Tom Eckersley Archives

Twinning?

designers

I do like a sharp-eyed reader. Sheila got in contact to show me this poster, which she’d just bought on eBay.

It’s great, isn’t it. But I can’t tell you anything definite about it, because it isn’t signed. Sheila, however, has a theory.

Compare and contrast with this, which is a Tom Eckersley classic.

These children are, if not twins, then certainly close relatives.

So is this a hitherto unknown Eckersley? Well it might be. The construction of the faces are almost identical, and so little is known about British commercial posters of this period that I wouldn’t be at all surprised at all if an entirely new poster turned up.

Equally, though – and this is Mr Crownfolio’s theory – it’s possible that another graphic designer saw Eckersley’s poster and rather liked the way that the face had been done. So when he or she got the right commission which involved drawing a child, they took some inspiration from the Mabletherpe little girl.

One possible way to sort this might involve going through a complete set of graphic design and poster annuals for the late 1950s and seeing whether the electric hot water poster is mentioned at all. Sadly I can’t volunteer, as we don’t have a full set. But if anyone else wants to have a go, or has any other theories or knowledge about this poster, do let us all know in the comments below.

Ghost posters

other, posters

This picture arrived by email last week. It is, I am told, a street corner in Brighton at some point during the 80s. But with the 1950s lurking just under the skin.

Now this would be worth putting your way just as a reminder of what does persist, and in the strangest places. But there’s more to it than just that.

Because this picture is the only colour image I’ve ever seen of that Eckersley Omo poster on the left. Until now, I only knew it from a black and white reproduction in Modern Publicity.

Despite that, I recognised the poster at once, because I’ve used it – both on here and elsewhere – as an example. It’s a reminder of the sheer volume of British posters, specifically commercial posters, which have not only failed to survive in any number, but quite often have left almost no trace at all. Except here it is, leaving a trace, thirty years after it was first printed. Hurrah for that. And I much prefer it in colour too.

(I suspect that there are other clues in that picture too, or at least hints. My feeling is that British commercial posters weren’t kept in part because they were immense, whereas – perhaps – Continental ones came in smaller sizes too. But that’s just a hunch with no research behind it for now.)

Two addenda. Firstly I know nothing about that Bovril poster at all, so if anyone has any ideas about that, please point yourself at the comments box at once as I would love to find out more. Secondly, the picture comes from someone called Bongo Pete, but arrived with me via the medium of Facebook which means that it’s hard to contact him. So if you are Bongo Pete and want any more acknowledgement than that (and of course my eternal gratitude for taking the picture in the first place) please do get in touch.

Special purchase

archives, auctions

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.

Dogged

auctions, London Transport

There’s a certain amount of urgency to this post as the next Bloomsbury poster auction is tomorrow (Tuesday). I do wish I could get a bit more excited about the Bloomsbury Auctions, I really do, as they really ought to be the missing piece of the jigsaw, the auctions which hoover up all the lower-priced pieces of good design which Christies no longer deign to touch. But somehow, it just doesn’t quite work.

Nonetheless, shall we get stuck in and see what we can turn up? Perhaps we should begin with this post-war Shell poster, seeing as I was over in that direction this weekend.

George Hooper, est £200-300

It’s rather hard to decide where to go next, in part because the poster part of the auction (there are film posters first, but I’m ignoring those) is arranged in alphabetical order of artists. Which is I admit entirely logical, but does make it hard to construct any kind of narrative out of the whole thing beyond saying that there are posters. Mind you, I think that if this selection of stuff was arranged in almost any order, it would still feel scattergun, it’s just that kind of sale.

So, here is a poster I like for no good reason other than it’s kitsch and quintessentially 1950s.

Anonymous, est. £300-500

So if the bulldog represents Britain, and the poodle Europe, what is the black one up to? Answers on a postcard please to the usual address.

Meanwhile this one is a classic, and a deserved one too.

Abram Games, 1951, est. £200-400

Although by rights that should mean that it is worth more than the dogs, but there you go.

The one feature worth noting is that once again they’ve landed a whole haul of small GPO posters (for the last outbreak, see here).

As last time, they come in lots of ten with only one of each photographed, which isn’t really an enormous lot of use if you are thinking of bidding on them.

