London Underground Poster Archives - Page 6 of 19

A Gay Old Time

eBay

I haven’t posted about eBay for a bit, mostly because there hasn’t been anything of note for a while. At last, though, there is something worth a look. Even if it’s not, in rather too many cases, worth the amount of money they’re asking for it.

First out of the blocks is this, which is both wonderful and cheap (as least for now).

I don’t really need to say any more than that, do I?

I mentioned this very David Klein just the other day, because it’s coming up in the next Christies auction.

Christies are expecting between £700 and £900 for it, which means that this eBay version is currently stupidly cheap at only £140. I do not, however, believe that this is going to last.

Also a bit of a bargain (no, quite a lot of a bargain as they are currently just at 99p) are these two 1950s London Transport posters by Lobban.

While they may not be my favourite posters ever, they are for sale and for a mere 99p starting price, which can only be applauded these days.

Rather less of a steal is another London Transport poster from the 1950s, in this case by Denys Nichols and from 1954.

It’s a wonderful, wonderful poster that I would seriously consider buying it in a normal auction. But £499 is more than I think it would fetch at any kind of auction, never mind on eBay. Am I right though? We will have to wait and see.

If that annoys you, all is not lost as there is also the chance to buy your London Transport posters in bulk. Fourteen of the little fellows for just £100.

Now we have one of each of these Harry Stevens designs and so probably don’t need any more (for some reason these two particular posters have kept appearing everywhere over the last year). But if you fancy going into poster dealing, Sotherans had copies of each of those in their most recent catalogue, at £85 a piece, so there is some scope for a mark-up. (Sotherans never sent me an email when their new catalogue came out, probably because they knew I was going to mock the prices. Now that I have found it, I will duly do this in a post next week.)

In further bulk buying opportunities, this seller has a comprehensive selection of greetings telegrams for sale, of which this 1939 design by Alan Sorrell is my favourite.

I like the design, which is probably even nicer in focus, but am even more pleased by the fact that someone thought fit to commission and produce a telegram of this kind of landcape. If you do want any of them, though, you’ll need to be quick, as the auctions all end this evening.

Finally, a warning. The most unnecessary piece of poster memorabilia ever is back, back, back on eBay.

But this time they want not £50 for it, but £150. When it looks like a slug. Consider me speechless.

Auction fever (or not)

auctions

The next Christies poster sale is upon us; the lots are online, the printed catalogue is sitting on my desk. But I’ve been avoiding writing about it for the last few days, mainly because I can’t work up much enthusiasm for what’s on offer.

This, if I am pushed, is probably the best of the bunch. But it’s American, so it doesn’t really count, even if it is by Herbert Bayer.

Herbert Bayer Eggs vintage American wartime poster
Herbert Bayer, c.1940, est £700-900

The next best offerings are also American, a selection of TWA travel posters by David Klein.

David Klein, c.1958, est. £1,000-1,500

David Klein vintage TWA travel poster
David Klein, c.1960, £1,500-2,000

I’ve pondered the excellence of these before, because they have a quality which no British poster of that era really manages, an intense optimism about modernity, not simply as an ideal to be aimed for (which is much more the British mindset) but as something experienced in the present moment. They are glad to be alive in this modern world and the joy is infectious.

David Klein vintage TWA poster
David Klein, c.1960, est. £700-900

In the realms of things which I really should be contemplating, there is a Fougasse I haven’t seen before.

Fougasse, 1942, est. £600-800

Along with an interesting and early McKnight Kauffer.

McKnight Kauffer, 1933, est. £800-1,200

And then two Landers which are not new but now come with quite eyewatering estimates.

R M Lander, 1956, est. £600-800

I’m intrigued by these posters; they’re not necessarily the best of his work but they come up time and again at auction, unlike anything else he did. It could be that there are just more of them about, or it may be a self-perpetuating phenomenon: because people have seen them fetch good prices before, that brings more out of the woodwork. But he did do more interesting stuff, and I’ll post a few of our (rather battered) examples one of these days.

Then there is also this.

Daphne Padden, £1,00-1,500

Now it is by Daphne Padden, because it’s signed Daphne Padden, even if at first glance it looks much like her father’s style of work. Judging by the style of clothing, it must be from the very start of 1950s, so is probably one of her very earliest posters. Which makes it interesting, but I can’t say I particularly like it. Although the estimate suggests that Christies think that a large number of people will be expensively intersted in it.

There are other mildly interesting lots; a few from London Transport, of which my favourite is this Bawden.

Edward Bawden, 1936, est. £600-800

As ever, there are also the usual slew of railway posters including lots of pretty landscapes and detailed pictures of trains. This one does at least get a prize for being, er, different.

Greiwurth, 1928, est. £3,000-5,000

Oh to live in the simpler age before Freud thought of phallic symbolism.

