Blog

School Prints Ltd. An experiment in bringing art to the masses, 1945-47
During the drab post war years of austerity and gloom, one inspirational project sought to brighten the walls of British classrooms with vibrant scenes of everyday life created by some of the country’s foremost artists including L.S Lowry, Paul Nash, Julian Trevelyan and Barbra Jones. Although short-lived, the scheme resulted in 24 original prints, released in 1946 and 1947, that are still remembered today by school children from the 40s and 50s.
Machine Age Modernism. A collection of original Shell-Mex posters designed by Edward McKnight Kauffer, 1929-1939
Art Exhibition Posters. A Buyers Guide
Art Exhibition Posters. A Buyers Guide Regular readers of my blog will know by now how much I love vintage posters, especially British travel and propaganda designs. But there’s one type of poster that I’ve become more and more interested in over the last couple of years: original art exhibition...
Read articleCome to Britain ! Travel Association Posters, 1929-1950
Speed to the West: Archive of railway publicity discovered in a London loft
If, like me, you dream of finding a hoard of railway posters languishing forgotten in a disused attic, the following blog post may prove too much to bear. For that is exactly what happened earlier this year when a lady contacted me out of the blue to say that she...
Read articleAlice boots and Suffragette shoes. T. Elliott and Sons footwear fashion posters of the 1960s
A fashion-conscious visitor to the Swinging London of the late 1960s could hardly have missed the achingly cool ad campaigns for leading women’s shoe retailer T. Elliot & Sons. From giant billboards to ‘car cards’ in Tube trains, trendy graphics and innovative product photography helped establish the brand as the...
Read articleRoyal Academy Summer exhibition posters
Eckersley-Lombers. Poster partnership, 1934-1946
Salford to London Tom Eckersley (top) and Eric Lombers In 1934 two aspiring Lancashire designers arrived in London at the start of a creative partnership that was to help transform commercial art in Britain. Tom Eckersley (1914-1997) and George Eric Lombers (1914-1978) had studied together at Salford Art School...
Read articleBruce Roberts (1918-1974), Artist-designer
In the years after the Second World War commercial art in Britain was booming. A new generation of designers and illustrators brought a cheery, optimistic, aesthetic to advertising that saw its greatest expression in the posters and publicity of progressive commissioners, such as the General Post Office (GPO), London Transport...
Read article