Commentary

Today, I’m turning the blog over to the floor, because there have been lots of interesting comments recently.  Some of them are thought-provoking enough to need whole blog posts in reply (like yesterday’s).  But there are also plenty more which deserve attention too.  So here goes.

Hans Unger vintage GPO TV licence poster 1954
Hans Unger, GPO, 1954

Firstly, the post on Hans Unger and his life attracted an evocative reminiscence from D.E., which I definitely didn’t want to leave languishing at the bottom of an old post from last month.

I lived in Hans’s house in Muswell Hill with my parents from shortly before his death until the late 70s. Hans rented us the upstairs of his semi-detatched, furnished the whole place for us all the way down to the linens, plates, and cutlery, and was very kind. My mum, herself a Jewish escapee from Nazi Europe, and an artist, marveled at him and his work. It wasn’t long after we moved in, sadly, that we became concerned at not seeing him for a few days, and… well… led to his discovery with a bottle of sleeping pills by his bedside, with a goodbye note. Needless to say, shocking for a 14 year old. Still, we stayed in the house for about 4 more years, and had Hans’s giant outdoor mosaic to look at in the back yard, the stained glass over the front door, and several of his LT posters scattered throughout the house.

Hans’s spirit was complemented well by the woman who moved into the lower part of the house afterwards. I believe that she knew Hans, and herself was a Jewish South African illustationist – Lixi Darvall. She filled the house with art and laughter, but sadly, she too died while we lived there, in her case from cancer.

I remember the house well, full of art and artists, and of the odd collection of Jewish survivors, and am fond of all those creations by these wonderful people.

It’s wonderful to hear him remembered as a person as well as a designer.

Hans Unger vintage London Transport poster Christopher Wren 1957
Hans Unger, London Transport (half of pair poster), 1957

But comments can also be corrections, and I was put right after complaining that a whole host of London Transport posters on eBay didn’t look linen mounted to me.  I now know that I was wrong, as Martin Steenson told me that old-fashioned linen mountings were often trimmed to the size of the poster.  Mike Ashworth gave an explanation of just why these particular posters might have been mounted this way, too.

I suspect many of the posters such as these currently on sale at Ebay have, over time, been released from the spares held by the old LT Publicity stocks by the LT Museum. I recall that many of these ‘information’ posters (rather then pictorial posters) were linen backed so that they could be trimmed and then used on a more semi-permanent basis at offices, stops, etc. A good example would be the LT ‘you are here’ posters (the area maps for tube stations) that were printed in 10s or 20s (as spares/replacements) and that were seldom replaced. The ‘spares’ were released to dealers etc by LTM some years ago and now show face on Ebay and at dealers – they’re often linen backed, either trimmed or not.

We have this one, also linen mounted, and now I know why it is the way it is, so thank you.

Vintage London Transport poster

Finally, more of an addendum.  When I wrote about Denis Constanduros last week, I couldn’t work out whether the artist of the Shell posters was the same man who went on to adapt Jane Austen for the television in the 1960s.  It turns out – perhaps not surprisingly given his rather less than common name – that it was.

Denis Constanduros long man of wilmington better pic shell poster

I found out thanks to the wonder that is our local library system, which lets me order books online from about six different counties around.  So, from the depths of the Somerset Reserve Stacks, I called up My Grandfather by Denis Constanduros on the offchance that it might reveal something.  I can’t tell you anything about the merits of the book itself yet, but it did contain this biography of Denis himself.

Born in 1910, Denis Constanduros escaped a formal education and had, instead, a succession of private tutors.  He was only 15 when he sold his first cartoon caricatures of Wimbledon players and characters to the press.  Later, he went to Chelsea Art School and produced Shell posters at the same time as Graham Sutherland and McKnight Kauffer.

At the age of 27, he had his first radio play produced, although he had already collaborated with his aunt, Mabel Constanduros, on some of the Buggins Family sketches.

The mother of Denis Constanduros was a daughter of Richard Tilling of the successful Tillings Transport group.  The two daughters married two sons of the Constanduros family.  Denis’ father was an unqualified architect and a compulsive gambler, and his mother and father parted company after the First World War.

In 1938, Denis Constanduros married Barbara Neill and moved to Wiltshire.  Classified unfit, although he had at one time been mixed doubles champion of Portugal, he spent much of the Second World War working in the office of a munitions factory.  in 1948, he had his first television play accepted and My Grandfather was published.

