London Underground Poster Archives - Page 14 of 19

Poster Mathematics

auctions

I can’t resist a few instant observations about Morphets. The full set of opinions will have to wait until I’ve got the complete results in front of me and some more time, but for the moment, we’ll deal with what I know.

Firstly, it’s clear that not many people like Daphne Padden and Royston Cooper as much as we do.

This is both a good thing and a bad thing. It does mean that we can pick up some lovely posters for rather less than we thought we’d have to pay – the lot above went for just £85. How anyone can not like that right hand poster in particular is beyond me. I particularly love it because the woman looks like all of my aunts in old photographs, but that’s incidental, it’s wonderful anyway.

But it also means that their work still isn’t getting the acclaim and recognition that they both deserve; particularly when kitschy 1950s seaside posters were going for way more. Perhaps it will just take a bit longer for the 1960s to come into fashion properly.

A possible third explanation (which would account for more than just these prices) is that the kind of people who buy 1960s posters don’t tend to hang around at railway and coach sales in Harrogate. Which is their loss. The left hand one above, incidentally, is an Eckersley which I have never seen before. Has anyone else spotted it elsewhere?

Although more likely is that there just isn’t a developed enough market in coach posters for people to be competing over them. Because 1960s London Underground posters did do well, with most of them hitting £80 – £100+, like this delectable John Burningham.

All of which adds up to the fact that I don’t really have a definite answer on Padden and Cooper values; if you have any thoughts, I’d love to hear them.

My other main observation is that auctions and their prices operate outside the world of logic, and I shall illustrate this with a small amount of mathematics.

This pair of posters went for £80.

If we say that the poster on the left is worth no more than £20, that values our sailor at £60. So far so good.

This pair then went for £260.

Which makes our friends with the cat worth £200-ish.

Except that, just a few lots later, this went for just £65.

Despite the fact that this version is in better condition. Unless the very subtle differences in the typography matter to people, this makes no sense at all. But I can’t think about it any more because it’s making my head ache.

More thoughts on Morphets later on this week, something completely different tomorrow.

Too many auctions

auctions

Today, for a bit of light relief, I’m going to write about some auctions that aren’t Morphets (although, fear not, a normal service will return later this week).

To start with, Wallis and Wallis down in Lewes are selling yet more of their seemingly inexhaustible supply of World War Two propaganda posters.

I’m not going to go into much detail, partly because it’s much the same as the last three times, but mainly because the Wallis and Wallis website is so infuriating. Most of the posters aren’t illustrated at all, and I can’t find out what anything made at the previous sales because it simply won’t tell me.

They have at least photographed these three rather fine posters that I think are by Pat Keely. Mind you, I’ve had to conclude that from squinting at the signatures, because the descriptions are rather vague. But I like them, and haven’t seen them illustrated elsewhere.

I’m also minded to try and advance to Air Artificer as well. Any suggestions as to how?

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, Swann Galleries are also having a poster sale.

A quick flick through the catalogue reinforces the point that Paul Rennie makes about his own collection in Modern British Posters,

British items were generally of little interest to international collectors and were, accordingly, less expensive to purchase

Fight your way through the swathes of American war posters and French Art Nouveau, but you still won’t find much from Britain here.

There are railway posters.

Of course there are railway posters. Although this set (lot 230), by Pat Keely for the Southern Region just before the outbreak of war, are more interesting than the average.

There are four in total, and they look even better en mass – a stylistic bridge between Art Deco and the simplifications of the post-war style. Worth a look.

There are also London Underground posters too. This is by Charles Burton, from 1930.

While this bus poster, by Fred Taylor, seems impossibly sleek and minimalist for 1923. It’s wonderful.

There’s some Hans Unger too, if all that’s a bit too pre-war for you.

It’s one half of a pair poster from 1957 and quite expensive at $400-600. We paid £130 for both halves not that long ago so let’s see what the Americans think it is worth.

