London Underground Poster Archives - Page 8 of 19

Queer Things

eBay

Only last week I was complaining that there really weren’t enough British food posters when this arrived through the post. I’d entirely forgotten than we’d bought it from eBay.

Although it’s only tangentially about food, and quite informatively prosaic to boot, I still rather like it. So much so that I would have hung it on the kitchen wall, were it not for the fact that there’s no more space. And the little hanger at the top of the metal bar (it’s got metal strips at the top and bottom just like a Shell educational poster) fell off when I photographed it. Never mind.

Another recent purchase was this splendidly information-free poster.

Thanks to the interweb, I am able to tell you that it is a British Railway poster by Myers (whose signature is just about visible bottom right), it dates from the 1950s, and it also existed with text too (image from the NMSI collection).

All of which leaves me with a couple of questions. Firstly, why are there two versions? Was the typeless one designed to go on the railway aficionado’s wall, and sold as such? Ours isn’t the only one, because the NRM have a copy too so there must have been a plan, even if I’m not quite sure what it was.

But it’s never come up on sale as far as I can tell. Faster All Along The Line with its title on has been sold a couple of times at auction, for £280-300, at Onslows and Morphets. But is it worth more or less with type? I have no idea – does anyone else?

Finally, we bought this simply because it existed, and so I am sharing it with you for exactly the same reason.

It’s from 1938 and that’s all I know. Although I may have to go on an expedition one day to see if any or all of these still exist.

Modern selling

auctions

The auction season really is upon us; no sooner do I promise you the Christies highlights, than the Swann Galleries catalogue also pops into my email box. And to my surprise, the American auction is, I think, the winner. But let’s take a quick canter through both of them, and then you can make up your own mind, starting with Swann’s offering.

There are of course a lot of classics in there, which is all you’d expect from a catalogue calling itself Modernist Posters.

Abram Games, 1956, est. $800-1,200

Eckersley Lombers, 1936, est. $1,200-1,800

In amongst those classics are a considerable quantity of Zeros, which is always nice.

Hans Schleger, 1938, est. $2,500-3,500

Hans Schleger, 1935, est. $4,000-6000

Even better, there are some that I haven’t seen before, like this quiet and understated design, also for London Transport.

Hans Schleger, 1935, est. $1,500-2,000

There are some other interesting posters in there too, like this Willy de Majo for B.S.S.A.

William de Majo, 1948, est. $700-1,000

B.S.A.A. split from the British Overseas Aircraft Corporation (B.O.A.C.) to operate in the South Atlantic. Founded in 1946, it merged back with B.O.A.C. in 1949, after a series of unlucky incidents, in which two of their planes disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle.

All of which rather leaves me wanting to know more, both about B.S.A.A. and William de Majo, who has featured on these pages before. Other questions are also raised by this rather out of the ordinary London Transport poster.

Maurice Beck, 1931, est. $500-750.

Fortunately, the catalogue is here to answer them.

An extraordinary montage of photographed letters and numbers designed by Maurice Beck. He was both a designer and a photographer, often incorporating photography into his work. In the 1920s he was the head photographer for British Vogue, and he is credited with designing 18 posters for the Underground, all photomontages. One in a series of four posters based on the unusual premise of informing the public how much “the Underground group (U.E.R.L.) pays in petrol tax. The information highlights the success of the company, still profitable in spite of so many taxes, and the fact that U.E.R.L. contributes significantly to the Treasury and therefore to the London’s economy” (http://www.20thcenturylondon.org.uk).

I have to say, I really do like this catalogue. While I’m not normally a fan of online catalogues,with their pretend turning pages and interminable loading times, I am prepared to make an exception for this one, which is well worth the investment of time and bandwidth. This isn’t just because of the layout, which makes almost every poster desirable.

Including that McKnight Kauffer at the left, which I don’t remember having seen before now.

But even better is the text, which, as the examples above demonstrate, is consistently interesting and informative. Take this BOAC poster by Henrion, for example.