The West Country radio serial Denis Constanduros created and wrote, At the Luscombes ran for 16 years. He adapted many classic novels for television during the 1960s and 1970s, including works by H.G. Wells, Henry James and Jane Austen, and died in 1978.

Denis Constanduros Farmers Prefer Shell poster

So now we know.  The Shell Art Collection at Beaulieu tells me that he did six artworks for Shell, but I haven’t been able to find images of any of the others.  Still, these two are so lovely that I, for one, am very happy to see them again.

Finally, a dilemma, posed by “mm” last week.

I’ve got mixed feelings about all this pre-auction promotion…Of course, if you alert me to something I’ve missed it’s great. But if you alert everyone else to something I’ve spotted and I’m hoping has slipped under everyone elses radar it’s not so good! I’m not sure what the answer is…Only discuss items post auction?

Now I have to admit that I have the advantage here, because if I spot a potential bargain coming up, I do only mention it once the auction has been and gone – as with the Constanduros above.  Which means that I can’t really judge this one fairly.  Although my personal suspicion is that no one takes the blindest notice of what I write on here, and one of these days I’m going to go back over all of the things I’ve highlighted on eBay to prove this, as I will happily bet that loads of them don’t even get a bid.

But what do you think?  Would you rather hear about auctions coming up and take the risk that I might reveal one of your carefully-spotted bargains?  Or would you rather I shut up until it’s been and gone?  And have you ever gone for something because I mentioned it?  Answers in the box below, if you don’t mind.

While I write this, incidentally, the Christies Auction is rattling away in the corner of Mr Crownfolio’s screen and it is officially Going Bonkers, with everything way over estimate.  More next week.

Survivors

When I wrote about poster hoardings and their rather surprising effects last week, the comments section ended up as a bit of a debate on how posters survive.  Were the few that remain only saved because the designers and a few other far-sighted people connected with their production and display collected them (the Malcolm Guest model)?  Or were there more which were sold on to the public of the time as well?

I promised to go away and try and find out as much as I could and report back.  There’s lots more research that can be done, so this is very much a work in progress.  But by asking the questions here, I’m hoping that I might get some answers from you as well.  So please do pile in if you can help.

John Minton London's river vintage london transport poster
John Minton, London’s River, 1951

What strikes me is that some kinds of posters survive in disproportionate quantities.  Any auction, or even a look at eBay will show you a lot of London Transport posters or railway posters, with lesser amounts of Shell and Guinness items too.  But very little British commercial advertising survives at all – you can go through swathes of auction catalogues without seeing any for months or even years.

The same is true of GPO posters – which are examples of great design but nonetheless come up very rarely. (To give you an idea of how rarely, Christies catalogue archive can turn up only 10 or so GPO posters which have come up for sale.  Put in “shell poster” and you get hundreds of results.  I daren’t even type in railway poster.)

Lewitt Him 1951 vintage GPO poster
Lewitt Him, 1951

So my suggestion would be that the kinds of posters which survive in numbers were also sold on to the public one way or another.

There is no dispute that this is what London Transport did (as mentioned on here before).  Here’s Oliver Green of the London Transport Museum on the sales pattern in the 1920s:

A typical print run in the 1920s was 1,000, of which 850 were required for posting on the system where they were displayed for one month.  The remaining 150 copies were available for purchase at the company’s head office for between about two and five shillings, depending on the printing cost.  Posters in demand with the public were invariably those which followed the more traditional artistic designs, such as Gregory Brown’s St Albans, Fred Taylor’s Kew and Dorothy Burroughes’ For the Zoo.  These three were all in the top ten of a bestsellers’ list which was announced by the Underground in 1923.

Dorothy Burroughes Zoo vintage london transport poster 1922
Dorothy Burroughes, 1922

By 1931 the best sellers were selling over 300 posters each, and London Transport were selling a total of 10,000 posters in a year.  But even the modern art posters did sell to some.

Edward Bawden has also recalled that he and Eric Ravilious, when students together at the Royal College of Art in the 1920s. looked forward eagerly to the appearance of a new Kauffer Underground poster which was then, literally, one of the cheapest forms of good modern art available.

McKnight Kauffer vintage London Transport poster 1934
McKnight Kauffer, 1934

In 1933 the London Transport poster shop opened in their headquarters at 55, Broadway, and designs were, it seemed, commissioned specifically with shop sales in mind.