Aside from the expected, there are also a few interesting odds and ends, like these BOAC posters for Earls Court Motor Shows. The first one is particularly good, and I’d love to know if anyone has any information on it.

There are also, not for the first time, dozens of American motivational posters. I’m rather intrigued by these, in a slightly horrified way. Were they the from the war or the depression? Were they produced by the government, or like educational posters, sold into workplaces? Does anyone know and can tell me?

But I rather like this one, although for all the wrong reasons.

It’s not just the libel against the Spanish, although that’s quite funny on its own; it’s also the fact that I think I’d have the siesta and the work-life balance of the Spaniard over the American motivational poster any day.

Finally, there’s this, which is here for no other reason than I like it very much indeed.

It’s like an Indian Daphne Padden. More of her stuff later this week, by the way.

Modern British Collecting

posters

I’ve had Paul Rennie’s Modern British Posters: Art, Design & Communication for a few weeks now, and am guiltily aware that I haven’t given it a proper mention yet. Now there are a whole heap of real life reasons why this hasn’t happened, which I won’t go on about, but I am also aware that I’m finding it hard to come to a conclusion about it. Which is absurd, so here are a few thoughts which may or may not come to a definite answer at the end.

Tom Eckersley Seven Seas vitamins advertising vintage poster
Tom Eckersley, Seven Seas Vitamin Oil, 1947

This doesn’t mean that I don’t like it. The book is beautiful and would justify its cover price (more on that below) for the illustrations alone. You’ve seen a few on the blog already, there are plenty more littering this post. There simply isn’t another book covering these subjects in this detail and with this kind of wonderful reproduction, so it’s a great thing to have.

H A Rotholz, vintage GPO poster stamps in books
HA Rothholz, Stamps in Books, GPO, 1955

Even better, the book mentions Quad Royal which is very flattering indeed. So now it’s been immortalised in print, I’d better keep this thing going for a while, rather than just be a fly-by-night blog.

Reginald Mount, Keep Britain Tidy, 1950s

But as well as the book being a whole treasure trove of beautiful images, Paul Rennie also makes some really good points about posters and collecting, so much so that I am going to repeat them all over again here. At the start, he observes that part of the reason that no one else has written this book before him is that the world of the poster, in Britain at least, is absurdly fragmented.

For example, railway posters, motoring posters and war propaganda all form specialised archives within separate institutions. Within the context of these distinct institutions, there is no urgent requirement to integrate the various and disparate parts into a history of visual communication.

I’ve touched on this in posts before – this odd disjunction between disciplines results in quirks like the National Railway Museum not thinking about its posters in terms of designers on their website and many other odd occurrences. People who know all about railway posters might have no idea about the history of the Ministry of Information; the Imperial War Museum has no reason to care about what designers did before or after the war. As a result, Modern British Posters is therefore pretty much the first decent survey of the whole, and that can only be applauded.

Abram Games London Transport poster
Abram Games, At London’s Service, London Transport, 1947

I’m also really interested when, at the end of the book, he sets out the history of how they started collecting, and the rationale behind what they chose to buy. Partly because he started out by being fascinated by the Festival of Britain and then, in discovering more about Abram Games and the Festival symbol, found himself intrigued by a wider world of graphics and communication. I trod exactly the same path too (I still have the little Festival badge that I used to wear on my hat as a teenager); it makes me wonder how many people have followed the same thoughts, and also why the Festival exerts such a potent hold over our imaginations even now.

Abram Games British Railway Poster
Abram Games, See Britain By Train, British Railways 1951.

But he also explains why they bought what they did.

Our collecting began, back in about 1982, with an interest in modern design… In 1982, the words British and Modernism seemed like a contradiction in terms.

The direction of our collecting was formed in relation to this widespread,and misguided, perception of British resistance to modernity. Conveniently, it turned out that British items were generally of little interest to international collectors and were, accordingly, less expensive to purchase.

