Halcyon 2017-3

092 093 Collecting Collecting With their vibrant colours, inspired designs and insights into an often-vanished world, classic travel posters are gaining in popularity among collectors Words: Eugene Costello London by Jet Clipper : a 1950s Pan Am poster (left); work by the graphic artist Roger Broders (below) Bright and T here’s something glorious about traditional travel posters – the colours, the lines of classic ships and planes, the overwhelming idea that the world is a big, beautiful place that can’t wait to hold you to its bountiful bosom. For all those reasons, over the past two or three decades, the genre has come increasingly to the attention of both collectors and dealers. Three of the world’s leading experts are Kirill Kalinin, a Russian who has adopted the UK as his home and has a showroom (as well as an online gallery) called AntikBar in London’s Kings Road, Chelsea; Patrick Bogue, of Onslow Auctions in Dorset, England, who held his first auction of travel posters in 1984; and the charismatic Nicholas ‘Nicho’ Lowry, the third-generation chairman of Swann Galleries in Lower Manhattan. What all three hold in common is a love of posters, being collectors as well as dealers. Kalinin says that his passion for the genre was sparked in NewYork in 1993: ‘I saw a poster by [Latvian constructivist artist] Gustav Klutsis for Soviet art at the Guggenheim.’ From this, Kalinin went on to specialise in the theme of vintage travel. Lowry’s interest similarly came about by chance: ‘Back in 1998 I was called out to an art museum in Mississippi to see a collection of posters that a librarian had brought back from Europe. I fell in love with these strong, visually exciting images and started collecting. I thought,“You know what? I’m in a position where I can make an auction of these posters.”’ Kalinin says that he is working at the moment on the sale of a very large collection for a man whose father was a travel agent from the early 1920s to the late 1940s. ‘This was the golden age of travel all over the world,’ he says, ‘a very strong period graphically. And it was a glamorous time; travelling was very expensive, especially by plane, but also by ship. So the posters had to appeal to a certain clientele, they had to look luxurious and inviting. They had to be very glamorous.’ Bogue takes up the story of how travel posters came into their own in the 1920s and 1930s, led in the UK by train companies and, especially, London Underground. ‘The man behind this was Frank Pick. Although not an artist himself, he was brought in to sort out the advertising department.They needed to find innovative artists familiar with the latest technology, and Pick was a genius at finding them. ‘Probably the best example was Edward McKnight Kauffer, an American who had come to London in 1912. Pick gave him a chance. He became London Underground’s most successful designer, working with the firm until the 1930s.The challenge was to get the message out quickly and with immediacy, that as well as using London Underground for commuting to work, one could use it to get out and visit the countryside, so you’d have these strong and forceful rural images, such as trees or rivers, or the ponds in Richmond Park, with strong colours and simple lines.The idea was that if you were standing on a platform or sitting on a train and you glanced at one of these posters, you got the message.’ beautiful