Hans Schleger Archives - Page 4 of 5

Small but perfectly formed

auctions

So, back on the auction rounds once more, and first in our sights is Van Sabben, on December 11th.

I’ve already skipped through a few of the French ones in passing last week, but there are also a small selection of British posters in there which are worth looking at.

Lewitt Him Vegetabull poster vintage WW2 on sale Van Sabben
Lewitt Him, c.1947, est. €250

Like the Vegetabull, to start with. Everyone should own this poster.

But in addition to that, it’s a small, but quite interesting selection. There’s something for everyone. Some railway posters, like this faintly murky Fred Taylor.

Fred Taylor cambridge vintage LNER railway poster from Van Sabben 1930
Fred Taylor, 1930, est. €450

And this rather wonderful piece of glamour. In as much as Felixstowe can do glamour.

Nicoll Gordon vintage railway poster 1930 van sabben felixstowe
Nicoll Gordon, 1930, est. €2,000

There’s a really lovely Abram Games too, which I’ve always rather liked.

Abram Games civvy street vintage WW2 poster from Van Sabben
Abram Games, 1944, est. €450

As well as a few more of his posters which, while brilliant pieces of design, I nonetheless wouldn’t much fancy having up on the wall.

Abram Games vintage ww2 safety poster 1943
Abram Games, 1943, est. €650

Especially if I have to pay €650 for the rather morbid pleasure.

But one thing that I really like about the Van Sabben auctions is that, even though they don’t have that many British posters, they’re not just comprised of the usual suspects. So in addition to Abram Games and Tom Eckersley,

Tom Eckersley vintage London Transport poster 1947 from Van sabben
Tom Eckersley, 1947, est. €250

there are also posters by Henrion.

Henrion exhibition poster 1945 from Van Sabben
FHK Henrion, 1945, est. €280

And Beverley Pick and Reginald Mount too.

Beverley Pick vintage London Transport poster 1947 from Van Sabben
Beverley Pick, 1947, est €250

Reginald Mount, 1946, est. €650

And even Robin Day.

ROBIN Day RAF poster c 1950 from Van Sabben vintage poster
Robin Day, c.1950, est. €450.

I’m assuming that’s the furniture designer rather than the interviewer.

It’s not just that they have a good mix of designers, they also get posters from different sources. Like these two from the GPO, which are also both large format rather than 1o x 15.

Zero Hans SChleger remember the country name vintage gpo poster 1942
Zero, 1942, est. €300

Manfred Reiss, 1950, est. €300

I’d love to know where they source their posters from, but I don’t suppose they’ll tell me.

My only minor complaint is the pricing. It’s hard to work out how the Vegetabull can be worth so much less than this Hans Schleger, for example, when they’re both in similar condition.

Hans Schleger blackout vintage ww2 poster London Transport 1943
Zero, 1943, est. €500

It does sometimes feel as though estimages are obtained by sticking a pin into a roulette wheel. Mind you, I shouldn’t be complaining; that’s the way that bargains are made, after all.

How to get there

auctions

It’s auction time again. Or, as an email I received this week would have it, Reminder Poster Auctioneer.

“We are pleased to offer these posters at call prices far below their value.” they go on to say. ” Don’t hesitate, come and discover for yourself – we are convinced that everybody will find what they are looking for.”

Sadly, we probably won’t though, because they are trying to entice us to bid at a Swiss auction, Swiss not only in the sense of being held in Zurich, but also in that it is almost entirely comprised of Swiss posters. Hundreds of them.

There are some nice things, like the Emil Hotz and Wolfgang Hausaman above, but nothing really to detain us. Except of course, being British, a poster that says Pschitt.

It shouldn’t be funny, really, but it is.

More locally, though, Cameo Auctions are having a travel, advertising, railway and everything but the kitchen sink auction next week. And in amongst a soup of Olympics and Austrian travel posters are a couple of real gems. This Zero from 1947 is my favourite.

But for a real modernist design classic, you couldn’t do much better than this – McKnight Kauffer at the peak of his powers in 1922.

It has an estimate of £3-5000 though, so I probably won’t be bidding on it.

If that’s a bit too painful for your purse there are also a range of London Transport oddities for a more reasonable price (mostly under £100). This 1962 poster by J E Kashdan is probably my favourite.

