Twentieth Century Posters

What’s in the window today ?

Julian Trevelyan print
Original 1966 World Cup poster
Bridget Riley 2012 Olympics print
1954 BOAC airline poster for England

Loads more inside, of course

Visit our new exhibition, London Posters, at 40 Cross Street, Islington, N1 2BA

Map newsletter out this weekend. Dozens of original posters and rare travel maps for sale.
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Love original posters ? Love antique maps ? Then your head will explode when you see our latest collection of original poster maps later this month.
Newsletter subscribers get first dibs (join up via website or DM)

The @ltmuseum photographic collection really is a treasure. Thousands of photos showing everyday scenes connected with the Capital’s transport from C19th to present. This pic was taken in July 1923 for the annual District Railway station gardens competition. Waltham Green (now Fulham Broadway)

such a great poster

Our last newsletter of 2024 is out this weekend.
Highlights include: several original Bridget Riley posters from the 1970s, early Pentagram prints, rare Royal Academy posters and posters from the archive of designer Roger Huggett.

Poster version reissue of Building The First Locomotive, by W. Heath Robinson, 1974. This comical cartoon was originally featured in 'Railway Ribaldry. Being 96 Pages of Railway Humour', published by the Great Western Railway, 1935

Visit our gallery at 40 Cross Street, Islington, for unique Christmas gifts

Our Dec newsletter includes this Royal Academy Summer Exhibition poster painted by Anthony Green 1973.
Green's painting (of his wife Mary) was rejected by London Transport on the grounds it might attract graffiti. A revised version, with overprinted ball gown, was issued for use on the Underground

But for how long !

Poster designed by David Hockney for an exhibition of his set designs for The Rakes Progress, Ashmolean, 1981. One of several original Hockney posters available right now in out gallery at 40

London Transport travel poster, How much of the London known to Shakespeare can you see today?, by Gaynor Chapman, 1964. The poster was published to coincide with the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s birth, and to promote a new London Transport travel guide Shakespeare’s London

This Saturday, 23 November, Twentieth Century Posters will be listing a collection of 325 original theatre and opera posters, dating from the 1840s to the 1990s. The collection also includes programmes and other theatre related items.
Join our newsletter for early notification (via website)

You can also find me on X, which increasingly feels like riding a wild boar into hell (like the chap in this poster)
@c20thposters

I'm usually all about the twentieth century posters, but these playbills are considerably older

I found this scrap book, put together c. 1928-1934 by a theatrical set builder. Loads more ephemera inside, including contracts, playbills, posters, letters, newspaper cuttings etc

Modernism in Coventry, 1937

Global Poster Gallery | London Transport Museum Discover the power of the poster in our first permanent gallery dedicated to commercial poster art and design. Opens 20 October.

The London Transport Museum will open its new Global Poster Gallery on 20 October. I can't wait to see the collection in this new setting, and to see the famous sporting posters (like Laura Knight's design for Rugby at Twickenham) in context. www.ltmuseum.co.uk/visit/museum...

Poster of a Met helmet with a George VI helmet plate under the headline "£400 a year when you're 20!" and the byline "Get yourself THE job with a future - METROPOLITAN POLICE - APPLY NOW TO NEW SCOTLAND YARD OR YOUR LOCAL POLICE STATION". Under the helmet is a list of perks of the job shaped like a face.

The #abstraction in this poster's background is typical of 'Karo' (real name George Brzezinski), active in south London in the post-war period and also represented in the National Railway Museum and London Transport Museum. #Museum30

A colour poster advertising the opening of the eastern Piccadilly Line extension with a map of the new stations

Five new stations opened on the Piccadilly Line Extension from Finsbury Park on this day in 1932. They were among the first public modernist buildings in Britain, overseen by architect Charles Holden and London Transport CEO Frank Pick https://buff.ly/4d5a1o7

Pan dances alone in this early 20th century London Transport poster.

🎨Alfred France, ‘Hermes for Speed, Eros for Pleasure’ (1912).

Theatreland poster published by the London County Council (LCC) Tramways company in 1922, by Frederick William Charles Farleigh (also known as John Farleigh)
This rare poster will be for sale via our newsletter later this month. Join up via website

“Weymouth.” Vintage railway poster (cropped). Color lithograph, ca. 1931. Produced by the Southern Railway to promote train services to Weymouth, Dorset. Artwork: Henry George Gawthorn (British; 1879–1941).

Oh my word, I appear to have joined BlueSky ! You can still find me on Twitter (dodging the bullets) and Insta (trying to figure out how it works), but from now on I'll also be posting on here, usually about posters, occasionally about railways and other geeky stuff. Hurrah !