Pat Keeley Archives - Quad Royal

Lend a hand

archives

There’s a certain inevitability about the fact that now I’ve written the Home Front Posters book, a whole heap of new information about World War Two posters has popped up in various places. This isn’t entirely a painful discovery, and not just because I am now resigned to the fact that while research could go on indefinitely, books do have deadlines. Because today’s exhibit is that particular joy, a brand new archive.

What’s happened is that the National Archives have digitised a significant chunk of their wartime posters and are distributing them via Wikipedia. (There’s a full explanation here if you want to know more). It’s very exciting because there are a large number in there that I’ve never seen before. Here’s a rather nice Dorrit Dekk to begin with.

This isn’t just an act of altruism but also a kind of crowd-sourcing, because the archives don’t have much information about many of these posters and they’re asking for people to help with everything from attributions to translation of foreign-language posters.

Part of the challenge, particularly with matching artists to designs is that these aren’t printed posters but the original artworks, quite often without the signatures that the finished item would have. So it ends up being a process more like finding the provenance of a painting. For example, we have this Eileen Evans, signed.

Which makes it a fairly reasonable guess that these two posters in the National Archives are also by her.

In fact I’m confident enough about that to have amended the description for each of those.

Only 350 of the 2,000 designs in the National Archives have been uploaded so far, but what’s already striking is how many of these I’ve never even seen before. Take this Pat Keely for example.

I think he owes McKnight Kauffer an acknowledgement on that one. Keely’s quite well-represented in the selection that are up so far, again often with previously unseen posters.

What’s difficult, though, is to interpret what these previously unknown designs actually mean. Are these for posters which were printed but are as yet unreported – whether that is because a copy never survived, or perhaps does exist but has not yet been digitised by the Imperial War Museum? Or are they designs which were not actually ever produced? In many ways. my bet would be on the latter. Artworks which never went to the printers would be far more likely to survive.

Then on the other hand, this artwork is in there, for a poster which was very definitely printed in quite large numbers.

There’s not an obvious conclusion to be had. Except perhaps that – because of wartime haste, limited record-keeping and the only accidental survival of what were intended to be very ephemeral bits of paper – we’ll probably never have the definitive list of World War Two Home Front posters, never mind their dates and artists.

It’s also worth remembering that this collection is very partial. The artworks all came from the Ministry of Information, but they were by no means the sole source of posters during the war. Both National Savings and the Ministry of Food, two of the highest-spending departments at the time, commissioned their own advertising, so very few of their designs, if any, would turn up in the MoI’s archives. And that’s without considering other poster producers, from British Railways to the Army. Even so, there are still some delightful surprises in there. It may not be the greatest design ever – apparently by the mysterious Xenia – but I love the idea of Village Produce Associations a lot.

So I am very happy to report that Google reveals many VPA’s founded during the war are still going today. Hurrah.

That kind of continuity after the war is also apparent in the poster designs. It’s easy to believe, as I’ve said on here before, that all wartime posters stopped as soon as hostilities ceased, but that’s far from the truth. Many campaigns, from salvage to fuel saving, just continued unchanged. This fuel saving poster – in the great tradition of bossy shouty slogans – could date from during or after the war.

Other campaigns, meanwhile, were reversioned for the peace.

It’s also fascinating to see some of the very definitely post-war designs produced by the new Labour Government to persuade people that the continuing austerity was necessary – a much harder job than wartime propaganda.

These seem to me to be much rarer than the wartime posters, presumably because, by this stage of post-war austerity, no one at all wanted to keep them as a souvenir.

There’s plenty more to be seen in there too – including this Percy Drake Brookshaw artwork for – well for what?

So why not take a look and see what I’ve missed out.

Back again

designers, other

I know that I keep promising to come back to subjects on this blog, and then it never quite happens. There on the other hand, sometimes subjects come back to me, especially designers. One of the great joys of writing about a particular designer is that quite often people get in contact with their own memories of the person concerned. I’ve blogged about this before with Hans Unger, and it’s wonderful to get a sense of how much that person was respected and remembered. Recently, quite a few people emailed who had worked with Pieter Huveneers. In addition to being a great designer, he must also have been an inspiring boss and mentor.

I was also sent this by Jim Pennington, who never worked for Huveneers but does know good design when it comes his way.

It’s manual of transistors from the late 195os or early 1960s. Everything you need to know about the valves of the day, apparently. But rather lovely.

More surprisingly, a lot of people have got in contact about Denis Constanduros who, you may remember, did a few rather lovely posters for Shell and then saw how the world was going and went off to produce historical TV dramas instead.

He seems to have had a large extended family which, combined with a highly googlable surname,means that lots of his relatives have found the blog and got in touch. His grandson sent me a very interesting range of material, including this 1939 article from the Radio Times.

So, in between the water carrying and play writing he was still painting as well. There is also a picture of him and his aunt Mabel from the year before.

Meanwhile, Jonathan Spector, who isn’t a relative, sent me this book jacket illustration by Denis, for one of his aunt’s books.

This only survived by dint of being a wartime rarity. Jonathan bought a wholly other book, called People are Curious, written by James Hanley and published in reprint edition in 1945. But on the reverse of the jacket, off centre, was this – obviously the result of wartime paper rationing. I think I preferred his posters though.

That’s not the only email that arrives here at Crownfolio Towers either. Quad Royal is now important enough, it seems, to get press releases. So should you want this poster, for example, for a scooter which was apparently ‘a joy to own, as long as someone else was paying the repair bills’,

I can tell you that there’s a gallery in Canada with just the thing for you.

Back on home turf, I’ve also been contacted by VintageSeekers, who are a new antiques site with a small number vintage posters on their books.

What Vintage Seekers is, though, is a shop window for dealers, which means that you are paying not only dealers’ prices, but commission on top. So the poster above, quite apart from being for a place which you’d only want a poster of if you’d never been there, is £695.

I did get mildly excited when I saw a link to a Whisky Galore poster, as I had some memory that it was a good one. What I was thinking of was this, which is by Tom Eckersley and I have been meaning to put up for your delectation for ages now.

What I actually saw when I got to the page was this.

Which is rather more in the style of a Ladybird book and, furthermore, will set you back £2,800.

All of which is enough to send me back into the arms of eBay, where even the silly prices suddenly look more reasonable. This wartime Pat Keely is £99.95.

While the listing doesn’t mention his name, this car ferry poster is by Lander (and dates from 1960, fact fans).

This is a bit of an oddity, as I have no idea what the Pye logo is doing there, particularly as the poster seems to have ended up in America.

Although apparently the poster says that Pye were Britain’s largest exporters of radio and television. I’m still not really any the wiser.

Finally, what I need right now is a time machine, to go straight back to 1973 and attend this.

Imagine the bargains there would be for the taking.

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.