of some very fine posters if you ask me.

Now Brian emailed because he wanted to know a bit more about them. This one (my favourite and a bit of a psychedelic masterpiece if you ask me) is signed Dorrit Dekk.

The Beatles might be asking for a few royalties on this one, which is by Martina Selway. As far as I can tell, she seems to have done a lot of designs for the GPO and only a couple more for London Transport. But a surprisingly copious biography out there on the web reveals that this is because she then went into illustrating children’s books. So now we know.

Then there is the third, which is a bit of a mystery.

The signature is only a pair of initials which might say dy, or jy, or jl, to be honest it’s hard to say.

So the first mystery is who is this by?

Mr Shepherd is a bit of a sleuth, because he started to do some more research into the posters and even scoured the National Archives to see what he could discover. Which was that these posters were all commissioned in 1969. Which then raises another question, because 1969 was the year that the Post Office Savings Bank turned into the National Savings Bank. Which makes me wonder whether these posters were ever actually used – or is the change of name the reason why they ended up lining fruit trays instead? I’ve asked the lovely people at the BPMA, but they can’t shed much light on it. So if you know any more, please do get in touch, I’d love to know.

Even without that knowledge, though, they’re still a great set of posters; proof that not all artistic merit had fled from the poster by the end of the 1960s.

That’s not the end of it, either. If you want to buy any of these, he has put each of them up for sale on eBay. So if you’ve taken a shine to any of them, you now know where to go.

A life of surprises

eBay

Odd times indeed on eBay. When I pointed out this poster last week, it was more for entertainment than investment value.

But it went for £104. Not so funny indeed.

I should have been less surprised that these two pieces of prime psychedelia went for £143 each. They’re by the wonderful Dan Fern and printer-fresh.

Although Mr Crownfolio and I had harboured hopes of picking one up cheap, mainly because these are the kind of things which can fall through eBay searches un-noticed. But not this time. (There were another two, which went for under £40 each, but still not cheap).

This Daphne Padden also sold very quickly for a Buy It Now price of £50.

I think I’d file that under interesting rather than desirable (much like the concept it’s advertising), mostly because it’s the first time I’ve ever seen that design and I had no idea that she had done much work for BR at all. So there you go.

As for what’s on sale at the moment, it is, as ever, a mixed old bag. Probably the most interesting are those being sold by medieval modernist, a name not unknown round these parts. This Henrion is, how shall I put this, unlike anything else I’ve ever seen of his by quite a long way and then some.

If you find that a bit frightening, this Salter is slightly more conventional.

And there’s plenty more in between, so go and take a look.

This poster wouldn’t be worth mentioning for itself, were it not for the person selling it.

I’ve mentioned this story before, but a seller on eBay, Kingchristopher, has been selling an incredible collection of leaflets, tickets, stamps, memorabilia and other ephemera for a very long time, all collected by his uncle George King. A long time before this blog existed, we bought a number of 1950s and 60s GPO posters from him: apparently his uncle used to go into the Post Office and ask to have the posters they’d taken down each week. Ones like this.

George King was clearly an interesting, if slightly obsessive man. Mr Crownfolio recently found out a bit more about him from a philately forum:

George King who was one of the great Philatelic hoarders of our time, and a man truly ahead of his own time.
From about 1908 to the 1950’s (?) he posted envelopes to himself to obtain examples of virtually every new special event or special purpose postmark issued by the GPO in the UK. (TPO’s Machine Cancels Exhibitions, Skeleton marks etc etc). If you ever see his name on a cover do some more research.
Often the postmark will be the first day of use or the last day of use. He would often send half a doz or more covers and now these are often the only examples known. He also kept copies of virtually every Post Office leaflet and label issued and quantities of associated Shipping and aviation leaflets etc.
His accumulation must have filled rooms not just boxes and when it first came on the market, I believe in the early 1980’s, it was a real eye opener and helped establish the dates of issue of many TPO’s and provided examples of otherwise unknown marks.
Its a shame that the entire accumulation does not appear to have been recorded before sale. I know that the family had some problems, being let down financially by some of those involved.
Today I believe a family member still sells some of the original covers and leaflets on eBay etc. If you see a 1930’s Brit GPO leaflet in “looks like it was printed yesterday” condition chances are its ex. George King.
I heard a rumour that in WWI he was interviewed by the Secret Service to find out why he was writing to the postie in charge of every British and many Australian NZ and Indian Army Post Offices to obtain examples of their FPO postmarks!

None of my relatives were so forward thinking sadly, although I’m not entirely sure I would like to have inherited the job for life that disposing of it all seems to have become for his nephew.

Other than that, the theme seems to be 1950s kitsch. This poster might be quite a nice buy were it not a) framed and b) in the States, so postage will be rather prohibitive.

This side of the Atlantic, you can have your kitsch in the form of tourism posters.

Or commercial advertising.

Or simply way bigger than you really need.

That’s nine foot by six foot of big, so don’t say you weren’t warned.

Shop Early Post Early

eBay, other

Apologies in advance if this post ends up being a bit like the parish newsletter today, but there are a few things I’d to tell you about, even though they aren’t entirely related. So bear with me, and the flower rota will be at the end.

