42 11th February 2012 international events
Nostalgia coasts to success
■ Golden Age of pre-War travel attracts the best bidding
Anne Crane reports
£1 = €1.1
AS detailed in this week’s London Selection, Christie’s South Kensington may have been the only saleroom with a dedicated ski poster auction last month, but across the Channel a twin- themed poster sale was one of the Paris season’s earlier openers.
January 25 saw Tajan (23/20/12%
buyer’s premium) offering a sale of some 240-odd lots at Drouot, all from one collection and majoring on two different areas. One was the promotion of travel and tourism by rail, sea and air which made up the lion’s share. A popular collecting area, it offered the opportunity to mix sporting and leisure scenes from the French Alps to the coast as well as more exotic locations such as North Africa, Vietnam and Ceylon. There was also a smaller section of around 50 lots given over to the Second
Right: the vintage seaside attractions of Saint-Cast in Brittany on a French State Railway poster, sold for €3300 (£3000) at Tajan.
World War, which featured a selection of French and British posters relating to the Free French and the Allied war effort and war information. In the event, the sale saw a take-up
of around two-thirds by volume to net a premium-inclusive figure of just a shade under €163,000 (£148,180). It was the travel material that yielded
the highest prices led, as expected, by Cassandre’s famous 1935 design for the liner Normandie, which graced the catalogue cover and fetched €11,000 (£10,000). A rare variant in mint condition, it measured 3ft 3in x 2ft (1m x 62cm), like all the posters discussed here unless otherwise indicated. As with British posters, early inter-
war evocations of holidaymakers at the seaside are always popular subjects and France offers plenty of coastal choice
from the Côte d’Azur in the South to the Côte d’Opale in the North. Pierre Commarmond’s Deco design
for the French State Railways showing holidaymakers at Villers sur Mer and in good condition, proved sought after at €2000 (£1820), as did another, mint railway poster by Peryber for Saint-Cast in Brittany, shown here. Featuring a sportif couple lifting their canoe into the sea, it took €3300 (£3000). The collection also featured a 30-
lot section devoted to posters using photographic images. These were a mix of black and white and later colour views dating from the 1930s to the ‘50s depicting Paris and the French regions. Most sold within expectations for prices in the low to mid hundreds but the TFN skier shown here quadrupled its estimate to take €950 (£865).
Above: the French equivalent of a ‘Careless Talk Costs Lives’ poster from the Second World War section of Tajan’s single- owner poster sale. This 20 x 15in (50 x 39cm) poster sold with another two for €600 (£545).
Top: photographic skier poster in black and white, sold for €950 (£865) at Tajan.
What Daisy did in the days before she set
DAISY Makeig-Jones’ main claim to collecting fame these days is the fantasy Fairyland lustre designs that she produced for Wedgwood in the inter- War years which are keenly collected on both sides of the Atlantic for large sums. Skinner’s (18.5/10% buyer’s
Above:Wedgwood Queen’s Ware Noah’s Ark design child’s service – $3500 (£2365) at Skinner.
premium) European furnishings sales in January are usually heavy on ceramics in general and Wedgwood in particular, and Fairyland lustre has provided some of their top ceramic results. However, January 14’s sale had no Fairyland
to add lustre to the prices, but it did feature another, slightly earlier, example of Daisy’s design work for Wedgwood – a toy or nursery ware service with polychrome decorated transfers in the Noah’s Ark design. This dated from c.1915, when Makeig-Jones was busy producing various ranges of nursery china before she embarked on the Fairyland line. Although it doesn’t share the same status, it is rare enough to be very collectable.
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