GPO poster Archives - Page 4 of 14

The Price of Everything

auctions, eBay

Today, a miscellany of stuff, mostly for sale. And it’s a mixed bag of good, bad and ugly. Shall we start with the latter?

This, um, rarely seen poster is being sold by an American auction house in an internet auction on Sunday. Although I tell you this more as a warning than an invitation to buy.

Truly, proof that the golden age of the railway poster was dead and buried by 1978. Amazingly there is a bid on it too.

To cleanse your eyes after that, some lovely Daphne Padden. Travel On Paper are selling this classic for what looks to me like a very reasonable dealer price of £275.

Now I’m not sure what Daphne Padden is actually worth these days (and I know that I’m saying this from the persepective of someone who’s got quite a few of her posters, and am therefore not exactly an unbiased observer, but hey). On one hand, other dealers are selling less good posters by Daphne Padden for £450+; on the other, we got our copy of the poster above at Morphets, last year, for just £65 and something else came with it, even if I can’t remember what. So, what’s the actual value? I haven’t got a clue. Anyway, Travel on Paper are at MidCentury Modern in Dulwich on Sunday 20th if you want to look at some of their posters or just say hello.

Over on eBay it’s the same story, posters of varying quality at seemingly random prices. Shall we start with cheap, but rightfully so.

It’s a National Savings Bank Poster, but I can’t tell you any more than is on the listing I’m afraid.

While this railway poster, with a similar womens’ magazine styling to its illustration, has a starting bid of $210.

But it is being sold by a dealer, PosterConnection, so perhaps the price isn’t so surprising.

Meeting them somewhere in the middle is this H M Bateman Save Fuel poster which seems very reasonable at £48 Buy It Now, especially considering it’s 20″ x 30″.

The more I think about that, the more I think it is a bargain; the better known examples of these can go for £200 or more at auction. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

The seller also has this ATS poster, from a series which has been mentioned on here before, and I believe is by Beverley Pick.

This is currently on a £68 Buy It Now, which is rather more like what it would fetch at auction, but still not unreasonable.

Finally in this heap of odds and ends, a couple of follow-ups to previous posts. When I wrote about John Burningham the other day, I couldn’t find an image of his cats in a boat coach poster that I’d liked so much at the exhibition. But Liz Dobson very kindly sent me a photo.

I’ll add it to the post as well, but I thought I’d show you here too as it’s so great. And if you do happen to have a spare one…

And following on from my musings about airline posters, Martin Steenson of Books & Things pointed me at this Lewitt-Him AOA poster, which he currently has for sale.

While it doesn’t have the expansive blue skies or vapour trails of their other posters, I still think this has a strong connection to the visual language of the war in the air. Because it looks to me like nothing so much as a wartime aircraft recognition poster.

Were there other areas where the visual memory of the war spilled out of the national subconscious and into peace time like this? Surely there must have been: the war was too all-encompassing to be easily forgotten, however hard people wanted to try.

What is the range of activity of the commercial artist in Britain?

archives, posters

That’s what this copy of Graphis is asking in 1950. (And yes, the cover is by Tom Eckersley).

Unfortunately for us, most of the answers are in black and white, apart from this design for Kia-ora by Lewitt-Him.

And this Christmas advertisement for Simpsons of Piccadilly.

I think there may have been some more at some point, but my copy seems to have a page missing. By way of compensation, I’ll try and find colour versions of the posters and illustrations they’ve reproduced where I can. Still, it’s worth putting up with the black and white because there is some wonderful stuff included in their survey of British design. I would like this Lewitt-Him showcard whatever colour it turned out to be.

Oddly, one of the things that makes this article particularly interesting is the small print. Each image is credit twice, once to the artist and/or illustrator and once to the advertising agency which commissioned it. Which means that, for a change, it’s possible to see how posters and advertisments came into being.

Let’s take Crawfords, for example (I would happily take almost anything from Crawfords’ considerable output if anyone is offering). Their art director was Ashley Havinden, who did produce some of the illustrations for his own press advertisements.

Even within a single campaign, more than one artist might be used though; so this cartoon is by John Parsons.

(Apologies for the wobbliness of the scans, but I don’t want to damage the magazine.)

At the same time, Havinden was also commissioning entire campaigns from other designers, like Tom Eckersley’s work for Gillette.

As well as Eno’s Fruit salts, which was also produced by Crawfords. A different format of this advertisement is reproduced in Graphis; the French caption provides the extra explanation that Enos is ‘un digestif’. I think, if forced to make a choice between some French pastis and a glass of Enos, the pastis would win every time.

These double attributions of the advertisements, thougb, are a useful reminder that designers of the period were not artists, producing whatever they liked, but were working within a very commercial framework, receiving commissions from people they knew, often, I imagine, to quite a tight brief. This is something that can get forgotten as we collect and admire posters today; increasingly they become detached from their original purpose and seen as artworks rather than functional pieces of design. But that’s not how they were originally produced at all.

This is a point also made, in a slightly different way, in the essay which goes with these illustrations. The author, Charles Rosner, thinks that the standard of posters and other commercial art has declined considerably since the war. The only high points are provided by what he calls ‘the cultural and social activities in advertising’, by which he means commissions from the BBC, London Transport, the Arts Council and the GPO. By which he is also implying designs which aren’t contaminated by the need to sell things.