FHK Henrion, 1947, $800-1,200

In post-war Britain, competition between the different airlines was fierce, and as a result, the airline companies hired the best graphic designers in the field for their advertising, such as F.K. Henrion, Ashley, and Abram Games. At the time when Games was creating a series of posters for B.O.A.C., the trend among artists was not to illustrate the actual airplanes (as had been the style in the thirties), but instead, to advertise the advantages of flying, such as saved travel time. They did this by creating beautiful, symbolic and surrealistically inspired images that captured the abstract concepts poetically. Here, Henrion incorporates the company’s Speedbird logo into the design.

All poster catalogues should be like this, why aren’t they?

You may be feeling that you saw that Henrion poster quite recently, and you did; there is a lot of overlap between the various auctions. Like the PosterConnection sale mentioned in my last post, Swann also have a fair number of airline posters of one kind and another.

Lewitt-Him, 1948, est. $800-1,200

Theyre Lee Elliott, 1935, est. $700-1,000

But there’s an even more interesting overlap between the Swann Galleries and Christies sale, which is this.

It’s by McKnight Kauffer and dates from 1931, but it’s worth $12-18,000 if you’re Christies, $15-20,000 if you’re Swann Galleries – and the Christies one is purportedly in slightly better condition, too.

It will be interesting to see how that pans out. Will the existence of two depress prices? Or does the fact that they’re on opposite sides of the Atlantic mean that this doesn’t matter. I shall watch with interest.

Sadly, that’s about as much excitement as I can muster up for the Christies catalogue. While there are plenty more unseen gems at Swann, where I can even get enthusiastic about German posters that I’m not supposed to be interested in.

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Hymmen, 1949, $400-600

At Christies, everything feels a bit more familiar, with only a very few exceptions. Best of all, I like this Herbert Bayer.

Herbert Bayer, 1940, est £800-1,200

And I probably would like this Night Scotsman classic if only I could afford it.

Alexeieff Night Scotsman Kings Cross vintage railway posters 1931
Alexeieff, 1931, est. £15-20,000

Ditto this Paul Nash, which I suspect will go for a bit more than the estimate. If only suburbia had ever looked like that.

Paul Nash vintage London transport poster come out to live 1936
Paul Nash, 1936, est.£800-1,200

But other than that the catalogue seems to be both rather thin, covering the same old ground, and without pithy texts to make me care about particular posters. So there are railway posters, of course.

Frank Sherwin, est. £700-900

With an honourable mention going to Frank Newbould for his impressive impersonation of McKnight Kauffer.

Frank Newbould, 1924, est. £1,000-1,500

And London Transport too. But a lot of these are similar to or even the same as items from the last sale, and so feel like they’re riding on the coat-tails of that last set of high prices.

Marty, 1931, est. £1,000-1,500

Jean Dupas, 1933, est. £3,000-5,0000

Of course no auction this year would be complete without airline posters, particularly those for BOAC.

Abram Games, 1949, £600-800

The only good news is that there don’t seem to be too many multiple lots this time, which is a relief. But I wonder if this is policy or accident? And where are all the nice, inexpensive London Transport posters going to be sold these days? Surely they can’t all be on eBay?

life : henrion : rabbit

exhibitions

I called up this book out of our library’s reserve stores the other day (you can easily enough find it on Amazon if your library isn’t so obliging).

It’s from 1972, so I wasn’t hoping for too much from it, but actually I was surprised. There’s a short introductory essay, but then the bulk of the book consists of short biographies of some of the designers who produced propaganda posters during World War Two – not just those from the UK but also Russians, Europeans and Americans as well.

Reading them has been a salutary lesson for me. I tend to assume that all of the knowledge in the world is out there on the internet for me to find. And if it isn’t there, it’s not known. Well I’m wrong. Because there is plenty of information in here which is new to me. Like a proper biography of James Fitton, for example, which told me that he left school at fourteen and worked on the docks in Manchester, attending art school in the evenings. All of which makes me admire him even more.

So today’s post was going to be all about the these biographies. But then I got distracted by this.

