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.

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...