Posters Produce Results

No arguing with that, is there.

Posters Produce Results. 1932 CECILIA H. MURPHY British Advertising Association
Cecilia Murphy, 1932, est. $1,700-2,000

Although for today’s post, the results we are mostly bothered about come from auctions, as all at once there is a rush of new sales on the horizon and I can hardly keep up.

That poster above is included in  Poster Auction International’s May 6 sale in New York.  There isn’t a great deal else of British interest there, except to say that it’s always good to see something by Ashley Havinden.

Use BP. 1932 ASHLEY Havinden vintage poster
Ashley Havinden, 1932, est $2,000-2,500

I’m also going to make one of my periodic exemptions for things foreign, mainly because this exhibition poster by Max Bill is just an extraordinary piece of design for 1945.

USA Baut. 1945 MAX BILL (1908-1994) vintage exhibition poster
Max Bill, 1945, est. $800-1,000

It still looks modern now, so back then it must have seemed like a visitation from the future.

Other than that, there is what looks like a chance to buy the complete works of Alphonse Mucha, but if you’ve got enough money to do that – estimates go as high as $90,000 –  you’re probably not reading this blog for advice on posters.

There’s a bit more to detain the rest of us at the forthcoming Van Sabben auction on April 21st, although most of it comes from the well-trodden paths of airline advertising, wartime and post-war propaganda posters and the London Underground.

Having said that, even these can deliver a few surprises, the greatest of which is probably this Beaumont.  In fact more of a fright than a surprise really; Mr Crownfolio is very worried that someone has beheaded their mum and put her in the cabbage patch.

Beaumont vintage propaganda poster 1950  cabbages
Leonard Beaumont, 1950, est. €120-400

Even at the top end, that estimate seems fairly reasonable when you consider that the lot also includes three other posters of the same ilk, all dating, I think, from after the war.

Anonymoust food propaganda poster after world war two

Green vegetables vintage British propaganda poster

Shredded cabbage vintage ministry of food propaganda poster late 1940s

On a similar theme is this poster, although with the added bonus of an interestingly menacing tone.

1946 bread want it vintage propaganda poster Ministry of Food
Anonymous, 1946, est. €80-160

Once again, there is a slew of airline posters, many of which have featured on this blog before.  Of those, the most desirable is probably this Abram Games.

Abram Games vintage 1949 airline poster BOAC
Abram Games, 1949, est. €650-1,000

But there are a few novelties here too.  This is one.

vintage 1949 BOAC poster Glad airline time is money
Glad, 1949, est €150-280.

I have never come across Glad before, but it’s really rather good, so if anyone can knows more, please do let me know.

The second is by John Bainbridge, about whom I do know more and have been meaning to post about for some time, because he is both excellent and not well enough known.

John Bainbridge, vintage airline poster BEA, 1949
John Bainbridge, 1949, est. €150-250

Although he worked in Britain for much of his career, John Bainbridge was originally from Australia, and there is a really good archive of his work over there, which I must post about one day.

There aren’t many London Transport posters for once, but those few are quite unusual.  This first one can only be from the 1930s.

Roy Meldrum vintage London Transport poster Green Line 1933
Roy Meldrum, 1933, est. € 300-600.

Van Sabben also have the poster below dated to 1935, which seemed a bit odd to me.  And a brief delve into the LT Museum site gives a date of 1950 instead, as well as confirming that it is one half of a pair poster.

James Arnold out to the Farms vintage London Transport poster 1950
James Arnold, 1950, est. €120-250.

Again, this looks like quite a bargain, as it also gets you this S John Woods poster from the same year as well.

S John Woods vintage London Transport poster 1950

Oddly, the other half of the farms pair poster is also on sale, but in a different lot.

Other half of farms pair poster
James Arnold, 1950, est. €100

I’m no completist when it comes to pair posters – would you ever really put the other half up on the wall?  So given the choice, I think I’d probably rather have the S John Woods instead.

As if all of that wasn’t enough for one day, Poster Connection also have a sale in San Francisco on 28th April.  There are airline posters, and that’s probably all I need to say about it.  But I did rather like this one.

BEA vintage airline poster Europe 1948
Anonymous, 1948, est. $200-360.

But it’s not just the gaiety I like, it’s also a reminder of the huge gulf between Britain and America at this point.  Britain was still enduring austerity, worse even than during the war, and this brightly coloured poster would have been an unimaginable luxury, depicting foreign travel which could only be dreamed off.  Such stuff were for export only, as the country desperately tried to entice Americans over to spend their money, and so help pay off the war debt.