Which is fabulous, and by FHK Henrion. In fact it’s so fabulous that it’s currently on display at MoMA in New York, along with some of its brethren. (Well rabbits will breed, won’t they).

The exhibition is Counter Space : Design and the Modern Kitchen and if I could get over to New York to see it, I would. Every bit of it, from early functionalist design to artworks about domesticity sounds brilliant. And it’s on until early May, so if you do get the chance to go, please do and let me know all about it.

But for the purposes of Quad Royal, the really interesting thing is that there is a whole section of British Home Front posters about food. Hence Mr Henrion and his rabbits. There are in fact three, as they also have the pair of the first poster, which explains why that rabbit is looking behind so nervously.

Now under normal circumstances I’d just go on about these, but MoMA themselves have written an excellent blog post about these posters, which I really couldn’t improve on.

But fortunately for those of us who aren’t going to make it to New York this month, there is at least a handlist of all of the exhibits online. Which means that I can tell you that, in addition to the Henrions, they are also exhibiting a few old friends like the Vegetabull.

Which means that we have something hanging on our wall which is also up in MoMA. Get us.

In addition, though, the exhibition is displaying a really intriguing set of posters which I have never seen before.

By Herbert Tomlinson about whom I know nothing.

This pattern of absence and presence is really interesting. On one hand, it’s easy to see why these posters have ended up in MoMA; they fit very easy into the narrative of International Modernism which the museum itself has done so much to construct.

What I understand less is why these posters seem to have disappeared over here. This may be no more than random chance: these weren’t posters that anyone much wanted to collect or keep, by a designer that no one much remembered so they disappeared into oblivion as soon as they were torn down. Or perhaps a rat and mouse-infested world isn’t how we want to remember the war?

Whatever the reason, it’s yet another reminder of two important facts about posters. One is that the history which does exist is very much constructed, and that the story may differ wildly depending on who’s doing the telling. The other is that all of these histories are made from a very partial and unrepresentative sample. So few posters survive, and for such random reasons, that it will perhaps never be possible to tell the complete tale of posters at any point in time. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have a lot of fun trying in the meantime.

Ceci n’est pas un crease

eBay

Everyone has spent their weekend listing posters on eBay, it seems. Well, everyone except me. But there is a something for almost every taste out there this morning.

Quite a bit of it is, however, somewhat battered. Like this Tom Purvis poster, for example.

This series has been mentioned on here before, as an example of the shift in Shell advertising from technical to natural. Which it is, along with being by Tom Purvis. So I really ought to like it. But I don’t, not even a little bit.

Mind you, it’s in better condition than the next exhibit, this whole collection of posters in the States, apparently discovered in an attic in 1967.

The three above are the classics, but my favourite has to be this one.

In my head, I am now back in Manchester, to a soundtrack of the Smiths. And I’ve never seen that poster before either, so it’s doubly pleasing.

These are all a bit spotted and chewed, but there are other ways to mistreat posters.

My eyes, my eyes. It’s Out and About: Country Houses by Clive Gardiner from 1951, in case you can’t tell. Sadly there are several in this state up for sale, including Literary London by Sheila Robinson.

Although the listings beg more questions than they answer.

Unfortunately this poster has been stored wrapped in an obscure way, which has left it too unravel as shown.
However there are no creases caused by this, so once framed or flattened out it will look good as new.

No, there are creases, I can see them. Which leads me to suggest that it will take more than flattening to sort this out.

As is all the fashion these days, they’re all listed for £99, which I don’t really think they’re worth in this condition. While the Peter Roberson below wouldn’t be worth that if if were flat, mounted on linen and offering to make me a cup of coffee every morning.

Well, perhaps for the coffee.

There have also been a rash of Shell Educational posters turning up too. A complete set of S R Badmin’s monthly Guide to Trees is available for the rather eyewatering sum of £350.

Which compares rather unfavourably with both the full series of John Leigh Pemberton’s Life In… posters at just £1.99 each

and also these six County posters, which have an even lower starting price of £1.50.

