railway poster Archives - Page 14 of 16

Different trains of thought

Another online archive of lovely posters for your education and enlightenment today. But, nothing is straightforward in this world, so this is another archive with its own quirks and priorities. Here, though, they’re more understandable, because this archive isn’t meant for the likes of you and me. It’s the National Railway Museum poster collection, and it’s designed for railway buffs.

Whitley Bay, Amstutz, 1954

Wondering what I am talking about? Try here. This is the main search page for the NRM’s poster collection, your gateway to more than ten thousand railway posters. Now I might want to search these by date, or by the subject of the poster, or even by the designer. Not a chance. I can filter them by category (of which there is only one, All, which is philosophically quite interesting), or I can sort them by railway company. So should I ever want to see every poster for the Axminster and Lyme Regis Light Railway, I am fine. Should, however, my life not be organised in terms of various railway operators I am rather up the Swannee.

Morecambe, Lance Cattermole, 1960

It’s such a radically different perpective on the world that it makes me laugh rather than drives me to fury. Although this is mainly because there are a couple of get-arounds by which I can find what I am looking for. The first is the search box in the top right corner. Although this searches the entire site, not just the poster collection, “Morecambe poster” or “Amstutz poster” generally gets you a full list of results, even if in text form, usually including several repetitions, and with only about half a chance of an image when you click on the individual object.

Lincolnshire, Tom Purvis, no date

But not even this isn’t as infuriating as it might be. Because, elsewhere, there is a much better search engine. The National Museum of Science and Industry runs not only the NRM, but also the Science Museum and the National Media Museum. And it too has a search engine – although, wierdly, I can’t find any way of accessing it from their home page. Perhaps it’s a secret and I’m not meant to be using it. In which case, apologies.

From this, you get a much neater page of search results, with thumbnail images where they exist. Plus, as an added bonus, your search can also turn up some additional Science Museum holdings, like this cheerful little Eckerlsey Lombers for the Ministry of Food.

What’s odd about these two search pages though, is that they don’t turn up the same results. (This next bit may end up being a bit geeky, so if you’re not interested, skip on a bit). The NRM search will miss out lots of items. Say you run a search like “studio seven” (I would recommend it, incidentally, as you can see from the results below). This 1958 Studio Seven poster appears when you search on the NMSI.

But doesn’t when you search the NRM – only if you search for “Dover Studio Seven”. And even then, there isn’t an illustration or a date. The same happens with this poster.

From which we could perhaps conclude that the NMSI search engine is a superior thing and the NRM one a bit random. Which is probably true. But what is more than passing strange is that even when each search engine comes up with the same thing, the pictures are different. The NMSI has proper scans.

Studio Seven, Minehead 1962

Whereas the NRM have flattened the poster with a bit of perspex, taken a picture and said, will this do? (Much like we do, I admit, but then we’re not a national institution in charge of a major archive.)

Now I’m not just doing this to poke fun at the NRM, there is a point. The pictures show that these two search pages aren’t just different ways into the same database, they’re totally separate entities. Which means that all of this information, on ten thousand posters and lord alone knows how many engines, sprockets and pictures of stations, has been catalogued twice. At best it’s a waste of time, at worst it must have cost an awful lot of unnecessary money. Or maybe there is a good reason for this, and I have missed it, in which case I’d like to know.

Studio Seven, Rhyl, 1955

So, nerdy bit over, there is still a rather wonderful and under-used collection to be found at the NRM, whichever search engine you view it through. And it’s another example of how the internet can do things for museums that a building can’t. If you go to the NRM hoping to see posters (as Mr Crownfolio and I, sad cases that we are, did on our honeymoon) you will be disappointed, as only a tiny proportion of what they hold will be on show. Surf the archives though, and you can look at whatever you like. If you can find it.

Studio Seven, By Train to London, 1960

It’s Easter, don’t move

auctions

We seem to own a piece of railwayana, how did that happen?

Fortunately, this didn’t end up being as relevant as it might have been this Easter.

But it still has a purpose, as you can also buy its cousin in a few days time in Chertsey. If that makes its estimate of £150-250, there may be another one coming onto the market quite swiftish.

The auctioneers have this down as 1930s, but they’re both published by the Railway Executive Committee, who ran the railways from the start of WW2 in 1939 until nationalisation created British Railways in 1948. And the ‘don’t travel’ message pretty much has to be wartime, I should think.

By way of completeness, here is a third from the National Railway Museum collections.

