A tonic for business

Commercial Art was an advertising-centric magazine produced by The Studio Ltd, 44 Leicester Square, London. Both names pop up whenever you research graphic things from the 1920s – 1940s. Now, if I still had access to the lovely online databases and libraries that I had when at college I’d be able to do a bit of research. As it is, I pretty much rely on the internet for research these days and it lets me down in this instance.

This is a wee paper flyer for Commercial Art magazine, probably from the later 1920s. A nice bit of copy tells us: ‘ “Commercial Art” THE Journal of Illustrated Advertising is a tonic for business, the proved friend of the advertiser and an essential guide to the publicity of to-day and to-morrow.’

And of course, being me, I love the line drawing below. There is more copy on the back.

The British Library catalogue tells me Commercial Art ran from 1922 – 1931 and then became Commercial Art and Industry from 1932 – 1936. And then may have morphed in to Art and Industry from 1936 – 1958. These dates are held up by a couple of covers of Commercial Art uploaded to Flickr by the ever tasteful Mike Ashworth. And the few bits of Art & Industry stuff I have.

So this remains a nice bit of paper without much of a story. But it’s a rare little thing too; especially when you think of how quickly you throw away the flyers and inserts in a magazine today.

Nature Study

It is nearly the end of the summer term. Shelf Appeal has been out of education for quite a while now but still thinks of summer holidays, buying new protractor sets from WHSmiths and working through reading lists.

BBC Broadcasts to Schools booklets have featured here, here and here before. They were mostly really nicely designed things from the 1930s to 1960s that accompanied radio programmes. They fittingly earn a place on the shelf due to their often quite lovely illustrations.

Nature Study is a new title to me. Quite a few issues are around and about, mostly showing nature type things in nature type settings. But a few Nature Study covers also had children on them. As per this extremely dapper young ‘boy with crow’ on the cover of the summer 1952 issue. The image is credited to a Scottish Field magazine, a title still exists with that name but it might not be the same thing.

The shows listed for the 1952 summer term were quite exciting, I must say. Animals at Play, Look and Listen, Ants, Jays and Jackdaws, Swallows and Swifts, Monarch of the Glen (for Scottish Schools only), Crabs, Thunder and Lightning, Daddy-long-legs and Nature Quiz. As I don’t do insects I prefer the birds and the fluffier things. Each show has a page or two of photographs and a bit of an introductory text with some starter questions to get young minds working. The images throughout are lovely, printed in a limited, faded palette that just makes them even nicer.

As for our boy, he certainly is dressed appropriate to our cool summers. That sturdy tweed jacket would protect well against claws, too, if one had to consort with – and whistle to – crows.

One cute little pooch

Shelf Appeal is somewhat always about the real thing. The mass produced real thing perhaps. But searching out something touched itself with history is very often the ephemerist’s Achilles’ heel. Garnering much ‘it survived this long’ amazement.

But some things are very rare indeed. Or very expensive indeed. And anyway their beauty transcends the originality urge. The recent facsimile reprint of Ravilious’ High Street book is one such. And this Russian children’s book Baggage, from 1926, is another.

First reissued by the Museum of Modern Art in NY and now by our own Tate, it is available, as I type, in an art gallery bookshop near you. Now, Shelf Appeal is not so far removed from reality that I think £12.99 is an absolute bargain for a small hardback of some 12 pages. But this is a very nice thing indeed. Reproduced hardback, around the size it first appeared in and with a Russian publishers stamp on the inside cover, a translation and original version of the poem and a 2 page ‘history of’ at the back.

But it is the pictures that please most. A Google image search on the illustrator – Vladimir Lebedev – turns up a page of almost unimaginable illustration niceness (and the odd bare breast). His style is so up Shelf Appeal’s alley.

Russian children’s books of the 1920s and 1930s are often really lovely things. I have a few books about those books. The interesting propagandist political backdrop behind these books – forming young minds to be good comrades – imbues them with other readings if you want to go there. Yet it was undoubtedly their graphic greatness above all that made them much beloved of curators of the time. Quite a few museums and galleries have examples of these children’s books in their permanent collections. The style of the illustrators of the books continues to inspire a lot of contemporary illustrators too, especially Japanese ones. Although some of the inspiration is a little bit too literal, and borders on cheeky, in my opinion.