Informative

Today’s post is crowdsourcing, Quad Royal style, because lots of very kind people have been sending me links to posters on sale or sold recently.  So the least I can do, of course, is share them.

The first, and following on nicely from my last post, is this Daphne Padden poster for British Railways, which is up for sale in America via eBay.

Vintage Daphne Padden British Railways poster Lancashire Blackpool tower.

It’s a great poster, and one that I have never ever seen before and can’t find much trace of either, apart from the fact that one sold in the Midlands about three years ago.  Despite all that, and an attempt at a frame, the price seems a bit steep to me at £300+ for a starting bid.  But thank you to Mike Jacob for putting that my way nonetheless.

Also forthcoming, and emailed to me by Mr Crownfolio upstairs, is a Christies poster sale.  But don’t get too excited, this is an Olympic special, and there are very few Olympic posters I can get enthusiastic about, with this Richard Beck from 1956 perhaps the only exception.

Richard Beck 1956 Olympic poster
Richard Beck, 1956, est £800-1,200

And I definitely don’t want to buy an Olympic torch (there are a surprising number on offer too).  Given that, there isn’t a great deal else to report from the catalogue.  All I can point you towards are a handful of McKnight Kauffer’s.

Edward McKnight Kauffer (1890-1954)  EARLS COURT MOTOR SHOW  1937
McKnight Kauffer, 1937. est. £700-900

The one below has to be my favourite, although this is less a result of the image than the estimate.

Edward McKnight Kauffer (1890-1954)  ENO'S "FRUIT SALT"  lithograph in colours, 1925,
McKnight Kauffer, 1925, est. £1,200 – 1,800

We got another one of this series on eBay about eighteen months ago, only for a small fraction of what Christies thinks it is worth, an experience which never fails to please me.  And it’s a nicer image, to boot.

There is also a classic Abram Games.

Abram Games (1914-1996)  JOIN THE ATS  lithograph in colours, 1941
Abram Games, 1941, est. £2,000 – 3,000

Along with this Peter Roberson, which I am guessing only slips through Christies minimum lot requirements thanks to the Festival of Britain interest.

Peter Roberson (1907-1989)  VISITOR'S LONDON, FESTIVAL OF BRITAIN  lithograph in colours, 1950
Peter Roberson, 1950, est. £1,200 – 1,600

My favourite British poster is probably this obscure and slightly pallid Victor Pasmore.

Victor Pasmore (1908-1998)  LONDON GROUP  lithograph in colours, 1948
Victor Pasmore, 1948, est. £600 – 800

Note the use of British in the sentence above.  Because once again, the local talent is having to compete for my attention with a small but lovely set of David Klein posters.

David Klein (1918-2005)  MIAMI, FLY TWA  offset lithograph in colours, c.1960
David Klein, 1960, est. £800 – 1,200

David Klein (1918-2005)  LOS ANGELES, FLY TWA  offset lithograph in colours, c.1958
David Klein, 1958, est. £800 – 1,200

David Klein san fransciso 1958
David Klein, 1958, est. £800 – 1,200 

That first one in particular is fabulous, if a touch unaffordable.

The bad news is not just the small selection of posters I want to look at either.  As far as I can tell from Christies’ Calendar, this will be their only poster sale this spring.  And eBay’s gone into the doldrums too.  There’s nothing left for it, I may have to start trawling the railwayana catalogues to keep my hopes up.

There are still a few glimmerings in the provincial auction scene as well, although I might have to get my act together a bit in reporting them to you.  James Manning pointed out that Dreweatts have been selling more Percy Drake Brookshaws in a recent sale.

Now I say more because one of my first ever posts on here was about some of his posters being sold at the same auction house.  Both then and now they seem to have come from the artist’s family, who have clearly been disposing of what they have in dribs and drabs.  And also saving the best stuff until last.

A London Underground advertising poster, 'While Others Wait - A Season [Ticket] / Takes You Through', 1928, by Percy Drake Brookshaw (1907-93)

What’s most amusing about these lots is the discrepancy between the estimates and the results.  I would have been very happy to get the poster above for the £50-60 that Dreweatt’s estimated.  Sadly it went for £550.  Although perhaps not sadly, given that I missed the sale.

That wasn’t a freak occurrence either, all the posters reached similarly high prices.  The boat race poster below was estimated at £100-150, but sold for almost ten times that, £1,100.

A London Underground advertising poster, for the University Boat Race, 'Saturday March 31st - 9.45 a.m. / Nearest Stations: Putney Bridge, Hammersmith / Ravenscourt P[ar]k, Turnham Green & Chiswick P[ar]k', 1928, by Percy Drake Brookshaw

While this classic would have been the bargain of the century at its £60-80 estimate.