Overall, though, the excitement just isn’t there. Really I think that – with the odd exception when a great collection comes up for sale – Christies’ sales just aren’t for me any more. The higher minimum lot value means that so much of what I’m interested in – the Royston Coopers and Tom Eckersleys – just don’t appear there any more. But these posters also not turning up anywhere else instead. So where have they gone? Are you sitting on a heap of these things and don’t know what to do with them these days? In which case, I might be able to help.

While I’m on about auctions, I should for the sake of completeness tell you that Poster Auctioneer have a new auction coming up tomorrow, but again with very little British interest in there, so you’ll have to make do with this Donald Brun instead.

Most of their posters are Swiss, which isn’t unreasonable for an auction house in Switzerland. What’s more puzzling is that Poster Connection, who are in the States, also have an auction stuffed with Swiss posters this time round. You can choose between an ample selection of Swiss graphics.

Hans Neuburg, 1966, est. $360

Or simply posters for Switzerland.

Herbert Leupin, 1949, est. $500

There are a very few British posters in amongst all the snow and sans serif, of which the most interesting is this Norman Weaver.

Norman Weaver, 1948, est. $500

With a rarely-seen Abram Games coming up a close second.

Abram Games, 1947, est. $600

But all is not lost. Swann Galleries have promised me that there are some lovely London Transport pieces in their forthcoming auction. I’ll let you know as soon as it appears online.

New In

eBay

While I am often griping about how posters cost too much on eBay these days, there are, every now and then, exceptions. Some of which I point out on here, some of which Mr Crownfolio and I throw a bid at. A few such bargains have arrived here recently (well, via a trip to the sorting office; we have a ridiculously small letterbox now, which is an absurd thing if you collect posters), and a couple are quite interesting.

First up, an anonymous Keep Britain Tidy poster, about which I know nothing at all but would probably date as being around the same time as the first Reginald Mount designs for the campaign.

It looks like the work of Harry Stevens, but could frankly be by anyone or no one. If you’ve got more idea than that, please let me know.

Secondly is this 1960s poster for the Motor Show. It’s worth a look because it’s quite good, and also because this kind of poster doesn’t crop up very often.

It’s by Roy Carnon, who did a fair bit of illustration in the 1950s and 60s but, much more important than that was ‘visual concept artist’ to Kubrick on 2001: A Space Odyssey and is therefore Very Important.

But there are other reasons to like it too; for me it’s a visual embodiment of the great British dilemma of ‘just how modern are we?’. The centre panel is a very good 1960s-modern poster. But then, somewhere along the line, someone has had a crisis of confidence and thought that you just can’t put The Queen into that kind of design, it’s just not fitting. And so we have a nice tasteful border with unthreatening serif type in which to put her. It’s a brilliant metaphor for the whole muddle, and revealing in a way that a truly perfect bit of design wouldn’t be.

Finally, the third poster is simply rather nice. It’s from 1967 and the painting is by Paul Millichip, who is still alive and working in the Chilterns.

Although I do think the typography is a bit unusual; I’d more expect to find it on a poster of the 1930s or 1960s. But I am sure there are plenty of examples out there which prove me wrong.

Chaps like you

eBay, other

A bit of a miscellany today, of which the most notable items are these.

They’re a pair of 1940s government information posters, but what makes them different is that they’re not wartime posters but date, I am reasonably sure, from just after the war.

The message is certainly right for the times. World War Two itself may have been over, but the sense of emergency hadn’t gone away because the end of American Lend-Lease finance meant that the bill now had to be paid. What was needed now was more National Savings and even more production for export earnings. So, just as during the war, sheaves of posters were produced exhorting the nation to greater effort. The government’s publicity budget in 1946 was nearly £3m, almost as much as it had been during the war; by contrast, in 1938, they had spent just £257,000.

It wasn’t just the quantity of posters which carried on, plenty of the wartime messages didn’t change either, and in many cases the austerity slogans are almost indistinguishable from those produced while the war was on.

The ‘still’ is one clue in the poster above (which is ours and so not for sale on eBay right now), but it is definitely post-war, because it was designed by Dorrit Dekk, who only joined the Central Office of Information in 1946. But without that attribution it would be almost impossible to give a definite date to it.

But what’s really interesting about all of these posters, and what makes the pair for sale on eBay so unusual, is that in comparison with the wartime posters, very few of them survive. And I think there’s probably a very good reason for this. During the war, it was clear to everyone that this was a moment of great historical importance and so at least a few people saved the posters as souvenirs or documents or whatever you care to call them. After the war, though, the austerity and effort had been a noble cause was now just a relentless grind in a grey, bombed-out, rather cheerless country. It wasn’t a time that many people wanted a memento of.

There’s another reason, too. People were sick of posters telling them what to do. Six years of almost constant exhortation and instruction had left their mark, and no one wanted to listen any more. All of which make these eBay survivals both rare and unusual. Although whether they are £140 worth of rare is another question altogether.

Mind you, they’re not along as there seems to be quite a lot of expensive on eBay at the moment. At first this London Underground poster doesn’t look unreasonable at £140, because it is lovely.