I wish I knew, for no other reason than my own satisfaction, what Shell educational posters were really worth. I’ve seen auction houses really talk them up (although not always manage to sell them) while other auction houses won’t even take them these days. So I shall watch these sales with interest and see if I can draw any conclusions.

Finally, someone other than us is selling Daphne Padden posters. So if you’ve missed something you liked, here’s another bite at the cherry.

These ones are also signed in pencil, as were some of the ones that we bought from her estate sale, so I wonder whether they too came from her own collection. Perhaps I’ll email and ask.

Beck indeed

designers, posters

While I pointed out the P&O archive a while back, I also said that I wanted to come back to it. And there’s one very good reason for doing so; his name is Richard Beck.

The handful of posters that he produced for P&O are that rare thing, home-grown British modernism. And it looks first class.

Beck seems mainly to have been active in the late 1930s. All these three posters for the Orient Line apparently date from 1937.

At about the same time, he was also working for London Transport – these two panel posters were designed in 1935.

But even before the start of World War Two, Beck seems to disappear from the record for a while. He next pops up as the designer of this.

For a change, though, it’s possible to account for all of this, because there are a couple of decent biographies of him out there on the web – the best here.

To start with, his early work looks as European as it does, because he studied at the Blocherer School in Munich, so was far more exposed to European modernism than the average British designer. Hence his uber-modernist designs for London Transport, like this leaflet.

Secondly, he then disappears because he went to the other side of the world. In 1939, he went to New Zealand as design consultant for the British Pavilion at the Wellington Centennial Exhibition. And he never came back; instead he migrated to Australia, serving in the Australian Imperial Force during World War Two and then setting up a design consultancy in Melbourne when the war was over.

He did very well, too, designing not only for the Olympics (the mural above still exists in Melbourne, although it was apparently once much brighter) but also for a whole range of clients and companies, including stamps for Australia Post and the new decimal currency. And Australian wine too.

Beck did well for himself. But one of the reasons I find his story so interesting is that he wasn’t the only one. Just as British design after the war was revitalised by an influx of European designers, it seems that Australian design was also very much shaped by immigrants. Pieter Huveneers designed for at least as many Australian institutions as Richard Beck. Did the world of British graphic design seem too closed and old-fashioned for these designers, or was the appeal of a new sunshine life simply so appealing after the rigours and horrors of World War Two? We may never know. But if there’s an Australian Crownfolio reading this who has some of the answers, I’d love to hear from you.

Sale Number

eBay

It’s gone a bit quieter on eBay now, which is a bit of a relief, at least it is here at Crownfolio Towers because we’ve spent a bit too much recently. Nonetheless, there are still a few things worth reporting. Like this, which is one of the linen-backed London Transport posters I wrote about a while back.

It’s by Beath, it’s from 1936 and it is currently bid-free at £14.99. Now I rather like these, as perhaps rather un-English examples of good typography. But it would seem from the lack of other interest that I am perhaps alone in this. Never mind, I still might get ours framed one day.

While in the States, an unusually early poster has turned up.

Dating from 1918, it’s by Emilio Tafani and is also mounted on linen, although a little battered. And yes, I have seen the carpet.

Back in this country, the Honey Monster would like you to go skiing.

Not Studio Seven’s finest hour really.

I know nothing at all about these but I rather think I need to.

The listing is reasonably informative, and also has enough pictures to make me want them very badly.

But at £650 for the set, I can’t exactly justify it. Does anyone know any more about the history or who the artists are though? Particularly that Cooks for fruit illustration above.

There’s a bit more interest in an auction in Norfolk next week. Only a bit though as several of the posters are Of Railway Interest, like this wartime morale-booster which has a very reasonable estimate of £100-120.

Although I do find myself quite liking this pre-war design (also est £100-120).

But the most interesting, to my mind at least, is this (no estimate given).

This is partly because it’s not a railway poster but produced by the British Travel and Tourism Authority, but also because it’s by Xenia, who I’ve never come across in any other context. And it’s brilliantly mid-50s. But we’ve got one already, so it’s all yours if you want it.