A London Underground advertising poster, for the University boat race, 1937, by Percy Drake Brookshaw

But it too went for £1,100.

I swear I will never ever fully understand the poster market.  Prices like that make me think that the internet is doing its job in flattening out the market, as anyone with an interest and a tiny bit of understanding of searches on websites can find almost any lot up for sale and bid on it.  But why doesn’t that work with eBay then?  Why can we buy a McKnight Kauffer on there for a tenth of its Christies price?  I think we might need to write a specialist piece of poster market theory, so if there is an economist in the house, can they get in touch?  And for anyone else, please do keep sending the auction links and anything else that takes your fancy, they’re very much appreciated.

 

Meet Mr Poster

There has definitely been a change in eBay over the last few years, at least in terms of the poster market.  When we first started watching it, most of what was up for sale wasn’t either of much quality or of much value.  Think National Savings and posters which had been damaged beyond all reasonable repair.  And quite often both.

Nowadays, though, it’s very different out there.  What’s on offer can sometimes look more like a sample from a specialist poster auction than the scrapings from someone’s attic, although admittedly you don’t get to look at pictures of so many people’s floors in a proper auction.

It’s one of those weeks this week.  So you could have a Guinness poster.

Guinness Poster 1951 Wilk (Dick Wilkinson)

Or a high quality film poster by none other than James Fitton.

James fitton film poster Meet Mr Lucifer 1953

Although with a starting bid of £250, I shan’t be buying it.  As the posters on offer edge up to auction quality, it seems the prices are doing the same.  I’m less impressed with that, however inevitable it is.

For a £99.99 opening offer, you might also have this period railway poster, featuring a man with wonderfully spivvy dress sense.

Lggage in Advance vintage railway poster late 1940s

Extra points for standing on the poster while you’re taking the photograph there.

You might also be interested in this gem  (starting price £80) which is one of my favourite railways posters that we don’t own.  Yet.

Manchester Piccadilly vintage railway poster British Railways 1960

I spent several of my teenage years travelling in and out of Manchester Piccadilly for gigs, nightclubs and hanging around in shops without buying anything, so it has a great nostalgic appeal.  Although I don’t remember the architecture looking quite that optimistic or even interesting after a couple of decades of unsympathetic adaptation and Mancunian smoke.

If it’s London Transport posters you are after, there is this bus stop poster by Harry Stevens.  Again.

Harry Stevens bus stop litter poster London Transport 1977

This keeps coming up, everywhere from eBay to Sotherans, and has probably been mentioned on here more times than any other single poster.  I have no idea why there are quite so many of them about.  Were they distributed to every London school child for the Silver Jubilee or something?  Or were they just very easy to steal from bus stops?  If anyone has a clue, please do share.

But all is not lost, some corners of eBay are just as they ever were.  Would you like a 1960s RoSPA poster?

1960s ROSPA road safety poster mirror gear signal

Please say you would.  Because I’ve got a whole tube full of these to put up for sale one of these days, although probably with a starting price of less than £9.99.

There’s also still space for the oddities too, like this man in France who is mostly selling a vast array of posters about safety out on the airport apron which is really worth looking at just for curiosity value alone.  The collection includes this British Airways safety poster, yours for the grand sum of €2.

British Airways safety poster

My favourite, however, is this Air France one, also €2 if you fancy it.

Air France safety poster dogs bottom

Finally,  there are the things that are more likely to come up in a junk shop or ephemera fair than an auction house, like a large set of BBC Schools leaflets or a Dorrit Dekk menu.

Lots of lovely time and tune for you

Dorrit Dekk P&O Chusan

These reassure me.  I’m really pleased it isn’t all tidied up and auction-like yet on eBay; life would be much duller if it were, and I wouldn’t know quite how many people had beige carpets. And we’d hardly be able to afford any posters at all ever. So long may it carry on like this.

Be prepared

Hurrah, an auction.  It’s about time we had a nice chunky set of British posters for sale, and it’s Bloomsbury Auctions who are obliging this time, on the 16th February.

Once again, there are incalculable quantities of airline posters.  Where do they all come from? I don’t remember them being in auctions a few years ago, and suddenly they are omnipresent.

Lewitt Him vintage airline poster AOA stratocruiser 1948
Lewitt Him, 1948, est £300-500

Lewitt Him AOA vintage airline poster 1950
Lewitt Him, 1950, est. £400-600

Well, there are at least six.  Some of them are indeed the usual Lewitt-Him AOA designs, but there are also other designers working for other airlines for a change.  This one is by Willy de Majo, who deserves a post all of his own one day.

