Shell poster Archives

Special purchase

My initial thought when I first looked at the new Onslow’s catalogue a few weeks ago was that someone had better ring the BPMA, because they’ve been burgled. Then I read the auction blurb more closely, and of course it says

including duplicates from the British Postal Museum & Archive
Collection

Panic over.

What they actually mean, it turns out, is duplicates from the BPMA collection, mostly featuring the work of Stan Krol. You can buy single posters like this.

Stan Krol, 1952, est. £100-150

Or indeed this one, which I love for drawing my attention to a problem that I was hitherto utterly unaware of.

Stan Krol, 1949, est. £100-150.

Both of these come with a bonus set of small size Post Office ‘art’ posters as well.

They must have hundreds of them, but even so it’s a funny way of getting rid of John Mintons if you ask me. But no one did.

Anyway, back to the Krols. If you want more than just a single poster (and have no desire for a John Minton), you can buy job lots of six.

Stan Krol, est. £150-200

And this lot is repeated three times. Although there’s no escaping those art posters here either, you get a bonus Norwich Market Place (as shown above) whether you want it or not. I’m guessing people mostly don’t if they are having to give it away like this.

That’s not the end of it either, there’s also another job lot of Krols, this time for the Post Office Savings Bank, also available twice over.

Stan Krol, est. £60-80

No Norwich Market Place in sight here either, which is a bonus.

Now I have two thoughts about this. One is that it massively increases my knowledge of the work of Stan Krol, which can only be a good thing. While the GPO posters are all on the BPMA website, the majority of the Post Office Savings Bank ones haven’t been digitised yet so some are entirely new to me.

But the other is that this is no way to sell off an archive. Flooding the market with duplicates like this surely isn’t going to get the best value for the museum. The result is going to be something like the final Morphets sale, when people were so boggled by the sheer volume of stuff on offer than poster after poster went really cheaply. (Morphets have taken the online catalogue down from their server now, but I used to regularly go back and look at the fantastic posters that went for £40 or so and wish we’d bought everything). But that was an estate sale, after Malcolm Guest’s death, so they had no choice. Given that they had choices, I can’t help feeling that the BPMA aren’t handling this very well, and will not be getting the maximum value from their holdings. An instructive contrast is with the recent London Transport Museum sale, where there were no duplicates at all.*

This is particularly true of some of the more expensive posters in the sale, like these McKnight Kauffers.

McKnight Kauffer, 1937, est. £500-700

The description says very firmly that these are the much rarer large format posters (they are a slightly odd 30″ x 36″). So then why sell them as individual posters, but then also as two pairs, and finally a set of four. They’re a lot less rarer as the result of that. Surely four would have been enough for one sale, with another batch next year, and so on.

But the sale isn’t entirely duplicates, there are also some single posters too, including a small handful of the van side posters that I love so much.

Andre Franion, 1960, est. £70-100

Guess what, you get a free John Minton with that too. But I’m still tempted, even though I have no idea how I, or anyone else, would display something that’s almost a metre long.

Other delights include this Alick Knight.

Alick Knight, 1955, est. £100-150

I’m also very pleased to see the estimate on this Zero too.

Zero (Hans Schleger 1898-1976) Address your letters plainly, printed for PRD 260 GPO by W R Royle 1942
Hans Schleger (Zero), 1942, est. £400-600

This is because we’ve got one, and as a general rule anything I buy tends to lose rather than gain value so it’s nice to see something bucking the trend.

This is of course just a small selection of the GPO posters available, so it does pay to go and look at the catalogue yourself. In the meantime, this can stand as an example of the vast number of this type of poster that are on offer.

Peter Edwards, 1960, est. £70-100

There are also a whole range of other posters included as well, including the usual Shell educational posters.

Rowland Hilder, 1963, est. £50-100 (with four others)

The 1914 centenary effect is also still holding strong, so there’s a set of World War One posters, including another Alfred Leete Lord Kitchener at a vast estimate.