Browning, 1950, est. £150-250

Farnhill, 1950, est. £150-250

Armengol, 1951, est. £150-250

This set are definitely not as stellar as the last selection. Even though there is an Eckersley amongst them, it’s not one of his greats.

Tom Eckersley, 1952, est. £150-250

Other than that, however, it is a miscellany. There are three of Henrion’s posters for Punch – I’ve chosen this one because it is the least frequently seen of them.

FHK Henrion, est. £150-250

They are an interesting case, though, these posters as they appear quite regularly on the market, which leads me to suspect that they must have been sold or given away at some point. Perhaps a trawl through early 1950s Punch might reveal the answer.

Also available are two very nice London Transport posters by Betty Swanwick.

Betty Swanwick, est. £200-400

Betty Swanwick, 1949, est. £300-500

For once I agree with the estimates, as the second one, Woolwich Ferry, is by far the better of the two and would look wonderful on the wall, should any of you be tempted.

There is also further proof that P&O and the Orient Line commissioned a lot of very good design before the war, even if I can’t tell you any more about it than that.

Anonymous, est. £150-250

There’s also a chance once again to appreciate the hallucinogenic colour choices of Percy Drake Brookshaw.

Percy Drake Brookshaw, c.1950, est. £150-250.

Along with a tram poster.

Gregory Brown, 1934, set. £200-400

And that’s basically your lot.

One final thing to say, though, which is I hope you are appreciating this blog post as it is the most expensive one I have ever written. Half way through, my computer keeled over once again and this time it looks terminal (or at least rather too expensive to repair). So I have been to the Big Town and come back with a new laptop, all in time to get this piece out before the auction begins tomorrow. It’s not every blog that gives service like that, you know.

Your goodwill eases our daily task

auctions

Right, I have got behind again (apologies) and so the next few posts are going to be mostly me catching up with the auctions. And there seem to be quite a lot to get through, too. Although I do also have some thoughts on 1930s railway posters which need an airing one of these days as well.

First up, because the auction is next weekend, is London Transport Auctions. On the plus side, they do at least, unlike most railwayman auctions, include a guide price. On the downside, the pictures in their catalogue are minute. Like this one, for example.

That, to save your eyesight, is a road and rail timetable for St Albans in 1937. I suspect that the cover design may be quite nice, but I can’t really tell.

Fortunately The Saleroom have come to our rescue, so we can actually have a look at some of the posters that are on sale. Which is a relief, because there are some nice ones in there. Let’s start with the classics (for which you can read really quite valuable posters) represented here by Anna Zinkeiesen.

Anna Zinkeiesen, 1934, est. £150-200

There’s also a design of hers for the Aldershot Tattoo, but it’s not as mice as the one above. Or this one below, come to that. which is by John Stewart Anderson.

John Stewart Anderson, 1939, est. £150-200

He did some work for Shell in the 1930s as well, in the same kind of airbrush style, but that is pretty much all I can tell you. And I don’t know anything about Charles Mozley, either, except that he designs in a style very reminiscent of Barnett Freedman crossed with a Punch cartoon.

Charles Mozley, 1939, est. £100-150

Although, when I google, it turns out that I probably should have heard of him.

Elsewhere in the classics department, there are a couple of World War Two posters.

Eric Kennington, 1944, est. £75-100

James Fitton, 1943, est. £100-150.

A James Fitton is always a joy to see, at least for me.

As is this Eckersley-Lombers, which I would say was rare, on the basis that I’ve never seen it turn up at auction before. Except that there are two of them in this very sale, each slightly different. Go figure.

Spot the difference. Both are double royal, both from 1936 and both on offer for £100-125 which, if you ask me, would be a bit of a steal. (Actually I think that quite a few of these prices are at the low end of what even a notorious cheapskate like me would be prepared to pay, so it will be interesting to see what things actually go for).

Elsewhere, there are also some lovely post-war poster which are, inevitably, a bit more up my own personal street. Cream of the crop is probably this very colourful Kensington Palace Coronation Special.

Sheila Robinson, 1953, est. £75-100

I could quite happily decorate a room in those colours. And with that poster too.

There are also a few nice later examples too, like these two by Victoria Davidson and Anthony Rossiter.