London Transport poster shop exterior
London Transport shop,c.1935.

Furthermore, some posters were also created so that they could be easily cut down for framing and display in the home.

Laura Knight September Freshnes 1937
Laura Knight, September Freshness, 1937

Poster sales continued on and off, with a break for the war, sometimes only to schools and other educational establishments, sometimes to the public.  Claire Dobbin writes about it in some detail in her essay in London Transport Posters if you want to know more.

She also mentions is that London Transport held poster exhibitions too, at Burlington House in 1928 and the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1949.

LT exhibition Burlington House 1928
London Transport poster exhibition at Burlington House, 1928

For London Transport, these were infrequent special events, but in the case of  the railway companies, exhibitions were a regular feature of their promotions. David Watts catalogues them in the essay I was referring to the other day.

Annual poster exhibitions were held at the LNER’s King’s Cross station in London between 1923 and 1927. Between 1928 and 1933, with the possible exception of 1931, they were held in either the New Burlington or Grieve’s galleries in the West End. In 1936 a private exhibition was held in Marylebone, presumably at the LNER station. In 1937 the exhibition reverted to the West End. LNER poster exhibitions were held annually in Edinburgh between 1924 and 1938. Their exact location is not stated, except for 1935, 1937 and 1938, when it was Waverley station. Numerous other localities hosted occasional LNER poster exhibitions, including: Aberdeen (1929–30, 1934), Barnard Castle (1934–36), Bournemouth (1934), Bradford (1934–35), Brighton (1936), Cleethorpes (1935), Dundee (1934), Gateshead (1936), Glasgow (1929–30), Grimsby (1934), Ipswich (1935), Kingston upon Hull (1932–36), Leeds (1934), Lincoln (1934, 1936), Manchester (1935–36), Newcastle upon Tyne (1930, 1934–36), Norwich (1933), Shef?eld (1933, 1936–37), Yarmouth (1934) and York (1932–36). […] It is likely that other localities also hosted exhibitions of LNER posters and that those listed above held them in more years than shown here. Exhibitions seem not to have been systematically recorded.

That’s quite a lot of exhibitions.

Now, I can’t lay my hands on any proof that posters were sold at these events.  But posters were definitely sold by railway companies.  Pre-war artists had contracts which paid them for every copy sold to the public, for a start.

And the LMS marketed posters to the public – possibly by the same system of writing in as London Transport used.  When the company produced a series of posters designed by Royal Academicians in 1924, they “sold well”, and Maurice Greiffenhagan’s image of Carlisle was top of the pops, selling to the public “in large numbers”.

Maurice Greiffenhagen Carlisle vintage Railway poster LMS

In 1931, the LMS even published a list of its six best-selling posters.  Like the railways, traditional art was what the public wanted to buy, with Paul Henry’s views of Ireland taking the top two places.

Paul Henry Connemara 1926 vintage railway poster

So railway posters were definitely for sale.  Which just leaves Shell and Guinness posters to account for.

W Steggles Tattingstone wonder shell poster
W Steggles

Shell held exhibitions of its advertising too.  The first was at New Burlington Gardens in 1931 and then later they were held at Shell-Mex House and around the country. These were reviewed in the press and attracted thousands of visitors.  And, yes, the posters were for sale.  Michael Heller has reseached Shell’s inter-war corporate branding.

Its posters rapidly became collectors items, available by subscription from Shell or through its popular published catalogue collections.

Which just leaves Guinness posters, about which I can find out nothing right now.  But  I think I might be prepared to make a guess that they also were sold given that they survive in the numbers they do.

Bromfield Foreign letter GPO poster 1951
Bromfield, 1951

By way of a contrast, let’s go back to the GPO posters.  We’ve got a fair number (in fact a rather embarrassing quantity), but what’s interesting is that I know the direct provenance of most of them.  A few came from the Malcom Guest collection, a few more (all by her) from Daphne Padden’s estate.  But the greatest number came from eBay, sold by a man whose uncle went to his local post office in the early 1950s and asked if he could have their posters when they’d finished with them.    They’re not just floating about like the railway and London Transport posters, only thanks to rare and chance collections are they kept.