But then it is only 10″ x 12″, so that’s quite a lot of money for a small bit of paper. Mind you, if I start thinking like that, I’ll never buy anything again.

Elsewhere, this 1960s London Transport poster for the Imperial War Museum is definitely overpriced with a starting price of £125.

While this pair of school prints are at least starting at a reasonable £40 and £30 respectively, although I suspect they may go higher.

The first is by Michael Rothenstein, the second by Leonard Tisdall, both rather good. I’ve written about the school prints before, but it’s probably worth pointing out that it’s yet another example of artists in the 1940s and 50s taking work for children seriously. Good art was a very important part of the new world they were building; I wonder where that impulse has gone now.

Finally, a rare feature which is things liked by Quad Royal turning up on television. Doesn’t happen often, so twice in one night is nothing short of a miracle. Firstly, a set of Fougasse Careless Talk Costs Lives posters turned up on the Antiques Roadshow, where Mark Hill valued them at £1,000-1,500. Mr Crownfolio, on our sofa, said £750. Any thoughts as to who might be right there? Then, straight after this on BBC Four, The Secret Life of the Airport featured Margaret Calvert talking about designing signs and typefaces for Gatwick. That bit’s about 10 min from the end, but the rest of it is worth your attention for some cracking archive footage too.

New Term

auctions, eBay

It’s September, school has started (in the case of small Crownfolio, for the very first time) and the auction season is getting back into gear too. First in the queue are International Poster Auctions in New York, whose Auction of Rare Posters is on Sept 8th.

Most of what’s on offer consists of things that Americans like and I don’t (Barnum and Bailey Circus posters, Art Nouveau, that kind of thing) but there are a few British gems on offer.

Quite a few of these are pre-war London Transport posters like this Dora Batty, but there’s nothing wrong with that.

Dora Batty, 1933, est. $1,000-1,200

This Roy Meldrum is less often reproduced but also rather fine. It seems to have an odd familiarity to me, but I don’t know whether this is because it looks like a mixture of so many other images from that period, or simply that I used to own a postcard of it once upon a time.

Roy Meldrum vintage London Transport poster 1933 Something Different
Roy Meldrum, 1933, est. $1,700-2,000

There are also a couple of McKnight Kauffer classics up for grabs.

McKnight Kauffer The Flea vintage London Transport poster 1926
E. McKnight Kauffer, 1926, est. $1,700-2,000

McKNight Kauffer Stonehenge vintage shell poster 1931
E. McKnight Kauffer, 1931, est. $3,000-4,000

But my favourite is much later than any of these, as it dates from 1973 and is by David Gentleman.
David Gentleman vintage London Transport poster Victorian London 1973
David Gentleman, 1973, est. $700-1,000

Clearly prices rise as posters cross the Atlantic: this poster went for just £130 on eBay last month, much to the disappointment of at least one reader of this blog.

Elsewhere on eBay, it’s still a bit quiet. This Tom Purvis is out of focus, a bit battered and in the U.S., although that doesn’t seem to be deterring the bidders.

It is also my bounded duty to point out that Cyclamon has yet another of these small but perfectly formed Eckersley GPO posters for sale on a Buy It Now for £35.

I don’t think he’s printing them.

Visual Signalman

eBay

Despite the holidays, there are a few faint signs of life on eBay now. In fact more than faint, as this 1963 Tom Eckersley went for a whopping £123.65 a few days ago. Not to us, I hasten to add.

I’m not sure what’s going on here. It may be that later Eckersley posters are starting to rise in value, which would make sense as they certainly seem to be very popular out there on the visual web. Equally, it could be that people are engaging in silly bidding because there is so little else on offer right now.

It’s not just the Eckersleys either. The seller had a few more London Transport posters for auction, so this John Farleigh went for £83 too, in spite of some of the more eccentric (and less informative) photographs I’ve seen for a while. This is the best, which isn’t saying much.

They dated it as 1960s but it looks a bit earlier to me. But I can’t find it on the London Transport Museum site or indeed anywhere else, so if someone out there knows more, I’d love to hear from you.

We did get this Carol Barker for just £23, though.

She’ll be fashionable one of these days, you mark my words.

Elsewhere on eBay, in America to be precise, there are a set of three World War Two British Navy posters for sale. They’re pretty expensive too, at $140 a pop starting price, but I mention them because they are quite interesting.

They’re a celebration of what are clearly some of the less exciting jobs within the Navy – Stores Assistant anyone? Although I don’t know whether their aim is recruitment, or just to reassure the people in these jobs that they are also a valuable part of the Navy too.

What makes them really interesting is that I have never ever seen them anywhere else before (and goodness knows I have been looking at more than enough World war Two posters over the last few months). They are by an artist called M Bertram about whom I know nothing either and generally they are a complete mystery. But I do think they are real.

Finally, my searches for the John Farleigh poster above did lead me to this. Which needs no further comment really.