The poem by Samuil Marshak which makes up the text in this book is lovely too. Listing items of baggage stowed by a be-fured be-booted lady traveller. And the mistaken replacement of her lost ‘one cute little pooch’ with a different, much bigger, pooch. Simple pictures, simple words, yet all layered under with not so simple communist intent.

Kayser boys

The marketing of women’s stockings has taken interesting turns and twists (or runs and ladders) over the years. The sexual connotation angle is the most utilised. Women sat almost demurely but flashing a length of leg in silk and satin underwear in the 1920s. Burlesque-esque women posed and pouted in the 1940s and 1950s. Close-ups of legs in stockings ran from the 1960s and 70s right through to today, really. Perhaps only the gratuity of the reveal on body parts has increased.

But some stockings have had more unusual mascots holding them up. These two angelic characters were used to sell Kayser Bondor stockings as early as the 1940s. Sometimes they interacted with the lady – flitting and flying around ankles with a tape measure in magazine adverts. Sometimes they held their own as the small die-cut point of sale sign here shows.

The two characters are, I suppose, some sort of angelic bellboy or tailor or waiter. I can’t think of what else they might represent in those outfits. Kayser seems to be an American company, made and sold under license in England and other countries. So these two might have originated under an American pen. The distinctive deco Kayser logo is almost A. M. Cassandre’s 1929 Bifur font but not quite.

This card was a present from a friend who found it in Norfolk – along with a nice Patons & Baldwins sign, that which I was also given. I like to think these two cards were old stock from a small local lingerie and dress shop. This one might have sat on a worn oak counter letting the customers know fully-fashioned fripperies were back in stock at last.

Ms Jones

If Shelf Appeal were going to sit down for an illustrator’s tea party, as well as Mr Bawden and Mr Ravilious – I’d invite Ms Barbara Jones. She has appeared in these hallowed pages of code before and before that. And doubtless will again.

Today’s appearance was triggered by the small exhibition of her work currently on show at The Whitechapel Art Gallery. More specifically the 1951 Festival of Britain exhibition she curated there: Black Eyes and Lemonade. That gorgeous title apparently came from a line in a Thomas Moore poem and was chosen by Jones as it: ‘seems to express the vigour, sparkle and colour of popular art rather better than the words ‘popular art’.

A small room off the Whitechapel library has been given over to original plans for exhibition content, photos of the exhibition itself and some few perfectly formed exhibits that had been on show in 1951, many leant by Jones herself. Others by friends. The Whitechapel show is not nearly enough yet more than I’ve ever seen before on Jones. There are some of her book jackets on show too. Most of which I have already. Although I might deny I collect her work. Stupidly. Might deny – stupidly.

A super Airedale Terrier shaped fireplace is the largest survivor on show from Black Eyes and Lemonade. Closely followed by a fairground horse head. But more satisfying even are a pair of plump blue paper parrots joined by a piece of poignant old cotton thread. And some old plastic windmills of the child-running-on-the-beach variety.

Black Eyes and Lemonade had only previously been real to me through the catalogue that lists and lists lots of wonderful sounding exhibits. I looked for the parrots and windmills but think they must have come under more generic names like ‘Fairings and Swag’. But what is super nice about my catalogue are the neatly penned erudite notes at front and back from someone who must have visited the exhibition in 1951.

I got this catalogue years and years ago. But it is still one of my favourite (ever) graphic illustrations. I saw in the Whitechapel book shop that another of my favourite Jones things, her book Unsophisticated Arts, has just been reprinted in nearly all its glory. That I have a copy of in its original glory. But gosh would I like one of those small bits of ephemeral whatnottage that Jones collected herself and put on show back in 1951.

The small show of the show at the Whitechapel suggests the original exhibition was more wonderful than I had imagined. Jones was a peoples’ popular art folklorist of the first order. Nothing, it seems, was left off her shelves.