Alfred Leete, 1914, ezt. £1,000-1,500

This is turning into the Keep Calm of World War One, as the rarity and high auction values brings yet more examples out of the woodwork with every new auction.

Speaking of which, for a change there isn’t a Keep Calm and Carry On poster in this sale, although you can have one of either of the others from these series should you wish.

Anonymous, 1939, est. £300-400

Mostly, the WW2 offerings are more of historic than visual interest, the exception being a pair of Abram Games.

Abram Games, 1942, est. £400-500

What with all of this, it’s perhaps not surprising that there aren’t that many railways or London Transport posters this time round, although this circular Tom Eckersley is a delight.

Tom Eckersley, 1945, est. £100-150

A number of the London Transport posters – although not the Eckersley – are listed has having come from another London Transport Museum Sale, run by Sotheby’s in 1993. I’d have loved to see how the values had changed between then and now, but sadly this date is just a bit too early for me to find the answers online. So if anyone does have a copy of the catalogue and can run the comparison, I’d be very grateful.

And finally, there is this.

Anonymous, £20-40

A simple poster, doing its job. Can’t argue with that.

*Underneath all the debate about how to sell off museum archives lurks a bigger question, which is whether museums should be selling off their collections at all. Generally I tend to think no, because what people might discard as ‘worthless’ now could well turn out to be highly prized in later times, and also because museums have histories themselves, and these histories need to be recorded. And because then people won’t give stuff to museums if they think it might be sold in the future, and the reasons go on and on and on. But I do think posters are a slightly different case, precisely because they aren’t unique, and therefore it is possible to have too many. As long as the museum has enough to cover losses, and damage and loans, then I can’t really see a good reason why they should keep 12, or 20 Stan Krols, just because they have them. But I’d be interested in other people’s thoughts on this too.

You can be sure of Australia

Getting the measure

auctions, other

I got somewhat over-excited towards the end of last week, when Mr Crownfolio pointed out this in a forthcoming auction.

Clearly this is a framed Paul Nash Shell poster of Rye Marches, and the reason I was getting into such a tizzy about it was that it had turned up at an automobile auction near Chippenham, with a valuation of just £80-120, and with a seeming mis-dating to the 1960s.

Now given that these posters usually go for several hundreds of pounds, sometimes thousands, I thought that this might be our only chance to buy one, so I started eyeing up the Crownfolio savings (still currently earmarked for things like doors and carpets) with a view to bidding on both that, and the Ben Nicholson which was accompanying it in the sale.

It seemed – almost – plausible that an auctioneer who specialised in cars might get this wrong, even if we might have been outbid at the actual sale itself. (The internet is, after all a double-edged sword; it allows us to find things in obscure auctions, but it also lets every other blighter find them too.)

But then I took a closer look at the listings. And it turned out that the auctioneers were right after all, curse them.

These aren’t 1930s posters at all, they are much later reprints. How could I tell? From the measurements. A ‘proper’ Shell poster has dimensions of 30″ x 45″, their own rather unique size meant to fit the side of a lorry. But the posters on sale here are 20″ x 30″. So there is no way that they can be the real thing.

At which point I calmed down. But it did make me realise how often Mr Crownfolio and I use the measurements as a way of judging when we’re considering posters, and I thought that this was something worth pointing out on here.

This probably isn’t a new idea to most of you, and of course there are lots of other ways of evaluating a poster when it’s there on paper and can be examined properly. But should an apparent bargain turn up at a far-flung auction, or appear on eBay, the size can be a very big clue as to whether this is the bargain of all time or a great big flapping turkey of the first order.

Of course, we’ve nonetheless still bought a few turkeys in our time (at least one of which has been a reprinted World War Two poster), but I think that probably goes with the territory of buying from eBay. Sadly Mr Crownfolio and I both have the amnesia caused by acute embarrassment, and can’t remember the details. Sorry about that; maybe I’ll go and dig it out one day and you can all laugh at us.