Willy de Major vintage BOAC airline poster 1948 South America
Willy de Majo, 1948, est. £600-800

My favourite of them all is probably this Schleger design for BEA, which I don’t remember ever having seen before now.

Hans Schleger BEA poster hand
Hans Schleger, est. £700-900

It’s also reminded me that when I wrote about these wide blue skies in the airline posters the other day, I left something out, something I only realised last week when I was thinking about the afterlife of surrealism in graphic design.

vintage BOAC poster 1948 airline flags
Anon, 1948, est. £350-450

Because as well as being a remaking of wartime skies and vapour trails, these clear skies with their spotting of clouds are also the heavens across which surrealist visions drift.

BEverley Pick vintage airline poster BOAC
Beverley Pick, est £500-700

Certainly Schleger’s airline skies aren’t much different to his pre-war dreams; it’s just different kinds of flying I suppose.  Maybe it did seem unreal to get to places so quickly, I don’t know.

Laurence Fish, life is gay at whitley bay, vintage travel poster
Laurence Fish, est. £200-400

Apart from the airlines, I can also offer you the undervalued dose of kitsch above, along with a neat Lander and a John Burningham that every household should own.

RM Lander Isle of Man vintage travel poster
R M Lander, est, £ 150-250

John Burningham vintage London Transport poster boat 1964
John Burningham, 1964, est £100-150

Beyond that the posters that most appeal to me are, strangely enough, mostly pre-war.  Mind you, who could resist this.

Blackpool vintage LMS travel railway poster
Anon, est. £200-400

While the idea of ‘J B Priestley’s England’ is one which hasn’t really lasted, making this poster an interesting curio.

Austin Cooper vintage railway poster J B Priestley Good Companions
Austin Cooper, est. £150-250

These two, meanwhile, are just quaintly likeable.

D M Earnshaw vintage London transport poster 1938 party
D M Earnshaw, 1938, est. £100-150

Freda Lingstrom school picnics vintage poster 1930
Freda Lingstrom, 1930, est. £200-300

None of which, though, really adds up to much other than some posters which I enjoy but probably won’t buy, along with a couple of interestingly low valuations on one or two lots.  I shall be particularly interested to see what happens to the Burningham and Whitley Bay posters when they come up.

There are also a very few posters on offer at Dominic Winter’s auction tomorrow, but they do include one or two interesting wartime and pre-war ones.  This Abram Games falls, like so many of his wartime posters, into the category of admirable but I wouldn’t want to have it on my wall.

Abram Games vintage army ordnance poster c1943
Abram Games, 1943, est. £300-500

Then there is this  McKnight Kauffer ARP poster.

McKNight Kauffer vintage propaganda poster ARP 1938
Edward McKnight Kauffer, 1938, est. £200-300

We have a smaller version of this and I was considering it the other day, because it is an odd one.

Although I quite like it as a piece of graphic design (enough to have the air pellet holes removed and get it framed, so a fair bit of like), I’m not sure it’s successful as a poster.  But then it does have an almost impossible task to fulfill.  The design dates from 1938, so just before the war; it needs to make people aware that there is a need for them to do something, but at the same time it can’t spell out the detail of what might happen and frighten people (“you will all be bombed in your beds and die without ARP, so there”).  So it ends up being a bit vague and ineffectual; perhaps they thought that people would have read the papers and would be able to fill in the details themselves, or maybe they just wanted to be woolly at this stage, I don’t know.

Dominic Winter are also selling an ARP poster by Pat Keely in the same sale, and I’m not sure his design is much more convincing.

Pat Keely vintage arp world war two propaganda poster 1938
Pat Keely, 1938, est. £200-300

What do you reckon?

Thinking in numbers

For anyone who thought the infographic is a modern phenomenon, the London Transport Museum is here to set you right.

They’ve just created a new display of graphics about numbers, which I am mainly drawing your attention to because this Schleger is both fantastic and not often seen.

Hans Schleger vintage London Transport poster 1938.

Interestingly, it’s from 1938.  These kind of explanatory posters with factual graphics are sometimes ascribed to the war, with its accompanying need to explain to the people, but clearly the trend had begun before the conflict started. This design by Theyre Lee Elliot is even earlier, from 1936.

Theyre Lee Elliott 1936

(I’m guessing from the press release that this is in the exhibition from the description, apologies if you go there and it isn’t…)

In fact a fair chunk of the exhibition seems to be dedicated to proving that the infographic goes back quite a long way further than we might think.

