My Top Ten Posters from the TCP archives

2016 - 2026

Twentieth Century Posters was launched ten years ago this month, in January 2016. Since then, we’ve sold literally thousands of original posters to customers all over the world. Choosing my favourite ‘top ten’ from this back catalogue has proved much more challenging than first thought…….

The following selection are not necessarily the rarest or most valuable posters we’ve sold, although those considerations inevitably had an influence, but rather they are the ones that I liked the most. They’re also all essentially British posters, which reflects my area of interest.

So, join me on a journey of seller’s regret as I recall the best posters we’ve sold in a decade of poster dealing.

Red Riding Hood, 1898

John Hassall (1868 - 1948)

It seems appropriate to kick off with a design by the first ‘Poster King’, John Hassall, best known today for his iconic Skegness is SO Bracing (Great Northern Railway, 1908). This poster was published ten years earlier for a West End production of Red Riding Hood and was one of the very first posters we sold. It’s a lovely design, executed in the bold style that Hassall became famous for, yet without the cumbersome text which marred so many contemporary posters. I especially like the trippy poppies of the foreground and the sinister wolf watching from a distance.

As an aside, this poster was featured in the December 1898 issue of The Poster magazine – a useful source for dating designs from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

LNWR Most Comfortable Route. Euston – Liverpool, c. 1906-08

London & North Western Railway

I bought this railway poster from eBay in the days when you could still find incredible rarities online.  It dates from the earliest days of British pictorial travel posters and is almost certainly a unique survivor.  The unsigned design, featuring a London to Liverpool Express passenger train, is possibly by Norman Wilkinson who pioneered this type of single image poster for the LNWR from 1905.

Most railway posters of this era were a confusing jumble of illustrated ‘vignettes’ showing places of interest, accompanied by dense text, so this example must have stood out on the hoardings. Now in the collection of a major UK museum (although I wish I’d kept it!).

 

Theatre-land, 1915

Leslie Macdonald Gill (1884-1947)

Here's the first of a couple of really ‘big-hitters’ to be included in my top ten: Theatre-land, designed by Leslie MacDonald ('Max') Gill and published by London Underground in 1915.

Now, I could focus on how rare this outstanding decorative poster map is, or where it fits into the story of Underground publicity pioneered by Frank Pick from 1908. But what delights me about Theatre-land is the quality of the illustration. And this copy also has an interesting story about how it came into my hands.

It is simply a breath taking poster. London’s West End (‘theatre land’) is depicted painted on a stage curtain, with the surrounding proscenium arch decorated with London Underground roundels each naming a West End theatre with its nearest station. The curtain/map has collapsed causing chaos for the actors and musicians, conducted (we are told) by the printer Gerald Meynell. The map is full of in-jokes like this, which were typical of Gill’s style. In the top right, for example, Gill can be seen dancing with his new bride, Muriel Bennett. More sinisterly, a German Zeppelin air ship hovers over New Square, Lincoln’s Inn – a reference to the notorious Theatreland Raid of 13 Oct 1915, which killed several theatregoers. This late addition (the poster came out shortly afterwards) includes a depiction of Gill’s brother, the artist Eric Gill, warming his hands on a fire caused by “a real bomb”, while the commander of the Zeppelin leans out of the gondolier exclaiming “What about the censor?”

I acquired this poster (a duplicate) direct from the estate of MacDonald Gill, which resulted in a charming daytrip to Gill’s former home deep in the West Sussex countryside. There I was shown many other treasures from the Gill archive, which is lovingly maintained and available to researchers. While so many commercial art archives have been dispersed, it’s a genuine pleasure to know that this one has survived intact.

The Friday Club, Mansard Gallery, 1921

Paul Nash (1889-1946)

How I wish I still had this poster! It’s for an exhibition of recent work by the Friday Club, an avantgarde group of artists which included Mark Gertler, David Bomberg, Christopher Nevinson, Edward Wadsworth, Bernard Meninsky and brothers John and Paul Nash. The poster was designed by Paul Nash and printed by Vincent Brooks, Day & Son Ltd in an edition of just a few hundred - almost none of which survive today.

The Mansard Gallery was located on the top floor of the stylish Heals department store, Tottenham Court Road. Over the years, the gallery hosted many influential exhibitions, and the associated posters are eagerly collected today.

 

International Aero Exhibition, 1929

Edward McKnight Kauffer (1899-1954)

It would be impossible for me to have a top ten of sold posters that didn’t include Edward McKnight Kauffer – surely the greatest poster designer working in Britain during the twentieth century. So much has been written about Kauffer and his undoubted influence, that I feel safe to move onto the poster without further biographical information. And what a poster this is.

International Aero Exhibition was the first poster designed by Kauffer for the Shell Oil company. It was also one of the first commissioned by Jack Beddington, the newly appointed head of publicity who sought to bring a more modern aesthetic to Shell advertising. Kauffer certainly delivered with this contemporary, dynamic, design, which promotes Shell’s participation in the 1929 International Aero Exhibition at Kensington Olympia.