That said though, if you do want to look at the Paul Nash or the Ben Nicholson on your wall, and you’d like it to take up a bit less space than normal, then there will be a couple of bargains going at Castle Combe later this week. Just as long as you know what you’re getting.

Is it really efficient?

auctions

On we must go with the endless stream of auctions. Today it is Onslows, which takes place on Friday. What can I tell you about it?

Well the first thing that will strike you as you browse through the catalogue is precisely what a tonnage of Shell posters they have – and there are more too, tucked away at the end.

Keith Grant, est. £100-150

I really must take a look at what these actually sell for, because the higher estimates of £100-150 do always strike me as slightly fanciful, but then a few always manage to reach that. Certainly, I don’t see them going as high at other auctions or on eBay. Watch this space and I will report back.

That would, however, be an utterly reasonable price to pay for these Tristram Hillier items, which have the same estimate. I’ve written about them before but, frankly, any excuse.

What I haven’t ever written about properly, however, are the Shell educational posters themselves. Must do that one of these days.

Meanwhile back at Onslows, the other thing that will strike you about the auction is a job lot of GPO posters, some being sold singly, some as individual lots.

Harry Stevens, 1950, est. £70-100

Sams, 1954, est. £60-80

Now I happen to know the story behind these posters, and it’s one to make any archivist’s hair curl. Back in the early 1980s, the Royal Mail in their Mount Pleasant HQ were having a sort out. Sensibly, they decided that two copies of each of the posters they had produced should go to an archive – these are the ones which the BPMA have now. Rather more bogglingly, they put the rest in a skip. The seller rescued a selection that he liked. Some were sold at Bloomsbury in March, this is another batch.

Martin Aitcheson, 1950, est. £40-50

Other than that, the other two interesting items are two rather lovely sets of proofs, one by Barnett Friedman and the other by Edward Ardizzone.

Barnett Friedman, 1952, est. £200-300

Edward Ardizzone, est. £30-50.

I like them a lot, but what you’d actually do with them I’m not entirely sure.

Meanwhile the rest of what is on offer is the usual mix of foreign stuff that I am going to ignore, railway and travel posters, and, as ever, a fair selection of World War Two Home Front posters.

This is probably the stand-out railway poster for me.

Frank Newbould, 1930, est. £700-1,000

Although, as even a cursory flick through this blog would reveal, I am always a sucker for this series.

L A Wilcox, 1960, est. £600-700

The main event in the travel poster section, at least if you are me, is a stream of these black and white British travel posters. A couple are quite interestingly early.

Anonymous, 1938, est. £50-70

The vast majority are not.

Anonymous, c. 1948, est. £50-70.

While this in no way constitutes a recommendation to buy one, these posters are quite interesting as historical artefacts. Take a look at the date: it’s just after the war has ended, and Britain is desperate to pay back the war loans. And one of the ways to do that, is of course American tourist dollars; so these posters wing their way over to the States to try and persuade our American cousins to come over here. But I often wonder just how well they worked. Because America is sleek, glossy and most of all technicolour, but Britain is broke. So our posters come in black and white and are printed on the cheapest, thinnest paper imaginable.

Of course none of this explains why the 1938 poster is equally as shoddy. Perhaps the British Travel and Tourist Association were just cheapskates, all the time.

The reason I’ve thought about these posters so much is that Mr Crownfolio and I, some years ago, bought a whole roll of these posters from America for about £30. We tried to sell a couple on eBay but basically got laughed at. But then, a couple of years later we tried again, and the prices started rising – so much so that one of the last ones went for over £100. And now they are at Onslows, well I never.

In the war section, meanwhile, this is probably the most classic poster.

Norman Wilkinson, 1940, est. £300-400.

While this is my favourite.

Anonymous, 1940, est. £40-50

Just look at the difference in prices, I am clearly in a minority of one on this.

For a change, there aren’t that many London Transport posters in there, but it’s worth persevering through the whole catalogue, because a pair of gems, both by Abram Games, are tucked away at the end.

Abram Games, 1976, est. £100-150

Abram Games, 1950, est. £400-500.