In a way, I wish he’d put this manifesto right at the start of the book, because it’s really important. This is partly because this is – and Paul Rennie freely acknowledges the point himself – a very partial book. Every single illustration is from their own collection and so knowing the history behind it makes a big difference to the way you might read the book as a whole. (I have been trying to work out whether there is a similar unifying idea behind our own collecting; so far I have only managed to come up with: It was cheap and we liked it).

Henrion BOAC poster
Henrion, BOAC Speedbird, 1947

The idea of the British relation to modernism itself is really interesting, and something I’d want to think about at length and probably devote a whole blog post (0r three) to. But it also informs a lot of the arguments that he’s making in the main bulk of the book, so it would have been good to know beforehand.

Now, I have to confess that between these two ideas I did get a bit lost in the middle of the book. Now this is partly I think a problem of the form – Paul Rennie is heroically attempting a complete survey not only of the history of posters in Britain, but also of the social and economic conditions which affected how they were produced. So it is, of necessity, a bit of a race through quite a lot of ideas and thoughts.

But also – and this is the bit I have been pondering for a while – Modern British Posters is at heart an academic book. It’s having a dialogue with a lot of other books, and theories of art and design, ideas about cultural production and the transmission of modernism, and that simply isn’t a conversation that I am part of any more. Academia and I gave up on each other more than twenty years ago, and since then I have been concentrating on the much simpler task of telling stories about people and things. So the fault is probably with me rather than the book, for which I can only apologise. I’d be interested to hear what anyone else thinks about this, particularly if you’re a design historian and have read it.

Telephone Less Tom Eckersley 1945
Tom Eckersley, Telephone Less, GPO, 1945

If you haven’t read it yet, and want to have an opinion, which of course you do, I am pleased to say that there is also a special Quad Royal readers’ offer (we’ve never had one of those before, get us). The book is available at a massive 40% off the list price to you our esteemed reader. To get hold of it, just email jess at blackdogonline.com, with Quad Royal Readers Offer as the subject line, and she will sort out the rest.

It’s the economy, stupid

auctions

At least that’s my theory. I can’t account for the Onslows’s sale otherwise. More posters than usual didn’t sell, or didn’t make their reserves, and very few indeed made more than their estimate. It seems that after two weeks of hearing about nothing but austerity budgets and cost-cutting across the board, everyone is now too frightened to spend money on posters.

There were a few honourable exceptions. This World War Two poster reached £420, from an original estimate of £100-150.

I don’t quite know why; plenty of other wartime posters didn’t sell that well, or at all, and it’s not even a particular design classic – I prefer the idea of the Londoner’s Land Club (which I would join in a flash if it still existed) to the actual poster itself.

A few other categories did well – Munich Olympics posters, and a smattering of French things and old things that I can’t get too excited about. This Frank Sherwin poster also went for £20 over its £600 high estimate.

But many classic railway posters weren’t as popular as they might have been. Lots of Terence Cuneos and landscape Quad Royals were passed over. As was this delightful chap, from Studio Seven.

I’d have thought him irresistable, but not even cute can sell in a recession it seems.

Mind you, I can see why there might be a shortage of buyers here. After Morphets and Bloomsbury’s big railway poster sale in New York, I imagine quite a few collectors may have spent over their annual budget already. Or they may just have auction fatigue. I’m getting quite close to it, and I’ve hardly bought anything.

There were some exceptions to the general trend though. The Shell Educational Posters all did well, almost all of them selling at their £50-70 estimates.

Which is possibly surprising, because the set on eBay which I blogged about recently, have almost entirely failed to sell for £60 each. (Should you fancy a bargain, they’re now coming round again at a more enticing £39.99 each.)

Other than that, the strange rule of the poster world was once again proven, which is that original artworks are less valuable than the mass-produced reproductions that sprang from them. (Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Mr Benjamin). There were a whole set – nine in total – of Frank Newbould railway safety posters. Each one paired the poster with the artwork and one or more original design treatments.

