Despite the noticeable absence of some regular American buyers and a certain selectivity among buyers generally, all the best pieces in the sale got away either within or above estimate.
A single-owner private collection of 20 Guinness posters brought a total of £5000. Guinness ephemera is a strong collecting area as are Second World War posters and the best seller of this collection combined both fields – a wartime poster showing RAF officers watching the trademark Guinness toucans modelled as bombers. The poster sold at £700.
Railway posters were also popular and a 1927 example designed by A.M. Cassandre advertising the Nord Express was a particular favourite. Mr Bogue believed the privately sourced poster could have made up to £10,000 if it had been in perfect condition, but it was slightly faded and this put the trade off. Nevertheless, it sold to a private buyer who was thrilled with his purchase at £4000.
The late husband of the vendor of a 1946 poster designed by Helen McKie for Southern Railway Waterloo Station had worked for the railways and looked after the poster well over the years, and condition was a factor in it selling here towards the higher estimate when a private UK collector bid £2000.
Among the printed ephemera in the sale, an archive relating to the Cornish engineer Richard Trevithick (1771-1833) sold at a mid-estimate £1600 to the National Railway Museum in York.
Onslows, Carisbrooke Hall, London
November 1
Buyer’s premium: 15 per cent
up to £1500/10 per cent thereafter
Trains and planes and Guinness
Patrick Bogue has been holding successful poster sales at specialist collectables auctioneers Onslows since 1984 and his latest was a reminder that Christie’s South Kensington do not have a monopoly on this active market.