It is an astonishingly rare survivor and probably the best example that Kauffer produced for Shell in over a decade of active collaboration.

The posters were an unusual size (45 x 30 inches), designed for display on the side of Shell delivery lorries. They must have looked remarkably modern (and quite possibly mysterious) in the context of contemporary industrial sites and petrol stations, or as seen by a farmer unloading an oil drum on a remote homestead.

Unusually for old posters we know exactly how this one survived. It was part of a reference collection assembled by the leading post war graphic designer Abram Games and may have been given to him by Kauffer himself. Certainly, the two giants of British poster design knew each other prior to Kauffer’s return to the USA in 1940. The poster was sold on behalf of the Games Estate.

 

North Devon & North Cornwall by the Atlantic Coast Express, 1934

Bayer-Dowden

One of the joys of being a poster dealer is unearthing collections that are new to market. On two occasions I’ve bought posters discovered under linoleum flooring where they’d been used, I presume, for insulation. This vanishingly rare poster was one of them, found with about 30 others in the home of a former railwayman (full story here).

The poster, published by the Southern Railway in 1934, advertises the Atlantic Coast Express (‘ACE’) from London to North Devon and North Cornwall. It depicts a harbour scene in the West Country, possibly at Bideford. Considering it had been folded and walked on for decades, the poster remains remarkably vivid and colourful.

This may be the only copy of this poster to have ever come for sale. What a find!

 

My Goodness, My Guinness, 1935

John Gilroy (1898-1985)

We’ve sold lots of Guinness posters over the years, but this is my favourite. It is, of course, by the artist John Gilroy who created many of the company’s most memorable posters, often featuring zoo animals in comic poses. This image, of an exasperated zookeeper chasing a sealion who has stolen his pint of Guinness, was one of the first.

I acquired this example from the estate of a former printer who had started his career with the Dangerfield Printing Company in the 1930s. The poster was one of his first jobs and he’d evidently saved a copy to mark the event. All surviving posters have stories like this, explaining how essentially ephemeral material has come down to the present day.

Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution, Will Bring Us Victory, 1939

Ministry of Information

Surely one of the most famous posters published in Britain during the Second World War. Your Courage Your Cheerfulness Your Resolution was commissioned by the Ministry of Information as part of a series of three “Home Publicity” posters, including Keep Calm and Carry On and Freedom Is in Peril / Defend It With All Your Might. Each poster showed the slogan under a representation of a Tudor Crown and were intended to strengthen civilian morale. An estimated 800,000 copies of this poster in different sizes were printed in 1939, to be exhibited on commercial poster sites, railway stations, shop windows, anywhere, in fact, where people congregated. Very few have survived as the campaign was cancelled due to public hostility towards the implied sacrifice of ordinary people for the benefit of the elites (Your Courage will Bring Us Victory).

What I love about posters like this is the opportunity they offer to own an original and significant piece of British social history that connects us directly with the fears and aspirations of an earlier age.

 

Join the ATS, 1941

Abram Games (1914 – 1996)

This is the second ‘big hitter’ to be included in my top ten. Join the ATS was designed by the leading poster artist Abram Games to promote the women’s Auxiliary Territorial Service and caused a sensation at the time. For some, including the dour head of the ATS, it was deemed too glamorous and provocative, with the result that the government intervened to ban the poster shortly after its issue in 1941. Games created two subsequent posters for the organisation, and these too were not without controversy.

But it’s the ‘Glamour Girl’ version which has entered the pantheon of C20th poster lore, reproduced as an icon of the Second World War (even if it wasn’t seen much at the time).

This particular copy came from the Estate of Abram Games and is hand signed by the artist. It has been the privilege of my career to represent the Estate in the sale of original duplicates, but the sale of this incredibly rare and significant poster was surely the high point.

A magnificent poster with outstanding provenance and in great condition. What more could you ask for?

Solidarność, Polish Solidarity Campaign, 1981

Peter Kennard (b. 1949)

For my money, Peter Kennard is one of the most significant, and influential, political poster designers of the post war period. His impactful images have been used by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the Civil Rights Movement and Amnesty International. In 1981, he was asked to create a couple of posters for the Polish pro-democracy movement Solidarność (Solidarity) for distribution in Europe following the imposition of martial law by the Polish government. For this design, Kennard took the Solidarność logo created by Jerzy Janiszewski and cut through the lettering with a bayonet to represent the military suppression of the movement.

The image is created by photomontage. Kennard later stated that he photographed the bayonet on the rifle of a Guardsman outside Buckingham Palace!

The result is a very successful poster which powerfully communicates a direct message – surely the ultimate goal of all good commercial art and the defining quality of a great poster.

 

David Bownes

Director, Twentieth Century Posters

January 2026