But were these high-minded designs really better? From this distance it’s hard to say for sure because so little British commercial advertising survives. But take this page of F H K Henrion’s work. The poster designs for the government health campaigns are more in the international modernist style with which I tend to associate him.

This wasn’t all he could produce though. Take these fine fish for example.

(I’m rather fond of the sheep too, which is why it’s here, even though it’s not actually by Henrion).

On the opposite page are also a couple of his better-known designs for Punch.

But which of these are better? Public information edges or Punch decorative? I find it hard to say, but then my pro-modernist bias probably isn’t as strong as some people’s. What do you lot reckon?

The text makes an interesting point about posters as well. Remember, this is 1950, and television advertising hasn’t been imagined yet, but posters are already seen as being in decline, and for reasons I’ve never seen put before.

Posters are victims of the great speed of modern traffic, congestion of town streets, squeezing out of hoardings from town centres to areas with less appeal in publicity value, and town and country planning regulations, with only vague definitions of the places where hoardings are still allowed to stand.

So the golden age of the poster was partly caused by the fact that people were moving slowly enough to look at them. Now there’s a thought.

But the article isn’t all about answers, it’s also made me ponder a couple of questions too. This post is going on a bit, so I’ll return to them in the next few days. For now you can just have this rather wonderful Lewitt-Him artwork as a clue about the first. It is illustrated in Graphis, but if anyone has sighted it anywhere else other than the GPO archive, I’d like to hear from you.

New Term

auctions, eBay

It’s September, school has started (in the case of small Crownfolio, for the very first time) and the auction season is getting back into gear too. First in the queue are International Poster Auctions in New York, whose Auction of Rare Posters is on Sept 8th.

Most of what’s on offer consists of things that Americans like and I don’t (Barnum and Bailey Circus posters, Art Nouveau, that kind of thing) but there are a few British gems on offer.

Quite a few of these are pre-war London Transport posters like this Dora Batty, but there’s nothing wrong with that.

Dora Batty, 1933, est. $1,000-1,200

This Roy Meldrum is less often reproduced but also rather fine. It seems to have an odd familiarity to me, but I don’t know whether this is because it looks like a mixture of so many other images from that period, or simply that I used to own a postcard of it once upon a time.

Roy Meldrum vintage London Transport poster 1933 Something Different
Roy Meldrum, 1933, est. $1,700-2,000

There are also a couple of McKnight Kauffer classics up for grabs.

McKnight Kauffer The Flea vintage London Transport poster 1926
E. McKnight Kauffer, 1926, est. $1,700-2,000

McKNight Kauffer Stonehenge vintage shell poster 1931
E. McKnight Kauffer, 1931, est. $3,000-4,000

But my favourite is much later than any of these, as it dates from 1973 and is by David Gentleman.
David Gentleman vintage London Transport poster Victorian London 1973
David Gentleman, 1973, est. $700-1,000

Clearly prices rise as posters cross the Atlantic: this poster went for just £130 on eBay last month, much to the disappointment of at least one reader of this blog.

Elsewhere on eBay, it’s still a bit quiet. This Tom Purvis is out of focus, a bit battered and in the U.S., although that doesn’t seem to be deterring the bidders.

It is also my bounded duty to point out that Cyclamon has yet another of these small but perfectly formed Eckersley GPO posters for sale on a Buy It Now for £35.

I don’t think he’s printing them.

Travel, send, deliver

designers, eBay

Please accept my apologies in advance, but Quad Royal is going to be a bit flakey for the next few weeks. Not only is it the summer holidays, but we are apparently moving house next month too. A normal service will resume in September, I hope.

None of which is the reason for the short state of today’s post, that’s all eBay’s fault. The summer holidays have got to them before they have me, and there really isn’t very much out there for the picking. But I did want to point out this.

It’s a bit expensive at £150 (or possibly quite a lot expensive if I’m honest) but it’s by Karo, and it’s rather good. Now I know very little about him, and haven’t been able to find out much more, but what I can say is that pretty much every single bit of his work that I come across, I like. He seems to have done quite a few bits for the GPO during the 1950s and 1960s, including a few very wonderful Properly Packed Parcels Please posters. Unfortunately the BPMA’s catalogue is down right now, so you’ll have to put up with our slightly more homely photographs of the couple we have.

They’re both from 1968 and one day when we have enough walls that top one will be framed and up on them. This one already is.

I know I’ve posted that before, but it still amuses me far more than it should, as well as being a lovely thing to look at too.

Karo also did quite a few coach posters as well as the one which is up for sale – a good dozen at least must have come up in the last Morphet’s Malcolm Guest sale. This went for £140.

But in amongst all of that, I can find out almost nothing about him and his life. So if anybody does know something, please do get in touch.

And finally, given the recent discussion of vans, this.

At just 99p right now with only a day and a half to go, it’s a bit of a bargain. But it’s also a reminder that the modern design wasn’t the only game in town back in the 1950s, and the Ladybird Books school of illustration was probably as equally ubiquitous.