In fact that poster above is the very last one in the sale. And probably one of the best. But it’s an exception, and I am slightly worried by the general lack of good posters like that from the Onslows sale. Because with Christies having got so expensive, there’s a real need for an auction house selling the stuff that, well, Christies used to – the Games, the Eckersleys and the Royston Coopers to start with, never mind the Daphne Paddens. But they aren’t appearing here – so where have they gone? They haven’t entirely migrated to the railwayana auctions, so where have they all gone? Do any of you know, because I certainly don’t. And I’d like to.

In another place

other

I keep trying to contemplate posters, but my brain isn’t complying and wants to think about archaeology instead. So, for one day only, the stone circles of Wiltshire as represented in graphic design. Only on Quad Royal.

Although our first offering isn’t all that.

Despite the fact that it’s in the collections of both the V&A and MoMA and therefore has to be a Modern Classic, I don’t really like it. There’s too much artistic licence in the hilliness and the surrounding stones for my taste, although I will give it points for being a very interesting collision between high modernism and an almost 18thC romantic view of wild landscape at night

But I have another grievance against the poster which is that I don’t really like Stonehenge either; it’s a freak and an abberation rather than a proper stone circle. That is a serious point, not just prejudice. The shaped and stacked lintels of Stonehenge may have become our default idea of what a stone circle looks like (I would say ‘icon’ except that I’d hate myself afterwards; a shame because the word used to represent a useful concept before it became debased). But no other stone circle in the country looks anything like this. And you only have to go twenty five miles along the road – still staying in Wiltshire – to find the real thing.

…it does as much exceed in greatness the so renowned Stonehenge as a Cathedral doeth a parish church.

That’s what John Aubrey said about Avebury in the seventeenth century, and it’s still true today. Which is why Keith Grant was wise to choose its stones for the cover of the Shell Shilling Guide to Wiltshire.

That’s not the only time Shell got it right, either. The Ridgeway is the prehistoric track which leads across the high downs to Avebury (now walkable as a tidy National Footpath all the way from Tring), and David Gentleman included it in his ‘Roads’ series of posters.

This is not the poster but the original artwork. David Revill posted a comment on the blog the other day to say that he had bought this very picture at the auction of Shell’s original artworks in 2002. I am envious.

My favourite picture of all though (and yes, I have said this before) is John Piper’s Archeological Wiltshire.

I would quite happily mortgage the cats for a copy of that, and probably throw in a few posters too, but it seems there is only one and it lives in a museum in Scotland. But if anyone knows differently, please do say.

I think that’s actually better than the picture below, even though Nash’s re-imagining of Avebury is far more known.

Nash’s colours are just a bit too weedy for me to really love this – and the hill fort in the background is about to topple forwards any minute now. But seen from the present day, it is a remarkably prescient painting. The hills all over the Wiltshire downs are now covered in geometric bales, cubes and cylinders, which turn his surrealist imaginings into reality every year.

With a bit of luck I have now got that out of my system and a normal service, in which we talk about posters, will resume tomorrow.

Stuff Stuff Stuffety Stuff

eBay

It’s time for a round-up of what’s for sale at the moment. I’ve been swerving this for a few days, mainly because there are bits on offer all over the place in a rather scattergun fashion. But bear with me and we will take a tour, starting with the Swann Galleries.

Unfortunately their new catalogue doesn’t have the stellar offerings of their last Modernist posters sale, and the British posters are spotted all the way through. In a way, this is a good thing, as it shows that they’re being taken seriously rather than tucked in a corner like some elderly aunt to be patronised. But it does make flicking through the catalogue much harder work than it might have been.

It also makes for some interesting juxtapositions. This English bathing beauty from 1955 is valued at a rather startling $700-1,000 (by someone who has clearly never experienced the reality of Ramsgate).

But just a few pages before is her American counterpart from 1960. Which does rather make me think that the Americans did some parts of ‘midcentury’ better than we did.

She’s also a bit less high-maintenance at $500-750.