Tom Eckersley vintage GPO poster 1955
Tom Eckersley, 1955

Which makes me think that we’re very lucky that Shell, London Transport and the Railway Companies wanted to improve the nations taste by selling posters.  Otherwise practically nothing would survive.

Sources

I haven’t given references in this, mainly because footnotes and blogs don’t mix well.  But most of the information came from these books:

London Transport Posters: A Century of Art and Design

Underground Art: London Transport Posters, 1908 to the Present

Art for All: British Posters for Transport (Yale Center for British Art)

Railway Posters 1923-1947

as well as from Michael Heller’s paper, Corporate Brand Building at Shell-Mex Ltd in the Interwar Period.  Do ask if you want any more detail and I will do my best.

That’s Shell, that was

I really wish I hadn’t started this post now.  It was meant to be a simple one about stuff on eBay, and now it’s gone and turned into a mystery.

The beginning was this poster, which ended two days ago.  Along with a confession.

Shell Poster Long Man of Wilmington Denis Constanduros

Which is that I didn’t actually mention it while it was on sale, on the off-chance that it went un-noticed and we could pick it up for a pittance.  Some chance – six bidders and twenty bids pushed it up to £412.  I almost wish that we’d gone that high.

So, piqued, I started investigating Denis Constanduros.  It turns out that he also did this rather lovely rendering of Llanthony Abbey (one of my favourite places anyway) for Shell.

Denis Constanduros Llanthony Abbey Shell poster

As well as this Farmers Prefer Shell poster too.  Which, although very pretty, I find a bit odd because looks as though someone’s just being eaten by the machinery.

Denis Constanduros Farmers Prefer Shell poster

But that’s about it.   His only artistic remains seem to be those three Shell posters, all probably pre-war.  So what’s the problem, you say?

Well there’s also a Denis Constanduros who wrote a 1940s radio serial called ‘At the Luscombes’ about West Country village life (by coincidence, set no more than ten or so miles from here, in a place I drive through quite regularly).  Who then – unless there’s a third Denis Constanduros which I have to say seems pretty unlikely – worked throughout the 1960s and 70s on adapting classic books for television, particularly Jane Austen.  That Denis Constanduros died in 1978.  But is it all the same one?  Did he just do a few posters and then go off into writing, in the style of an earlier Patrick Tilley?  I do not have the foggiest idea, the internet is just confusing me and the Shell Poster Book says nothing at all.  Can anyone else shed any light?

I’m bothered not just because it’s not making sense and so needs sorting out, but also because these three posters are all really rather good.  They’re very much of their late-1930s period, but in a good way, with echoes of Ravilious in the style and colours.  And also in the subject matter of course; Ravilious wasn’t just a painter of chalk hills, but also drew the Long Man himself too.

Eric Ravilious the Long Man of Wilmington

So it seems a pity that Constanduros never painted much more than his Shell posters.  But then, if it was him who went on to write ‘At the Luscombes” and adapt classic novels for television, his journey was very much that of his times.  Before the war, the poster was king.  But afterwards, the new, shiny, exciting broadcast media took all the glory; if you had the talent for it, who wouldn’t have made the switch.  Posters were no longer the place for a smart young man to be any more, there were new and more exciting furrows to plough.

One final note, and that’s the price.  Its not remarkable for itself – it’s a fine poster and well worth the money.  But it is remarkable for having been achieved where it was – I can’t remember having seen a poster match the price it would have reached at a specialist poster auction on eBay before.   Not that many of that quality turn up, but still, it’s an interesting precedent.  (I can’t be bothered to do the maths, but I wonder how the eBay selling fees compare to  Christies charges.  Not that well, I should have thought…)

And, having said that these things don’t turn up very often, there in fact a couple more classics out there right now.  This Henrion,

HEnrion 1950s London Transport poster as seen on our walls

And this John Bainbridge too.

John Bainbridge 1950s London Transport poster

They’re both from the same seller, and it will be interesting to see how they go.

The Bainbridge, meanwhile, is also being offered by Sotherans at the moment.  for £895.  If eBay can scale those heights, that really would be a turn up for the books.

You Can Be Sure of Shell

The relationship between archives and the internet is not always a one way street.  What gets most discussion is how, and whether, archives are putting their catalogues and content on line.  But in the meantime, the internet itself is also becoming the archive.

Here’s a fascinating example.  It’s something I’ve touched on before, but it’s such an extraordinary (and well-hidden) resource that it deserves its own post.