They’re all by Reginald Mayes, who was staff artist for the London Midland and Scottish Railway before the war and so presumably stayed on to produce a wide range of anti-travel and propaganda posters for the Railway Executive Committee. What’s interesting is that I can’t find any traces of anything he designed for the London Midland, so it looks as if he only started signing things after 1939. If anyone can tell me any more, please do.

In other auction news, Dreweatts in Bristol are selling a second collection of works by Percy Drake Brookshaw, once again being sold by the family of the artist (I blogged about the first sale in February). Some are the same posters,

and quite a few are in the same style as those in the last sale (i.e. with the colour turned up to 11).

But there are also a couple of interesting ones. This 1958 London Transport poster is rather lovely, and you’d get two copies for an estimated price of £50-70, which seems entirely reasonable to me.

Meanwhile the big estimate of £300-400 is on this Summer Shell poster.

The Shell Poster Book tells me that it’s from 1933 (there, incidentally, is an archive that would really benefit the world were it online) so it may well go for more. Happy shopping.

The cut-throat world of poster selling

eBay

Not so much a post today as an observation of the minefield which is eBay.

This man, Paulsnumbers, is selling some railway posters. My favourite is the Bromfield of Swanage:

although I do also quite like this one too:

But then I am always a sucker for that kind of lettering.

He clearly disagrees with me as he’s only put these two on for a start price of £290, whereas this Skegness poster is starting at £350

And this of Weymouth at a somewhat surprising £380.

I am rather afraid that he is going to be disappointed with all of these. But then it’s hard to feel that he’s done himself any favours with these listings.

For a while now, I’ve been meaning to write some kind of guide on how to sell a poster on eBay; I’m going to have to start it now, as unfortunately Mr Paulsnumbers not merely broken a couple of these rules but then stamped quite thoroughly on their shattered remains.

The first commandment is Thou Shalt Photograph Thy Posters Very Well, so well in fact that you need to feel that your viewers are thoroughly bored and think you are a rather picky and unappealing person. But if I’m going to spend over £200 on eBay (doesn’t happen very often, believe you me), I’d like to think that I’ve seen every potential fold, stain, tear and blemish that a poster has, so that I know what I’m getting myself into. A single blurry and reflective photo of a framed poster doesn’t quite do that for me. (I’ve also done him a few favours with the cropping here; on the original pictures I got to find out more about his wallpaper and curtains than I strictly needed to know).

The second rule is, don’t start your prices too high, as it just puts people off. I don’t quite know why the psychology of this works (any suggestions?), but it definitely does. Perhaps, as I put my £300 bid on, I like to think that there’s a chance that I might get it for a bargain, then get psyched into spending more than I meant. This probably applies to all auctions, but it’s particularly important on eBay, because your start price determines your listing fees too, so you’ll pay over the odds for starting higher than you have to. Mr Crownfolio and I tend to start most of our posters on at £9.99; the prices almost always go up to about what we’d hoped.

Thirdly, it’s not often the case that you’ll get the highest price on eBay. I’ve only been able to track one of these posters down in an auction, and that’s the Skegness one, which sold for £375 at Christies in 2007. I don’t think the price will have gone up since then (see ramblings, passim) either. But then there are always some exceptions, so perhaps he’ll be lucky.

We shall see. In the spirit of information I should also tell you that he’s selling a few film posters (at similar fuzziness and prices) should you be interested. More bizarrely, he’s also selling batteries, razor blades and toothbrush heads. Go figure.

Update – 6/4. Not one of the posters was sold; quite a few of the razor blades and toothbrushes did.

Not laughing, in a perfect world

other

Now I began this post, if I’m honest, intending simply to poke a bit of fun at poster dealers, and in particular the prices they charge.

Because now and again something comes my way which makes this almost irresistible. Like this.

Or to be more precise, this.

Now in my head, nothing, but nothing could make this 1960s railway poster worth £900, even if it is by Claude Buckle. Not the Piccadilly premises of these lovely dealers, nor their need to pay the legions of Sloane Rangers who stroke it daily, nor any other excuse they offer could ever justify that price to me.

And why am I so sure? Because we paid £80 for a lovely bright copy, with another poster thrown in to boot, last year. Although I’m not entirely sure why we did as it’s a bit drab to have around the place and I can’t imagine it will ever end up framed. Only a few edge tears distinguish it from its Mayfair relative. Should you feel like doing the same, it’s pretty easy to pick one up at the railwayana auctions for between £100-£250, and they appear with reasonable regularity.