For the same price as the Ramsgate bathing beauty you could instead have this rather fine Shell poster by Colin Statham, about whom I can find out nothing at all (except that someone of that name is very active in amateur dramatics in Berkshire).

I did learn that this design is apparently the only poster in this series with a background colour that isn’t neutral, so there you go.

But for me one of the most interesting posters on offer in the sale is also one of the least visually interesting.

My mind is on the subject of World War Two posters quite a bit at the moment, so you may not be as excited as I am. But it is worth thinking about, for two reasons. One is that it’s a reminder of the fact that design often wasn’t the main driver when these posters were produced. This comes as part of a lot of nine posters, which also include: Only Use Boiled Water; How to get Help After Air-Raid Damage; This Shelter is Not Gas Proof; You Can Get Water At; If You Have Lost Your Home; For Help and Information Go To; This is a Rest Centre. All of these must have been designed for immediate use in the aftermath of a raid, so their concern is being visible and legible, not being pretty. Each and every wartime poster had a purpose, and ‘good design’ was only used when it might help that purpose, it wasn’t their main reason for being.

It’s also a reminder of just how many posters were produced during the war, and that not only were the numbers vast, they are also pretty uncountable today. The Imperial War Museum Archive on VADS doesn’t seem to have a record of any of these nine, and I’ve never seen them reproduced anywhere else before. Which means that there are probably plenty of others which have disappeared entirely, and so a full record of every poster of the war will never be possible. So keep your eyes peeled, and you could perhaps hit the marketing jackpot with the next ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’. Although perhaps not with these posters.

Back on this side of the Atlantic, there are also a couple of railwayana auctions, at Talisman and Gteat Central Railwayana. While both have a reasonable selection of perfectly fine railway posters (although, as ever neither estimates nor dates), nothing is leaping out screaming ‘buy me!’. Although Great Central Railwayana do have this Studio Seven gem, which would probably do quite well in the Swann Auctions.

And this, which I am just amused by.

The catalogue tells me that it is ‘from the series Famous Public Schools on the LMS’ so there are more to collect should you feel the urge.

I can only ever bring myself to admire this Pat Keely London Transport poster from afar, rather than actually wanting to own it and have it on the wall.

At Talisman, as well as no estimates or dates, there aren’t even proper pictures, so you will just have to look to the bottom right here to see what I am going on about.

I rather like that, partly for the typography, but mainly because I cannot imagine the circumstances under which Weston Super Mare would be better still. Than borstal, perhaps, but that’s about it. It’s got a muddy estuary instead of sea, a tide that goes out half way to Wales and a prevailing wind that gets sand into each and every sandwich. I used to wonder why there were so many railway posters advertising it, until I realised that no one would go there otherwise.

And finally eBay, which has been a bit quiet recently, which might be down to the summer holiday lull beginning to kick in. Although MrSpencer007 would like you to pay the best part of ninety quid for this.

I, for one, am not biting.

A similar aura of optimism applies to the pricing of this Lowestoft poster too.

Cheerful, yes, but not £450 worth of cheerful I don’t think.

But there are more reasonable prices to be found, most notably with a seller called 2mkantiques, who has clearly found a whole treasure trove of posters somewhere, 93 to be precise. It’s a real mixed bag, with everything from Dutch bus posters to 1970s Sealink advertising, but there are some good ones in there, and mostly at reasonable prices.

I like both of these 1950s travel posters, for example, and they’re at £150 and £100 respectively.

Plus the seller will take offers, so you may even get them for less than that. There are also some National Savings posters, at slightly higher prices – this Norman Wilkinson is on offer for £250, for example.

But the real star exhibit, for me at least, is this, yours for £199 or thereabouts.

Now, what does that signature say? I could almost swear it reads Henrion. Anyone else got a thought on that? It has a pair, too, which is on for £225 even though it’s not quite as nice.

There have been a couple of other finds on the Bay too, but they haven’t made this post because we’ve bought them. Sorry about that. More on a few of those later in the week.