Firstly and also excitingly, the BPMA have also got in contact with Pieter Huveneers, and he is going to answer some questions on their blog in January. So if there’s anything you’d like to ask him about poster design, the GPO or being a design guru in Australia, now is your chance. All the details are on their blog.

The artwork above with the bite taken out of it is from their collections, as is the poster below.

This is of course a poster announcing the arrival of a medium – television – which would in the end kill the poster itself stone dead. Still, Huveneers wasn’t to know.

While I’m on the subject of the BPMA, they are once again selling lovely poster Christmas cards, including this lovely Hass.

But there are a whole range of designs, quite a few of which have already featured on Quad Royal before now, and you may find them here.

Most of the rest of our parish consists, as ever, of eBay. In summary, there are some nice posters out there; however people mostly want rather larger sums of money for them than we – along with I suspect most of the rest of the parishioners – are prepared to pay. With that in mind, here’s the best of the bunch.

Your starter is a lovely Dorrit Dekk, mounted on linen too. Starting price, £224-ish (it’s in America), although it doesn’t deserve that on the grounds of the foreshortened photography alone.

Another photography award goes to the seller of this Pye Radio poster, who has managed to photograph it looking like a giant billboard on the A4.

It is in fact only 74cm long, which probably also means that £49.99 is a fairly optimistic valuation.

All of which means that when both the above Guinness posters start at a slightly more reasonable £99, I am pleasantly surprised. The top one is, I think, by R Peppe and dates from 1962, although the listing doesn’t tell you any of that. The other one I have never seen before in my life, and all I can find out is that it might be by someone called E Hanna, so if anyone can enlighten me further about it, please do. Rather good, though, don’t you think?

Cheaper, and possibly even more fantastic still, are these two Australian emigration posters.

The listing (which in turn wins a prize for being one of the longest I have ever encountered) describes them as being possibly the work of Douglas Annand. A brief trawl through google leaves me unconvinced, but he did do this poster.

And also these rather great P&O Menu cards too (via this Australian blog).

Regardless of whether he did those other two posters, they are very still good. Even better, both auctions started at a thoroughly reasonable £9.99, but with bids already in I am expecting them to go higher.

Digression over, I can also tell you that it is possible to buy expensive posters in places other than eBay.

This GPO poster is up for auction by Poster Auctions International with an estimate of $400-600. I’m usually quite fond of this series of posters, but this one has to be one of the least appealing. So have this one as a palate cleanser instead.

There that’s better, isn’t it. All that remains a reminder that the Church Christmas Fair is this Saturday and Holy Communion is at the usual time of 11.30 on Sunday. See you all then.

In touch with the everyday life of the nation

Uncategorized

As promised last week, another look at Sotherans and their new-found love of posters which I had hitherto never thought of as valuable, never mind the preserve of a Mayfair dealer, But I am always willing to learn.

What’s most interesting about the latest crop of posters that they’ve put up on their website is that there are a whole slew of GPO posters in there. This, by Donald Smith has to be my absolute favourite.

So much so that I almost thought about paying the £125 that they want for it. But didn’t, you’ll be relieved to hear.

I’ve mentioned my utter lack of knowledge about Donald Smith before (when a few of his posters, including the one above, turned up in the 1962 Poster Annual. Unfortunately nothing has turned up to change that since then, so I still can’t tell you the first thing about him except that he made very good posters indeed.

In the same sort of vein are a Stan Krol and Harry Stevens.

There’s a weird lack of consistency in the dimensions of these posters which is a bit puzzling, as they must have been made for a whole range of different displays.

Just to add further variety, there are also a couple of what I think are GPO schools posters, although I’ve never seen them before, both proudly promoting the Post Office’s role as a promotor of national unity, ‘in touch with the everyday life of the nation’. Which is probably something which should have been thought about a bit more before so many of them were closed down.

The sheer joyous optimism about new town life in Harlow in the Walter Hoyle poster at the top is rather wonderful, while the Norman Jacques below more falls under alright if you like that sort of thing. Neither of them, though, are ever going to be worth £145 in my book. Nor is this other Hoyle going to persuade me to part with £225 either.

But the griping about the prices is really a bit incidental. What’s odd (and if I’m honest a bit unnerving) is that this kind of poster has suddenly found its way into the mainstream. I am bemused, I really am.

Further bemusement is also caused by finding this anonymous CoI poster in there too.

I’m guessing it’s early 1950s, but is there really a market for Cold War memorabilia? This Beverley Pick is at least a bit less of a surprise.

But what still confounds me most about all of this is how the usual fare of Cuneos and railway landscapes have almost completely vanished from the Sotherans roster. To be sure, there are one or two in there, but not in the swarms there once were. Instead, they’ve been replaced by, well, this kind of thing. Posters I like and am interested in to be precise. And I’m not sure I like that, I don’t think I’m ready for my tastes to become mainstream. Quite apart from anything else, I’ll never be able to afford another poster again.

The New Wave

auctions, railway posters

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.