Irene Fawkes 1924 vintage London Transport infographic poster

The design above, by Irene Fawkes, dates from 1924 and there are plenty more of that ilk in the exhibition, although they are mostly in a pre-war style that I can’t get too excited about.

Charles Shephard 1923 Vintage London Transport poster

But what this makes me think, perhaps even more than how far these kind of explanation goes back, is that what seems to be missing are their modern equivalents.  I know there are exceptions to this – a few years ago London Transport produced a set of posters explaining why escalators needed to be replaced, which were placed on the hoardings around the work which weren’t graphically exceptional but were interesting and informative.  In the main, though, it doesn’t feel as though public bodies feel the need to explain to us what they are doing any more. Or am I missing something?

Heinz Zinram vintage London Transport poster 1960s

The above is by Heinz Zinram (at least he took the photographs) and dates from 1965.  Just as true today though.

And thanks to Macca, who pointed me at this exhibition in the first place, for which I am very grateful.

Posters past

A while ago I posted, as did many other people, about the ghost posters of Notting Hill Gate, thanks to the wonderful photos taken by Mike Ashworth.

wide of disused passageway Notting Hill Gate tube station

In the late 1950s, this tunnel, which ran between different lines at Notting Hill Gate tube station, was replaced by escalators and sealed up.  What remained there for more than 60 years was a fantastic set of posters, a glimpse into what was really being advertised at the time.

Old posters in disused passageway at Notting Hill Gate tube station, 2010

What’s particularly fascinating is that they’re not all good.  Of course there are some classics like Daphne Padden’s poster for Royal Blue coaches, but some of them are frankly quite average.  Dial FLE 5000 for the Evening News.

The reason I’m reminding you about this is that a similar set of posters – only this time not stuck to any walls – have just been sold on eBay.  There are seven of them, and it really does look like the contents of a pile given to the poster hangers at the start of the day.

Harry Stevens Boulogne vintage travel poster 1959

British Railways book holiday travel poster 1959

Once again, there are some lovely pieces of design – my favourite is probably this Victor Galbraith image.

Victor Galbraith vintage 1959 sport travel poster

The LT Museum dates that to 1959, and my guess is that they are all from about the same period.

So far, all so wonderful, but there are also some decidedly average ones.

Mechanical Handling Exhibition Earls Court May

Some which can only be described as looking  like newspaper ads magnified.

Atlas van vintage advertising poster 1959

Along with a couple which aren’t even that interesting.

London TRansport vintage evening news advertising poster

I have no idea where the set  have come from, but I’m going to ask, so if I find out more I will let you know.

But they’re not just interesting as a cross-section, they also tell me, at least, something new.

Lt Copes advertising poster

All of these posters are 20″ x 30″, so Double Crown size, which was the standard advertising format of the period (if you want a full explanation of imperial poster sizes, Tom Eckersley will be your guide)  Which is what you’d probably expect, given that, just like today, all kinds of companies advertised on the Tube network.

But two of the posters are for institutions – British Railways and London Transport – who usually used the 40″ x 25″ Double Royal poster for their advertising.  That’s the size that posters on railway stations and on the outside of Tube stations always were, and that’s the size that most railway and London Transport posters are when they survive – take a look at any auction if you don’t believe me.

Except here we have two posters, one for the railways and one for London Transport itself, which don’t fit that format and instead have been designed to sit amongst all the other commercial advertising.  Which surprised me, as I’d never really thought that they ever produced posters in this format.

Of course it makes complete sense when you do think about it, especially for London Transport who must have printed at least some Double Crown posters just to fill in any gaps which appeared in their commercial advertising spaces.  Victor Galbraith’s elephant is probably doing that job on the tunnel walls above.

Victor Galbraith Party Travel London Transport poster 1958

And even a cursory search on his name in the London Transport Museum archives produces other designs in a Double Crown size too, so while they might have been uncommon, they weren’t entirely unusual.  Here’s another one from 1959.

Victor Galbraith rush hour poster vintage London Transport 1959

But that BR and London Transport produced these posters  is also not surprising because this point, the late 1950s, is the final heyday of the poster.  This was an advertising medium of such importance that even British Railways, with its own poster sites in its own poster sizes, couldn’t afford not to be part of it.  This wouldn’t last though, within a few years commercial television would have ended the dominance of the poster forever.

My Victor Galbraith search also brings up this wonderful bird, who is a Double Royal this time.

Galbraith vintage London Transport poste r1958

I wonder how the decisions were made as to which posters were chosen for which sizes.  That, like so many other things, is something to find out more about one of these days. Unless there’s someone out there who knows already.