Way, way down in the bowels of the Sothebys website, their catalogues now go backfor more than 10 years.  And so they include the 2002 sale of many of the original paintings commissioned by Shell for its post-war educational posters.

Now, this isn’t your typical poster sale.  To start with, Shell didn’t really commission the usual run of poster artists for their educational posters, the people concerned are mostly illustrators.  Some of the finest illustrators working in the 1950s and 60s, to be precise, like David Gentleman, S R Badmin, Tristram Hillier and Rowland Hilder.

Perhaps the best-known illustrations for sale were the images of individual counties, which were covers for the Shell Guides as well as centre-pieces for the associated posters.

S R Badmin original illustration for shell county guide
S R Badmin, Derbyshire

Rowland Hilder Kent illustration for Shell County Guide
Rowland Hilder, Kent

Ian Henderson, Worcester illustration Shell County Guide
Ian Henderson, Worcestershire

Richard Eurich, Cornwall illustration Shell County Guides
Richard Eurich, Cornwall

I don’t think I’ve ever come across the Worcestershire one before (and I would have noticed it if I had, not only is it a great piece of design, but Worcester is where the Crownfolio family came from, back in the day).  The Eurich, meanwhile, was the most expensive of the county illustrations, going for a quite spectacular £12,925.

But detailed illustration did seem to be what the buyers wanted most.  The highest-prices went to the S R Badmin images of trees through the year.  Here’s February (£14,100) and September (£10,340).

S R Badmin trees and shrubs February original shell poster illustration

S R Badmin shell poster illustration trees and shrubs september

Although Tristram Hillier’s Fossils also went for £14,100, but that’s because it’s genius.

Tristram Hillier Fossils shell educational poster illustration

While David Gentleman’s Roads series (which I love almost the best) went for hardly anything.

David Gentleman Ridgeway shell poster llustration

David Gentleman Ermine Street Shell poster illustration

And why Ermine Street fetched £3,290 while the Ridgeway fetched only £999, I will never understand.  Why pay more for tarmac?

But to some degree, the prices aren’t the most interesting thing about the auction.  What I like most about the archive is that it is there at all.  Here, for the last time, all of Shell’s illustrations are gathered together, from the famous ones,

Rowland Hilder Sussex shell County guide poster illustration
Rowland Hilder, Sussex

to some that I never knew existed.

David Conner Rousham Court shell illustration
David Conner, Rousham Court

It should have been a book.  But at least it is still out there on the web.

Lucky for some

I posted a few weeks ago about our giant black cat, but this more manageable version (well, manageable-ish at 40″ x 60″) has just come up on eBay.

Black Cat National savings poster from eBay

This sleek feline could be yours for just £99.  Ours, meanwhile, has been re-homed at the History of Advertising Trust, to be properly looked after.

Also on eBay at the moment, your choice of pretty much any Shell County poster you want.  Here’s Wiltshire, by Keith Grant, by way of an example.

Wiltshire Shell county poster illustration Keith Grant

But with 22 on offer, you are spoilt for choice.  At £59.99 a go, that could be a nice little earner for the seller.  If they get that of course.  Some very similar ones come up at Onslows tomorrow, so it will be interesting to see what they make.

(These are offered as Buy It Now or Best Offer, so might go for less.  Am I the only person who is regularly tempted by Best Offer to make a really low punt, just in case they say yes? Or is it a universal urge?)

Sepsis, fuel and dark beer

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.

Rags - Mount Evans world war two vintage salvage poster onslows

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.

railway fuel saving world war two vintage poster

As well as this fantastically stark warning – also from the railways.

Railways Health and Safety Warning vintage poster

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.

Henrion VD awareness world war two vintage poster

Pat Keeley Sepsis world war two vintage poster

Abram Games blood donors world war two vintage poster

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.

R Peppe Guinness vintage poster 1962

And after that, I just got a bit overwhelmed.  There are film posters, London Transport posters – including this 1953 gem by Sheila Robinson.

Sheila Robinson London Transport poster 1953 Royal London half of Pair poster

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.

Mary Kessell vintage London Transport poster Euphorbia 1964

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.

David Gentleman Roads Shell educational poster onslows

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.

Trans Europ Express vintage poster onslows auctions

And finally (because I am rambling furiously and must stop) I like this, for no good reason at all.

Onions poster onslows auction

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.