But there are also these three ‘How to Get There posters’ from the same period.

The first two are by Victoria Davidson, the last by Hans Unger.

Plus this rather over-informative British Railways poster on the subject of freight, by Blake.

But what really grabbed my attention was the close-up of the background. They really should release that as wall-paper.

As if that wasn’t enough, Christies have also released the catalogue for their November poster auction. At first glance, it looks as though the new higher minimum lot price has excluded almost anything that I might be interested in. But I’ll take a proper look at it over the weekend and report back next week.

Sold and unsold

eBay

Right, it’s eBay Watch time once more. I do this so often that I feel as though it should have its own logo. I shall work on that when I get a moment.

Your starter for ten is that this, surprisingly, didn’t sell.

There isn’t enough Barnett Freedman in the world, so I would have thought that this would have gone, even with a few flaws and an asking price of £100. Shows how little I know.

But this did sell, for £23.22.

Interestingly, although it’s a Studio Seven classic coach poster, I’m not sure that it came from Morphets, perhaps the sale has brought a few more out of the woodwork. (We didn’t buy it, incidentally; there’s the small question of what we do with the thirty-odd coach posters that we already have to sort out first…)

I don’t remember either of these from the sale either, so perhaps there is now going to be a boom in coach posters (or a mass unloading, depending on your point of view).

The top one is by Atkins, the bottom by Bigg, but they’re on for £75 and £1oo respectively (although, I have to say, I much prefer the cheaper one, if only for the White Horse on it).

But these ones might have come from the sale. Perhaps. Either that or Patlid is a seller who has found a rather good cache of unused posters.

I can of course wish that this fabulous Bromfield would go for the £9.99 that it is currently listed at, but rather doubt that it will.

Meanwhile over on the other side of the Atlantic, MaxReinhold is selling even more Zero London Underground posters from the war.

He’s had so many of these now that I can’t really get excited about them any more, although I would be interested to know where they came from. Perhaps I’ll ask.

Finally, a couple of sixties gems. This LT poster from 1964 is by Laurence Scarfe and is really rather nice.

Although whether I would actually want those mad staring eyes framed and on the wall of my house is another question. So it might not be the £90 of nice that they are asking for.

And then, from just a few years later, there’s this Alan Aldridge poster for a 1968 event at the Royal Festival Hall. With The Grateful Dead and John Peel, natch. It’s already been on Retro to Go, but I thought I’d tell you anyway.

Besides, if you want one, you can almost certainly have one, because the seller seems to have found a whole stock of unused copies. There are more than ten left, and getting one will set you back just £30.

There is more out there too – mainly a whole slew of railway posters – but those will have to wait until next week. Or maybe tomorrow.

Such posters

designers

Now, bear with me. I know that I’ve gone on about Hans Schleger’s design work for Macfisheries before, and I also know that some of these photographs are a bit duff. But I still can’t resist showing you some more of these.

They are simply too wonderful to resist.

Once again, the images come from Colin French, who runs the meticulously-researched Macfisheries site. In this case, he managed to track down the son of the company’s former logistics director, who’d kept a whole archive of these display posters.

Some, like the poster above, I’ve seen illustrated before; others are completely new to me.

He apparently rescued them from a skip at Macfisheries’ head office. They’re a fascinating slice through the kind of work that Schleger’s studio was producing – not just the ‘show’ posters like the ones above, but more workaday examples of marketing too.

A few of these posters do worry me though. A fish entreating me to eat other fish is getting dangerously close to cannibalism.

Especially when it starts filleting its brethren.

Mind you, I used to feel the same way about blackcurrants advertising Ribena, so perhaps I worry about these things too much.

One of the many interesting things about these pictures is that the collection doesn’t just cover the Schleger-era designs. There are examples of work from (I’m guessing) the early 1920s right up to World War Two.

And then goes on to what I suspect are designs that came afterwards as well.

But perhaps the most fascinating story is that some of the posters were just design trials, and never made it into the shops. Unfortunately, I have no idea which ones they are. Perhaps this rather hypnotic hare,

which is far too much like a pet to consider eating.

Or possibly the brainwave that you might want to give a MacFish token.

