Tom Eckersley Archives - Page 12 of 13

Eckersley discovered (twice)

I hadn’t meant to return to Tom Eckersley so soon, but Mr Crownfolio came across this on eBay.

“What do you think?” he said.

“I think it’s very expensive,” I said. With a starting price at £100, it certainly is, even if it is a limited edition of 500.

“Do you know what,” he said after we had stared at the screen for a few more minutes. “I think we’ve got this on the bookshelves downstairs.”

I looked blankly at him, certain that I have never seen this book before in my life. But it turns out that he’s right. Which means that we can’t have paid £100 for it as I would definitely have remembered any transaction of that sort (to put this into perspective, I could count the number of posters that we have paid more than £100 for pretty much on the fingers of one hand). Perhaps it isn’t the limited edition, we thought – but it is too, copy number 100. You may consider me surprised.

While this whole episode may have left me wondering how close I am to utter senility, the upside in terms of the blog is that I can show you some of the book – in particular a few images that don’t seem to be in the Eckersley archive. (Apologies, incidentally, for the slightly poor quality of the scans; I am terrified of damaging the spine of a book that is clearly more valuable than I thought – and I’d also say that the colour reproduction in the book isn’t as bright as it might be).

Cover for The Director, 1954

National Bus Company Poster, 1974

Imperial War Museum Poster, 1981

Apparently the image above Eckersley himself thought to be amongst his best work. I think I can actually remember seeing it displayed on the tube when I visited London, back in the day.

But the book has also made me look at a couple of other designs properly. Like this one, for an exhibition in Sweden in 1960, which is almost impossibly modern for its date.

As well as this, from 1973, which is nothing short of genius in its minimalism.

The other really useful thing about the book is that it has a slightly more detailed and personal biography of Tom Eckersley than you might find on the web. So I’m going to revive my long-lost copy typing skills and put a slightly edited version of it on here for you at some point this week. Illustrated with a few more images from the book. You’ll hardly need to buy a copy yourself.

Finally, one further benefit of all of this is that I have looked at our bookshelves properly (generally they are Mr Crownfolio’s domain) and discovered all sorts of contemporary design and poster annuals, so I will, gradually, get round to scanning and posting about them all.

Find me an artist. From 1953 please

Collect Posters Carefully

archives, designers

These thoughts are the result of what was quite literally fall out from my previous musings about poster sizes. When I was scanning Eckersley’s illustrations, his obituary (from The Times, August 18 1997) dropped out of Poster Design. And it told me something I didn’t know.

I’d always been aware of his being Tom Eckersley, O.B.E., but I had no idea that he’d got the honour in 1948, at the age of just 34. It was in recognition of his contribution to the war effort. Which looked like this.

And also this, amongst many, many others.

He was awarded the honour for all of his posters for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents – and possibly also for the fact that he designed all of these posters while at the same time drawing maps for the RAF as his day job. I find it really interesting – particularly in light of the current backlash against ‘Health and Safety’ – that this campaign was seen as such a central part of wartime propaganda, to the extent that Eckersley was, as far as I know, the only wartime poster designer to be honoured in this way. Although please do correct me if that’s wrong.

But I’m not just telling you this because it’s an interesting snippet. ROSPA, who commissioned all of these posters, have als0 put up an interesting archive of all of their World War Two Safety Posters, with images from Abram Games and Arnold Rothholz as well. So there are lots of lovely images for you to look at, and a bit of history as well. (If you want to follow the trail any further, it leads, with a certain inevitability, to Rennies who have many more posters on their site).

On the menu today

eBay

Now look what you’ve made me go and do. This, to start with.

And this.

All I did was write about Daphne Padden, and then post images of a few menus that Dorrit Dekk had designed for P&O. The next thing I knew, MrCrownfolio had pressed a few buttons on eBay, and these popped through the letterbox a few days later.

Both are from the same August 1958 cruise of the S.S. Chusan, and the food and entertainments listed are almost as evocative as the design. Anyone for Dancing to Relayed Music, or Housie Housie in the Lounge? Or how about some Consomée Tosca, or Sweetbreads Godard? So they are wonderful things, and a bit of a bargain at just £4.99 each.

But at the same time, I am utterly appalled. We can’t start collecting anything else, who knows where it will end up? In a house stacked with piles of old leaflets, tickets and newspapers and no room for us, probably. We are both natural collectors, and until now I’ve been feeling slightly smug about managing to restrict ourselves to just posters, which are at least either on the wall or not taking up much space. And now this. Ephemera. Help.

If I’m entirely honest, it isn’t the first one either. A while ago, MrCrownfolio bought this.

It’s a Tom Eckersley menu, from the Royal Designers for Industry Dinner in 1985. We’re doomed, there’s no escape. But we will go down in great style, eating Noisettes of Lamb Shrewsbury and Caramel and Orange Salambos. Anyone care to join us?

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.

Four posters in search of a story

posters

I’ve always been interested in the afterlife of objects – how things survive long enough to become collectibles or heirlooms or even national treasures. It’s generally a story of chance and – quite often – being so lost and overlooked that no one bothers to throw you away. It’s also a story that isn’t often told as part of design history; once an object has been created and made, that’s normally the end of it. But often what happens next is at least as interesting, and can also be very revealing about how we appreciate, or disregard, the objects around us.

So, following on from yesterday’s post about just how little survives, here are a few of our posters with the tales of how they made it through to the twenty-first century.

Tom Eckersley, Post Early for GPO, 1955, Crown Folio 15″ x 10″
Saved by a man who went into his local post office and asked them to keep for him all of the posters and publicity material that they had finished with. (I will write more about this one of these days as it’s worth a whole post in its own right.)

F H K Henrion, Changing of the Guard for London Transport, 1956, Double Royal 40″ x 25″
Kept by a tutor in graphic design who used it in his teaching.

Mount/Evans, Anti-Smoking poster for COI, 1965-ish, Double Crown 30″ x 20″
Bought at auction but I believe it came from the designers’ own archive.

ARP Poster, Edward McKnight Kauffer, 1938, Crown Folio 15″ x 10″
Found in the roof of a scout hut. The air rifle pellet holes had to be restored…

Patrick Bogue from Onslows also mentioned in passing that he once found original railway poster artwork being used as insulation in a loft space. Can anyone better that?