Stuff Stuff Stuffety Stuff

eBay

It’s time for a round-up of what’s for sale at the moment. I’ve been swerving this for a few days, mainly because there are bits on offer all over the place in a rather scattergun fashion. But bear with me and we will take a tour, starting with the Swann Galleries.

Unfortunately their new catalogue doesn’t have the stellar offerings of their last Modernist posters sale, and the British posters are spotted all the way through. In a way, this is a good thing, as it shows that they’re being taken seriously rather than tucked in a corner like some elderly aunt to be patronised. But it does make flicking through the catalogue much harder work than it might have been.

It also makes for some interesting juxtapositions. This English bathing beauty from 1955 is valued at a rather startling $700-1,000 (by someone who has clearly never experienced the reality of Ramsgate).

But just a few pages before is her American counterpart from 1960. Which does rather make me think that the Americans did some parts of ‘midcentury’ better than we did.

She’s also a bit less high-maintenance at $500-750.

For the same price as the Ramsgate bathing beauty you could instead have this rather fine Shell poster by Colin Statham, about whom I can find out nothing at all (except that someone of that name is very active in amateur dramatics in Berkshire).

I did learn that this design is apparently the only poster in this series with a background colour that isn’t neutral, so there you go.

But for me one of the most interesting posters on offer in the sale is also one of the least visually interesting.

My mind is on the subject of World War Two posters quite a bit at the moment, so you may not be as excited as I am. But it is worth thinking about, for two reasons. One is that it’s a reminder of the fact that design often wasn’t the main driver when these posters were produced. This comes as part of a lot of nine posters, which also include: Only Use Boiled Water; How to get Help After Air-Raid Damage; This Shelter is Not Gas Proof; You Can Get Water At; If You Have Lost Your Home; For Help and Information Go To; This is a Rest Centre. All of these must have been designed for immediate use in the aftermath of a raid, so their concern is being visible and legible, not being pretty. Each and every wartime poster had a purpose, and ‘good design’ was only used when it might help that purpose, it wasn’t their main reason for being.

It’s also a reminder of just how many posters were produced during the war, and that not only were the numbers vast, they are also pretty uncountable today. The Imperial War Museum Archive on VADS doesn’t seem to have a record of any of these nine, and I’ve never seen them reproduced anywhere else before. Which means that there are probably plenty of others which have disappeared entirely, and so a full record of every poster of the war will never be possible. So keep your eyes peeled, and you could perhaps hit the marketing jackpot with the next ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’. Although perhaps not with these posters.

Back on this side of the Atlantic, there are also a couple of railwayana auctions, at Talisman and Gteat Central Railwayana. While both have a reasonable selection of perfectly fine railway posters (although, as ever neither estimates nor dates), nothing is leaping out screaming ‘buy me!’. Although Great Central Railwayana do have this Studio Seven gem, which would probably do quite well in the Swann Auctions.

And this, which I am just amused by.

The catalogue tells me that it is ‘from the series Famous Public Schools on the LMS’ so there are more to collect should you feel the urge.

I can only ever bring myself to admire this Pat Keely London Transport poster from afar, rather than actually wanting to own it and have it on the wall.

At Talisman, as well as no estimates or dates, there aren’t even proper pictures, so you will just have to look to the bottom right here to see what I am going on about.

I rather like that, partly for the typography, but mainly because I cannot imagine the circumstances under which Weston Super Mare would be better still. Than borstal, perhaps, but that’s about it. It’s got a muddy estuary instead of sea, a tide that goes out half way to Wales and a prevailing wind that gets sand into each and every sandwich. I used to wonder why there were so many railway posters advertising it, until I realised that no one would go there otherwise.

And finally eBay, which has been a bit quiet recently, which might be down to the summer holiday lull beginning to kick in. Although MrSpencer007 would like you to pay the best part of ninety quid for this.

I, for one, am not biting.

A similar aura of optimism applies to the pricing of this Lowestoft poster too.

Cheerful, yes, but not £450 worth of cheerful I don’t think.

But there are more reasonable prices to be found, most notably with a seller called 2mkantiques, who has clearly found a whole treasure trove of posters somewhere, 93 to be precise. It’s a real mixed bag, with everything from Dutch bus posters to 1970s Sealink advertising, but there are some good ones in there, and mostly at reasonable prices.

I like both of these 1950s travel posters, for example, and they’re at £150 and £100 respectively.

Plus the seller will take offers, so you may even get them for less than that. There are also some National Savings posters, at slightly higher prices – this Norman Wilkinson is on offer for £250, for example.

But the real star exhibit, for me at least, is this, yours for £199 or thereabouts.

Now, what does that signature say? I could almost swear it reads Henrion. Anyone else got a thought on that? It has a pair, too, which is on for £225 even though it’s not quite as nice.

There have been a couple of other finds on the Bay too, but they haven’t made this post because we’ve bought them. Sorry about that. More on a few of those later in the week.

Tag: GPO poster

The Price of Everything

What is the range of activity of the commercial artist in Britain?

New Term

Travel, send, deliver

Stuff Stuff Stuffety Stuff

Redirection