So far, so quite funny. Although the more I consider it, the more I think the joke is less on the poster dealers than on their clients, who will, after all, have paid several hundred pounds more than they they needed to for this poster.

But then I did a bit more digging, and found the same poster had sold at Christies for £588 and then £657 there (in 2002 and 2004, since you ask). Which makes the Sotherans price look more reasonable, as well as forcing me to reconsider how hard I am laughing – and do some proper thinking to boot.

So, why are people paying £900 for a poster when they could get it for £600, or £250, or even £80? To some degree, they do this because that’s the way the antiques trade (or any branch of it like poster dealing) works. Things, whether they are Claude Buckle posters or undiscovered Rembrandts, are sold at provincial auctions where no one knows what they are and so they go for a little bit. They then work their way up the food chain via specialist auctions or middlemen, costing a bit more each time, until they finally end up in a Mayfair showroom for many, many times what they originally cost. And everyone is happy.

This works because (I’m dredging up my memories of A Level Economics here, forgive me if this makes no sense) the market is imperfect. To be precise, the market information is imperfect – the regional auction doesn’t know it’s a Rembrandt (or a nice poster), the man with bottomless pockets in Central London doesn’t know that he could get it much cheaper somewhere else. And these imperfections are what drives a whole chain of price rises and exchanges.

Except there is one problem with this model now, and that’s the internet. Should you choose to look for it, all the information you ever wanted to know about posters and their prices is out there on the web. And the proof of that is this blog post.

I’m not a poster dealer with twenty years experience, gained in hanging around every provincial and Christies auction, I don’t even live in London. And when I started writing this post, all I knew about that Buckle poster was that a) we had bought one for £80 and b) that there was a dealer in Mayfair pushing the boundaries of plausible pricing. Now, just an hour later, I’ve got its whole auction history at my fingertips, and I’ve also had a crash revision course in the theory of perfect markets.

In theory then, the old model shouldn’t work any more. Thanks to the internet, everyone with more than ten minutes to spare will know that they can get that Claude Buckle poster for £80-£200, they can see which auctions it’s coming up at – and they can even buy it without having to step away from their computers. So they don’t ever need to pay more than the market price. It’s nearly perfect, if you’re an economist that is. Rather less so if you want to make money dealing in posters.

In Piccadilly, people with bottomless pockets probably will still walk into a gallery and buy something for what a dealer says its worth. But elsewhere, I think this is more than just a theoretical model, it is already starting to make a difference. In my previous post about Christies, I’ve already noted the drop in auction prices for post-war posters. Here’s another example, Royston Cooper.

This went for £660 at Christies in 2005, just £200 three years later. There may be other factors involved – the collapse of the world economy, that kind of thing – but I’d still be prepared to bet that the internet and all its information paid a part in that. After all, why would you pay £660 for a poster when you could pick it up for £60 on eBay?

Having said all of that, the imperfect world did have its upsides. Sotherans also have this on offer.

It’s a Shell educational poster by David Gentleman, and they’d like you to pay £198 for it. Now Mr Crownfolio and I went through a phase of rather liking these Shell posters, which means that I’d really like them to be worth the sharp end of £200 each. Because that would mean that there is £7,000 sitting quietly under the spare bed. Sadly, I don’t think it’s really true.

Mr Huveneers, I presume

designers

Unless you have studied GPO posters with a rather unnatural intensity, you probably wouldn’t know the name of Peter (or possibly Pieter) Huveneers. But it’s worth making his acquaintance. He designed a whole series of delightful posters for the Post Office throughout most of the 1950s.

The BPMA have about 20 of his designs catalogued, including this gem.

And he also worked for British Railways into the early 60s.

Until 1963, when the last piece of design I can track down is a British Railways poster in the National Railway Museum collection. And then he disappears.

Fast forward to 1968, when another designer called Pieter Huveneers sets up a design company in Australia. Now, if you’re Australian and of a certain age, Pieter Huveneers is a big name. He’s the down-under equivalent of Wim Crowel or Hans Schleger, a designer who shaped the fabric of everyday life.

Huveneers’ work is still written all over Australia. He designed the logos and identities for two of Australia’s national institutions, Australia Post and Telecom Australia when they were created in 1975.

an australian stamp

(The Australia Post logo, with its neatly incorporated post-horn is still in use, although slightly rejigged in recent years. Telecom Australia rebranded itself as Telstra in 1995).

