Rare early London transport and other English travel posters set for October 2017 26 New York auction

CLASSIC posters from England's golden age of steam travel are set to sell for thousands of dollars when they come up for auction in New York, on 26 October 2017 2017. All the posters  being sold feature idealized London and country scenes, Henry VIII, steam trains and cruise liners, they include rare surviving work by the very best commercial artists of the time, including:- the man who set the whole trend going when commissioned to produce promotional material for the Underground Electric Railways Company of London (UERL), precursor to London Underground, in 1930. The posters include the 1 above, that advertises Southport and even has both the Lancashire Crest and the Southport Crest on it!   They are among the highlights of the Rare and Important Travel Posters sale at Swann Auction Galleries. These stunning scenes combining neoclassical elegance with the age of the Flapper celebrate 1 of the most fruitful partnerships of the great age of the travel poster. In 1930, Frank Pick, later the mastermind behind the development of the London Transport brand, was managing director of the UERL when he commissioned the award winning French artist and designer Jean Dupas to produce a series of posters for his network. Dupas, who had won the prix de Rome in 1910, had also conceived what was already acknowledged as 1 of the masterpieces of print advertising when he produced the catalogue for the fur company Max in 1927. And he went on to decorate the grand salon of the Normandie, the greatest French cruise liner of the golden age of steam travel, in 1935.  For the Underground project he put his considerable talents to work by turning familiar London landmarks into scenes of Elysian bliss, populated by svelte semi divine figures. These compositions were the precursors to the idealised, if rather less Olympian, series of images that were to dominate advertising for travel by road, rail and ship in the decades to come, whether under commission for the various regional railway companies, tourist boards, shipping lines or London Transport itself. Such vision and draughtsmanship from the earliest days of this movement, and on the orders of the great Frank Pick himself, are understandably a collector's dream. With titles like Where is this Bower Beside the Silver Thames and Thence to Hyde Park, Where Much Good Company, and Many Fine Ladies, they date to 1930 and are expected to sell for as much as $15,000 to $20,000 each. Other Dupas views celebrate Richmond, Camden Town, and bus and coach travel, with each of these pitched at $4000 to 6000 apiece.  Plus some of the highlights include Forging Ahead, a c.1955 British Railways poster by the much sought after artist Terence Cuneo ($3000 to $4000) and a 1923 promotional poster for the Science Museum ($700 to $1000) by Edward McKnight Kauffer, who went on to become the doyen of London Transport poster design.

Leading heritage body will fight for public access to landmark building

MERSEYSIDE Civic Society (MCS) is asking political leaders to speak out about the prospect of retaining public access to the magnificent 1920s' marble panelled Holt's Arcade in Liverpool City Centre by asking for action from Historic England. MCS is asking Liverpool Riverside MP Louise Ellman and the new Merseyside Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram to write to Historic England, the Government body protecting built heritage, to help save a Liverpool landmark. Holt's Arcade is threatened with closure on security grounds, following the HMRC signing a 25 year lease to move 3,500 staff members from Bootle, North Liverpool, and elsewhere, into India Buildings' upper floors.

The HMRC claim that the free movement of public access through Holt's Arcade, which bisects India Buildings, will compromise the security of its work. Holt's Arcade, clad in Travertine marble, is the centrepiece of Liverpool's landmark India Buildings, acclaimed as 1 of Britain's greatest interwar buildings by renowned architectural historians. It was designed in US Neo Classical 'City block style' by Herbert Rowse and Arnold Thornely, in 1923 and completed in 1930, for Alfred Holt and Co, which owned the legendary Blue Funnel Line, trading to the Far East and Australasia.

Holt's Arcade was devised when the City Council insisted that if this giant building was to straddle 2 blocks then the 18th Century passageway, Chorley Street, must remain a public thoroughfare. Even during WWII, Holt's Arcade remained open, in spite of being adjacent to the crucial Western Approaches Combined Operations Command Centre directing the Battle of the Atlantic. This is why the MCS believes public access to Holt's Arcade, a nationally unique public thoroughfare of superlative design and execution, needs national protection and should not be closed due to security concerns that could be dealt with by instigation of basic security staffing and technology.

Jean Grant, MCS chair, said:- "Our MP's, politicians, and the authorities at the highest national level safeguarding our historic architecture, must be alerted to the serious threat of banishing the public from Holt's Arcade by the HMRC. There is simply nowhere like it in the UK and it is one of the premier components of why Liverpool received UNESCO World Heritage Site status as the prime example of a mercantile seaport City. This alone is good reason for Historic England to ensure the public is allowed continued access to this architectural interior Tour-de-Force. After all, the HMRC will occupy the upper levels of India Buildings, while Holt's Arcade is on the ground floor. Also as high end tourism plays an increasingly important role in Liverpool's economic revival, the last thing that the City should be doing is deliberately putting 1 of its incredible architectural gems out of bounds to visitors."

MCS is supporting the online petition set up by photographer Dave Woods also calling for retaining public access to Holt's Arcade.

Joseph Sharples, Pevsner Liverpool Architectural Guide author, wrote:- "India Buildings, in scale, combination of functions and architectural treatment, emulates the most ambitious early 20th American commercial buildings. Arched entrances to (Holt's Arcade) in Water and Brunswick Streets open into spacious elevator halls, lined with Travertine marble, linked by a noble tunnel vaulted arcade of shops through the centre."

Prof. Charles Reilly, former Head of Liverpool University School of Architecture, said:- "The building would not disgrace (New York's) 5th Avenue; indeed it would sit very happily there."

Click on here for further information on the campaign to save Holt's Arcade. Also please do let us know your views on this topic via emailing us to:- News24@SothportReporter.Com.

Did you know? If you don't already know, the Merseyside Civic Society has been helping to preserve Liverpool's History and promoting design quality for the future since 1938.