Victoria Davison, 1959, est. £75-100

Anthony Rossiter, 1964, est. £30-50

But you should probably go and have a look at the catalogue, if only because it is full of many and diverse delights apart from posters. If I spend more than a few minutes in there, I find myself wondering about bus conductors’s satchels and cap badges, about poster frames and brochures. Or why not buy a bus stop?

Yours for £100-125 if you want it. But I think I’d better end there, before I get entirely carried away. On a bus, of course.

Undated

auctions

On 16th July, Bloomsbury are holding their Poster Sale, in what I’m hoping will be the last auction for a while – I say this mainly because I want to write about other things for a chance.

I’m not so jaded that I am going to do this, but I am aware that I could almost substitute what I wrote about Onslows in here with different illustrations, because the two sales are following a very similar pattern.

In particular, they both have a big selection of GPO posters, although in the case of Bloomsbury, they sell them in lots of ten so the estimates, although nominally higher than Onslows are actually cheaper on a per poster basis. Which is confusing, in a trying to work out which brand of cornflakes in the supermarket is actually best value kind of way. Perhaps we should price posters per square centimetre for the sake of clarity. Anyway, these are what’s on offer, but bear in mind that each one comes with nine unphotographed others.

PIeter Huveneers, 1954, est. £150-250

Browning, 1955, est. £150-250

Gapp, 1951, est. £150-250

This also connects up with the Onlows sale in that these – rather than the set on offer at Onslows – are the ones rescued from a skip when the Post Office were having a clear out. So it’s an interesting coincidence that two sets have come on the market at the same time. There is one more lot on offer at Bloomsbury as well, fronted by this Tom Eckersley classic.

Tom Eckersley, 1955, est. £150-250

In another resemblance to Onslows, Bloomsbury also have a few fantastic Games posters tucked away at the end. I won’t go through them all, but mostly they are good but not news to me because they have been much reproduced, like this London Transport example.

Abram Games, 1950, est. £150-250

This one, however is both new to me and utterly wonderful.

Abram Games, 1952, est. £200-400

It’s apparently a British Railways poster – and given that it’s in the collection of the NRM I see no reason to doubt this – but it doesn’t say BR on it anyway. Which is unusual, but I imagine just the kind of thing Abram Games got away with and no one else was allowed to.

Onslows was full of Shell posters; Bloomsbury have but two. They are, however, this kind and so both preferable and more valuable.

Roland Suddaby, 1937, est. £300-500

After that, however, I start to run out. There are foreign posters (lots), film posters (just as many) and car posters (quite a few) but little to tickle my fancy. The best thing I could find is this Lander, and it’s not one of his best.

R M Lander, 1960, est. £200-400

The only other thing that is of interest, although strictly speaking it’s more of a print, is this item by James Fitton.

James Fitton, 1942, est. £300-500

Now I’ve come across one of these before. It’s a print by CEMA, wartime fore-runner to the Arts Council and the prints look to be precursors of the School Prints and Lyons editions. But I can’t find anything about them anywhere – do you lot know where they might be documented? Or even a decent history of CEMA itself would do. Anyway, there are actually a whole set available in the lot, so the estimate looks like somewhat of a bargain, if you like that kind of thing.

Even though it’s a bit short on my personal favourite kinds of posters, I still think the sale is good though, because I think Bloomsbury have answered the question that I asked a week or two ago, which was where are we to buy and sell mid range posters now that Christies have turned us away at the door? Here, it seems.

F M. 1960, est £200-400

That said, I do still have a couple of reservations. One is very simply that they are not trying very hard with their catalogue. For several of the posters I’ve illustrated up there, no dates have been given in the catalogue; in each case it’s been the matter of moments with Google for me to find out. And given that two of those posters are for the GPO and London Transport, who in each case have comprehensive online catalogues, with dates, it’s pretty poor.

The other is the estimates. They’re both wide and well, a bit vague. Surely that fantastic Games of Blackpool has to be worth more than the average Lander? So then I look at the catalogue and wonder how much they really know about their lots. Still, I don’t suppose it matters too much. This is, after all, an auction, and the market can judge for itself what a poster is worth. But I do still feel very slightly cheated.

Finally, in a shameless piece of self-advertisement, we are selling some posters on eBay. However, they are mostly world war two, mostly a bit shabby (OK, some a lot shabby) and surplus to requirements, so keep your expectations low and you won’t be disappointed.