London Underground Poster Archives - Page 19 of 19

Something fishy going on

designers

Now here’s a thing. To be precise, it’s a website about Macfisheries, full of pictures of pre-war shops and employee reminiscences. But it’s also got a fair smattering of the work of Hans Schleger, who designed pretty much the entire corporate identity for the food chain throughout the 1950s, from shop layout to packaging design and advertising.

To whet your appetite, here are some packaging designs (photos from the Hans Schleger exhibition at the V&A in 2007).

But what I really wanted to draw your attention to are the brilliant in-store posters that Schleger and his studio designed to be displayed in the shops.

I want to buy salmon, turkey and chicken right this minute. From a beautifully-designed shop please.

But these posters have got me thinking. Because I have never, ever seen one of these in the wild – at an auction or on eBay (and if anyone has, there’s a comments link below where you can tell me all about it at the bottom of this post).

One of the reasons, I suppose, that railway posters and London Underground posters have ended up being so collectable is that they are out there to be collected in the first place. Both the railway companies and London Transport did sell contemporary editions of their posters*. So pristine copies – however few – were kept and framed and had at least a fighting chance of surviving for longer than the duration of the advertising campaign.

Whereas, I’m guessing, the Macfisheries posters were put into a wet and rather smelly bin at the end of the week or month. And so now next to none survive, apart from perhaps the few above and those that Schleger himself kept and which are now at the National Archive of Art and Design (about whom I am going to grumble at length one of these days as they are absolutely inaccessible online). I’d imagine that as a result, they are quite valuable; then again, it might work the other way, as there’s no established market in them. I rather doubt that though.

* I once saw on eBay a 1930s poster advertising that London Transport posters could be bought at their 55, Broadway headquarters. Not only did I fail to buy it, I didn’t even keep an image of it, and now I can’t track it down at the London Transport Museum. Any clues, anyone?

Art for all

auctions

Tracking down a bargain is hard work these days. There aren’t many to be found at Onslows any more, and even on eBay, something has to be pretty well hidden not to make good money. So pretty much the only pleasure left are the local auctions.

For example this picture and description in Battle:

E R BARTELT London Transport poster print Circa. 1960s, and MENGUY, Colour lithograph poster print, (2), unframed.

also hid this 1961 gem:

Yours for £45, which isn’t bad. And if anyone knows anything about Mr Bartelt, please let me know, as I don’t. (The sale also had a smattering of original railway poster artwork, but it’s hard to get worked up about that at the best of times, and especially not after the art-fest that was Morphets day two.)

There on the other hand, not everything that is hidden turns out to be treasure.

This listing in Essex:

A 1966 Underground poster, by Hans Hunger
30 to 50 (GBP)

(I make no comment)

Could have been one of these two:

Mmm, lovely John Nash architecture. I got quite excited for about ten minutes.

But what was on offer was this.

Still went for £42 though, despite the nibbled edges and unprepossessing frame, which goes to show something, even if I don’t know quite what. Does anyone have any views on what Unger is worth? I rather like the late 50s and 60s underground posters (with the exception above), but perhaps that’s just me.

But of course the real lesson from all this is that, thanks to internet listing and on-line bidding, because we can find these things , everyone else can too. So soon there won’t be any bargains at all. Then what shall I do?

Mr Bawden designs a railway poster

Uncategorized

You’d think that the subject of the Morphet’s auction had been well and truly exhausted – it was only a poster sale after all. But there was one more thing I wanted to say about it, and that’s Edward Bawden.

I knew he’d done some rather wonderful London Transport posters before now.

This one was also in the Morphets sale (estimate £150-£200, sold for £1200, I say no more). It’s half of a pair poster from 1952 and is rather wonderful.

But what really surprised me was this.

For the very simple reason that I had no idea that he had ever designed a railway poster. It’s from 1954 and is a Quad Royal depicting the York mystery plays*. The National Railway Museum collection only has this one. Are there any more out there that I don’t know about? Or is it unique?

*And it only went for £440, so with hindsight I wish I’d bit a bit more bravely on it. Never mind.

Mmmm, 1976 never looked so good

eBay

Sold on eBay this weekend*, proof that poster design hadn’t gone into a complete decline by the 1970s, in the shape of this wonderful London Zoo poster by Abram Games.

I think this is great, and that’s a bit of a rare event. Because, in my mind, Abram Games is rather like oysters or Gainsborough. Everyone else thinks they’re wonderful, and I know I’m supposed to think that they’re fabulous as well, but I can’t do it. I can admire them, I can see why other people pay lots of money for them (ish) but I just don’t like them that much. With Abram Games, his posters are great pieces of design, but more often than not they feel to me a bit worthy, if not dour, and I wouldn’t necessarily want them hanging on my wall. This, however, has a real lightness of touch which makes it a pleasure to look at – and the tiger (edit: of course that’s what it is) is smiling. Who wouldn’t want to live with that.

Another surprise about this auction was the finishing price of just over £156, which felt quite low. This isn’t just because it’s a lovely poster of a kind which doesn’t come up that often, but also because of idiosyncracies of eBay keyword search. Named designers sell much better than good design, and Games seems to be – correct me if you think otherwise – the top search in posters. So a bit of a surprise that this didn’t turn into a more expensive battle.

If all of that fuzziness and folding is giving you a headache, by the way, this is what it ought to look like in focus and with a bit of light restoration.

Rather nice.

*You will notice as this blog goes on that I’ll point you to some eBay auctions while they’re going on, and to others after they’ve finished. This may be a bit infuriating – for which I apologise – but it doesn’t take the mind of Einstein to work out that it rather depends on whether or not we’ve decided to bid on them. These days, it’s hard enough to pick up a bargain on eBay without inviting half the internet (or, as things stand at the moment, the rather smaller number of readers of this blog) to bid on the posters we’re after as well.