The posters do also make me mourn what the posters present as a golden age of fish shopping, when native oysters and pheasant could not only be bought on the high street but also delivered to my door. But I wonder whether it tasted as good as the posters looked? Remembering the smell of the fish sh0p in the Midlands market town where I grew up, I’m not totally sure that it would have done.

Going dutch

Uncategorized

It was the Van Sabben poster auction on Saturday. As usual, there weren’t too many British posters there, but this time those few were mostly of very high quality – and ones that don’t often turn up – so it’s worth taking a look at.

To start with, there were five Abram Games. This RAMC Parachute poster made the most, at €600 (approx £508), despite being my least favourite by quite some distance.

I would much rather have had this one, for a mere £386-sih.

Clearly someone who was very interested in sending telegrams to ships was selling their collection too, as there was this 1947 Rothholz (a bargainous £183)

And a 1949 Pat Keely on the same subject which went for just £122.

As well as yet another Games – probably the nicest of the three, and quite cheery for him.

That went for £355, since you ask.

But the highlights of the sale for me were three Zero posters. The starter is this lovely Central line extension poster from 1946, which made just over £200.

But that’s not the main attraction. This fantastic WW2 Ministry of Food poster

would have been covetable enough on its own, but it came with its sibling too.

Together they went for £560, which is actually very reasonable for posters of this quality – especially ones which don’t tend to come up at auction much. We didn’t buy anything in the end, but I now wish we’d tried a bit harder with these two; we might never get the chance again.

Just to stop this blog being too insular, it is also worth remembering that the auction had hundreds of very lovely foreign posters for sale too. Van Sabben quite often have a fair quantity of Dick Bruna for sale. This auction had just a few, but this one, advertising childrens’ book week, is rather fun, especially just for £91.

I also rather like this image by Kees Kelfkens, which I’ve seen come up before and went for £142.

But then I am always a sucker for a nicely drawn cat. Especially one from 1958.

Even though the sale’s over, it’s still worth taking a look at the catalogue, as Van Sabben offer ‘aftersales’ – i.e. a chance to buy anything which didn’t go at auction. So it’s still possible to get a 1943 Pat Keely for just over £100, should you so desire.

But don’t spend all your money now. The Onslows’ sale comes up in just a few weeks time – more news on that when the catalogue appears.

Shine a light

eBay

This was sold on eBay on Friday.

From 1944, it is a lovely piece of Hans Schleger/Zero in prime linen-mounted condition. Mr Crownfolio and I did have rather deluded hopes of picking it up for a pittance, seeing as it was being sold in the States. But it went for nearly £250 – unsurprisingly – which means that I can bring myself to tell you that the same seller has another one from the series on offer this week.

In a way, I’m not really upset that we didn’t get the first poster. It’s a classic, but I’m not sure I like it enough (certainly not £250 of enough). Would it ever get framed and hung on the wall? I don’t think so.

One of the reasons is that it may be a classic World War Two London Transport poster, but I’m not sure it’s a classic Schleger. His posters are usually either a bit stranger, or at very least a bit wittier, like this GPO poster from just a year or two later (known in our house as the ‘Prawn Chef’).

I wonder if there is a reason why his London Transport posters are so sensible. Because the other thing that has struck me about the two offered on eBay is just how much they resemble other designers’ work on the same themes – and how much they all resemble each other.

Here’s Tom Eckersley on the other side of the question – reminding bus drivers to stop when they are hailed in the blackout.

And also reminding the drivers to save rubber.

While James Fitton (whose work really does deserve more appreciation than it gets) informs the travelling public that they too can help save this precious wartime commodity.

And finally, we’re pretty much back at the beginning again, as Fitton also tells us how not to flag down a bus during the blackout.

Two things strike me from this series. One is what a great designer James Fitton was, in particular for his luminous use of colour. His posters easily stand up to the work of both Eckersley and Schleger.

The other – which was the thought that started all of this off – is that, for such a diverse set of designers, the results do have more in common than I would expect. This is mainly in the way that they’ve all used a simplicity of technique, each poster illustrating the issue fairly literally with no visual puns or distracting images. I wonder whether, somewhere in the heart of the London Transport wartime archives, there is a memo which says: This is war. And safety. So don’t let the designers get away with any of their clever-clever stuff. Oh, and on the way out, make sure you give them an airbrush. Perhaps I should write to the London Transport Museum and ask.