Tag: James Reeve

After I wrote the post about James Reeve and his brilliant brochures for Murphy televisioon, Dave Grant who runs the Murphy Radio site emailed with a bit more information.

Sadly, he tells me that James Reeve died just a few months ago, so I’m not going to get the chance to quiz him about his wonderful designs.  Here’s another couple from 1949, just because I can.

It turns out that James Reeve wasn’t the only force in favour of good design within Murphy.  Co-founder Ted Power (great name if you are going to go into making electrical equipment) was very interested in modern art.  Not only did he collect avant garde art such are Dubuffet and Beuys almost in bulk, he also became a trustee of the Tate Gallery.  (If you want to know more, there’s a fascinating article about him from the Independent here).  So perhaps that’s why Reeve was allowed to go for such adventurous graphics for the company.

But that’s not all that Dave Grant had to say.  There’s also more stuff – more precisely, Reeve’s covers for Murphy News from the same period.  They’re just as good.  And in some cases – like this pastiche of Abram Games – Reeve is letting himself be a little more playful.

Clearly he let go a bit for Christmas – here’s 1962’s offering

Some of the other covers echo the work that he was doing on the brochures at the time – these two are both from 1955.

While others are experiments in different styles.

And, lest you think he might be losing his touch as time went on, here are some more typographic efforts from 1964.

Give that man a medal.  Or at very least a posthumous round of applause.

Mr Crownfolio has been doing some searching, in part as a result of the Abram Games Murphy advertisement which I posted last week.  Here’s another, by Reginald Mount, for what it’s worth.

But on the way, Mr Crownfolio came across the Murphy Radio site.  Now, generally, this bears the same relation to poster design as railway name-plate auctions do.  Actually, no, it’s even more frightening; there are circuit diagrams.

This is for the Murphy A26 RG radiogram for use with AC Mains, since you ask.

But also on the site are pages and pages of leaflets and brochures.  And they are great.  All of the following are  from 1948-49 and are incredibly sharp for their era.

In fact, the graphic design was considerably more modern than the televisions themselves.  This brochure

is for this television.

Unlike the brochure, the woodwork hasn’t moved on from the 1930s.  In some ways this is surprising, because much of the company’s graphic design was done by James Reeve, who also designed many of the televisions.  I was going to say that I like the brochures better than the products, but then I would say that, wouldn’t I.

There are plenty more great pieces of design as we go into the early to mid 50s.

When we also enter the era of the portable (ish) radio.

I swear, it’s almost like looking at European posters it’s that good.

The great work continues until 1960.

What I find extraordinary, apart from the fact that I haven’t seen these before, is that an internal employee, whose main job was designing television sets, produced all of the above. He clearly knew his graphic design – especially considering that the likes of Abram Games and Reginald Mount were designing posters for Murphy television – but that can’t account for all of it.  James Reeve was certainly a very clever man, bordering on undiscovered genius.

Furthermore, he is definitely hiding his light under a bushel.  He’s written an ebook about his designs – which you can find here – and it’s all about televisions.  Although I can give you this wonderful image of the Murphy stand at Olympia in 1939 – I’m guessing for the Ideal Home Show.

But it is possible to find out more.  There’s an exhibition at Mill Green Museum in Hatfield, all about Reeve’s work and including some of his poster designs.  So if someone could pop over and tell me if the rest of his work is as good as this stuff, I’d be very grateful.