You’d have thought it would be a museum or a collector’s dream; but none of them made their £150-200 estimate, and a few failed to sell altogether. I’d love to know where they came from.

Also of interest is that a selection of 1960s London Underground posters (like this 1963 Frank Dobson) almost entirely went for £55-60 each.

Which perhaps makes the estimates at the Morphets sale look more reasonable, a thought which quite perks me up. Perhaps I’d better go and order that truck then…

But if you fancy buying any posters in the meantime, Onslows will consider offers on any of the unsold lots, so take a look, there may be a bargain or two to be had.

Disclaimer: this is an entirely personal view and has probably missed lots of interesting prices out. Please feel free to point them out, or to suggest any other theories you may have about why auctions and prices are as they are.

Country pleasures

designers, London Transport

The car broke down on the way home last night, and real life is generally intruding in one way or another, so proper posting will resume tomorrow.

In the meantime, have this by way of an apology.

It’s by Sheila Stratton, it’s from 1954 and it’s one half of a pair poster, thus.

And that’s pretty much all I can tell you about it, other than it is completely wonderful.

I tripped across it by accident in the LT collection a while back, and was so taken with it that I saved it for a day like today. But I can’t seem to find out any more about Sheila Stratton, and this seems to be the only poster design of hers I can turn up, so if anyone has any more information, please do let me know. And, even better, if you’ve got a spare one, the contact form is on the tab above. I have a very good bit of wall just waiting.

Sepsis, fuel and dark beer

auctions

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, the Onslows catalogue is now up and complete – eighteen lovely pages of posters for you to look at it, and all of which you can bid for via the internet.

So with the sale less than two weeks away, I thought I’d better take a proper look.

If you are a fan of a) World War One and Two, b) Guinness or c) French posters, you’re in luck, as there’s plenty of all of those.

This Mount/Evans salvage poster is probably my favourite of the WW2 lots – and one I’ve never seen before as well. Large tranches of the rest – unless you like H.M. Bateman cartoons – are more of historical than graphic interest. Although, having said that, I rather like this railway fuel saving poster too.

As well as this fantastically stark warning – also from the railways.

At an estimate of £70-£100, I might even think about that, were it not for the fact that I’d never ever put it up on the wall.

Then (lots 246 – 250 should you be looking for them) there are a small cache of classics, including Henrion, Keeley and three by Abram Games.

Every one a classic, but all also sufficiently grim that I can’t see any of them going up around the house any time soon.

In the world of Guinness, meanwhile, there are a few Gilroy classics on offer, but I rather like this 1962 one by R Peppe, not just for being different, but it does help.

And after that, I just got a bit overwhelmed. There are film posters, London Transport posters – including this 1953 gem by Sheila Robinson.

We once sold a poster of hers once; with hindsight I have no idea why.

There’s also this 1964 design for Kew Gardens, which is by Tom Eckersley’s wife, Mary Kessel, poster trivia fans.

There are of course railway posters, including Terence Cuneo’s Pictures of Trains, lots of 1972 Munich Olympic posters about which I know nothing, and – as mentioned in my last post – industrial quantities of Shell educational posters, at least 22, although I might well have missed some. The Hillier is still the best one on offer, although I am also a big fan of the David Gentleman series on The Roads of Britain.

There’s at least one missing here – The Great West Road with his wonderful image of Silbury Hill – and quite possibly more, but they’re still a great set on a deeply under-rated subject. But I will not digress.

If your a fan of Kraftwerk, you might want to buy this.

And finally (because I am rambling furiously and must stop) I like this, for no good reason at all.

Surely that prize specimen has to be worth more than the £30-40 estimate.

This is of course a fantastically partial review of what’s on offer, and has almost certainly left out all the most valuable posters. So please do and take a look for yourselves, and I’ll come back once the auction’s over and see what I missed out first time around.