He not only designed the logo but also created the name of the bank which emerged from Australia’s biggest ever bank merger in 1981, when the Commercial Bank of Australia and the Bank of New South Wales became something much more modern and international.

And completely rebranded one of Australia’s iconic breweries, Tooth – this is his logo design from 1981.

And that’s just what I’ve been able to find out about from the other side of the world, I’m sure there’s more as well.

The thing is, I have no way of proving that this is the same person. The dates add up, and the Australian Pieter Huveneers was born in c1926, which gives him plenty of time to be designing GPO posters before emigrating to Australia, and the chances of there being two of them in the design world at the same time have to be pretty slim anyway. But is it or not? I can’t say for sure.

But I seem to have reached the limits of what I can find out without being either a) Australian or b) within easy reach of the British Library. So if there are any Australian design historians out there who are able to tell me a bit more about him and his design studio, I’d really love to hear from them. As far as I can tell, he’s still alive too, so perhaps he might be able to answer the question of whether or not he designed those posters himself. Hope so.

Market failure?

auctions

At the end of last year, MrCrownfolio and I made some enquiries about selling some posters at Christies. We have done this before, although the combination of something being good enough quality and us wanting to get rid of it doesn’t come round that often. But, as will become apparent, it’s unlikely ever to happen again. Because the (very polite) reply from Christies was that they now had a minimum lot value of £800. Yes, that’s right, £800.

I couldn’t quite get my head round this, because it seemed so unlikely. Would Christies really want to turn away so many of the posters which have filled their recent sales, from railway posters like this,

(£375, Sept 2008)

which is a species of railway poster I rather like, probably because of the type. Or this classic Abram Games

(£375, June 2008)

So I contacted Nicolette Tompkinson, the head of their poster department, who confirmed that this their new policy.

…the general policy here at Christie’s for new consignments is to include posters that have a minimum lot value of £800. Our aim is put together higher quality sales with less lots as we feel that at £800+ we consistently sell a high percentage of lots at a good price.

I still find this both extraordinary, and a great shame. There are now a whole swathe of poster types which now won’t be sold at Christies, from the kitchier post-war railway posters such as this anonymous Clacton poster,

(£275, Sept 2007)

to post-war London Transport posters (and, indeed, a great many pre-war ones as well).

London Transport Bainbridge vintage poster (£250, Sept 2007)

And there are a number of designers – not only Abram Games, but also Royston Cooper,

(£375, June 2008)

and of course Tom Eckersley

(£264, Sept 2006)

who just won’t appear in their sales any more.

Now, you may be wondering, does this really matter? After all, there are other auctions where these posters can be bought and sold (if I were Patrick Bogue, say, I would be rubbing my hands with glee right now). But I think it does; not just because these are exactly the kind of posters I like and I don’t want to see them left out in the cold, but because I believe it will damage the market in two ways.

One is quite simply that I think fewer posters will now come to market, because they won’t fetch such high prices as they would have done at Christies. Nicolette Tompkinson seemed to suggest that their higher fees were putting off buyers anyway,

In addition, due to a commission rate of 15% and the minimum marketing fee of £40 it is also expensive to sell here at a lower level.

Personally, we’ve never found that too much of a problem. Most of the time the extra fees at Christies are more than cancelled out by a much higher hammer price, so the good posters are – or were – almost always worth putting into their sales rather than somewhere else, despite the costs involved.

But I think the Christies decision will do more than just depress the market financially. There is a sense in which a large auction house operating in this area acts to underwrite the market – these posters are perceived as being both more valuable and more collectable because they are sold at prestige auctions. Without those auctions happening – and without those visibly high prices – post-war graphics and posters are going to struggle for a while. It’s rather like buying a house in an ‘up-coming’ area; fine during the boom, but rather harder to sell in a recession.

But not all of this is Christies’ fault; to some degree they are just reflecting what is happening anyway. Going through their catalogues has made me realise just how much prices have dropped from the peak of a few years ago. Take this rather wonderful Hass poster,

That sold for £1,500 in September 2007, but just £375 two years later. And the cheaper one was in better condition too.

Plus it’s not even all doom and gloom for us either. As collectors, we could now afford things that would have been out of reach before (that Hass poster, for example). It’s just that the posters under the bed may not be our pension fund for a while yet.

One final note of cheer. Here’s an Eckersley for sale in a posh auction – Bloomsbury Auctions on 25th March. From the description, I’m pretty sure it is this,

from 1976, estimated at £100-£150. So life could be worse really.