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Advertising Advertising on London Underground

Written on February 13, 2013 10:57 am by Peter Berthoud in Advertising, Exhibitions, Prints, Transport

The long and splendid history of advertising on London Underground is about to be celebrated in a new exhibition at London Transport Museum.

Poster Art 150 – London Underground’s Greatest Designs opens on 15th Feb and will run until October. The exhibition will feature 150 of the greatest Underground posters ever produced.

This poster has made the cut, it is one of my all-time favourites but I have never managed to identify all the characters depicted.

Underground to Wood Lane, F.C. Herrick, for Underground Electric Railways Co. of London Ltd, 1920

Produced in 1920 for the International Advertising Exhibition at the White City, London, the poster features a host of brand characters. Some, such as the Michelin Man and Johnny Walker are still with us today, others are harder to identify. For example, is the small dog in the foreground Nipper of HMV fame, or is it the dog owned by Rowntree’s Cocoa-Nibs? I assume the young woman with the camera is the Kodak Girl, but who is that pixelated female figure in the distance?

Click on the image for a full-size zoomable version.

The V&A catalogue entry for this poster offers a few clues to help identify some of the characters. This entry also includes a reference to a fascinating event that I hadn’t heard of before. Apparently the International Advertising Exhibition featured a: “‘Pageant of Publicity’, a procession through London of such brand characters as Bubbles, the Kodak Girl, the Michelin Man, the Rowntree’s Cocoa-Nibs children and many others, some of whom are depicted here.”

I haven’t managed to track down a single image of this pageant or discover its route, can anyone help?

The artist of this poster, Frederick Charles Herrick (1887-1970), also produced a host of other classic posters for the Underground Group and London Transport. You can buy a reproduction of this poster and many others from the London Transport Museum Shop.

The author of this blog is a fully qualified and insured City of Westminster Tour Guide who runs unique walking tours and private tours in London.

All Public Walking Tours are bookable here via Eventbrite.

I also offer Private Tours, Private Events and provide Consultancy Services for media and education professionals in London. You can read Reviews of Walks and see some recent projects here. Please feel free to contact me about any of these services.

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Stunning Panorama of London in 1774

Written on October 3, 2012 8:39 am by Peter Berthoud in Architecture, History, Maps, Prints

For the first time ever on the net, here are high quality images of Samuel & Nathaniel Buck’s complete sequence of five views of London as published in 1774.

Together the originals form a panorama of mid 18th Century London over 4 metres long. They show, in tremendous detail, the whole of the north bank of the Thames, between Westminster and the Tower.

Click on the small images below for full-sized zoom-able versions.

Buck’s Panorama of London, Plate 1, New Westminster Bridge to Treasury Building.

Buck’s Panorama of London, Plate 2, Whitehall to Somerset House.

Buck’s Panorama of London, Plate 3, Somerset House to Bridewell.

Buck’s Panorama of London, Plate 4, Fleet Ditch to St. Michael’s Church – Bassingshaw.

Buck’s Panorama of London, Plate 5, Old Street Church to The Tower of London.

These incredibly detailed views were produced by Samuel Buck and his brother Nathaniel.

The Buck’s five London views were originally issued on 11 September 1749. The copper plates were later acquired by the Fleet Street printmaker Robert Sayer and reissued (partly updated) in 1774. This rare set of 1774 prints are currently for sale priced at £12,000.

You might like to compare this panorama with the earlier Visscher Panorama of 1616 . Very many thanks are due to Peter Harrington Rare Books for permitting and enabling me to share both these historic, but photographically unwieldy, panoramas here.

You can read more about the Buck’s Panorama at Peter Harrington Rare Books, or why not drop by the Fulham Road and see the views for yourself at what must be the friendliest Antiquarian bookshop in London.

Special thanks to individual staff at Peter Harrington: to Ruth as ever for her brilliant photography and once again to Emilie for first showing me the amazing originals.

The author of this blog is a fully qualified and insured City of Westminster Tour Guide who runs unique walking tours and private tours in London.

All Public Walking Tours are bookable here via Eventbrite.

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The Visscher Panorama of London in 1616

Written on September 13, 2012 11:44 am by Peter Berthoud in History, Maps, Prints

Claes Visscher’s Panorama of London in 1616 is one of the finest views we have of London before the Great Fire. It is over two metres long, so perhaps unsurprisingly, there are no complete, high quality, images of it on the net.

Thanks to Peter Harrington Rare Books I am very happy to be able to share this stunning image, complete and in colour for the first time.

Click on the small image below for a full size version or scroll down to see the panorama in sections.

The Visscher Panorama of London, 1616.
Image courtesy of Peter Harrington. All rights reserved.

This version of the panorama is a superb, rare, Victorian facsimile of the original. A beautifully hand coloured view of London from the south. You can see an original uncoloured high quality version here but it is incomplete.

This left hand section showing Westminster in the West is omitted from many on-line images or it is reproduced in very low quality.

The Visscher Panorama of London, 1616. (Left)

Continuing east along the river, the next section contains a wonderful view of St Paul’s Cathedral, after losing its spire in the 1561 lightening strike but before the Great Fire of 1666.

The Visscher Panorama of London, 1616. (Left Middle)

In the centre of the panorama the spires of City churches dominate.

The Visscher Panorama of London, 1616. (Middle)

London Bridge, then the only bridge, can be seen complete with severed heads on spikes. St Mary Overie, in the foreground, was later to become Southwark Cathedral.

The Visscher Panorama of London, 1616. (Right Middle)

In the final section we can see The Tower of London and St Katherine’s Docks.

The Visscher Panorama of London, 1616. (Right)

The panorama still excites debate in certain circles. Some of the architectural detail, such as the shape of Shakespeare’s Globe, is often questioned. Others will point out that several churches and other buildings are omitted entirely. These inaccuracies could be due to the fact that Visscher lived and worked in Amsterdam and probably never visited London.

However, I think that that taken as as a whole this view is still a magnificent early representation of London and will leave it to others to point out any faults in the comments section below.

You can see the Visscher Panorama for yourself at Peter Harrington Rare Books and, if your pockets are deep enough, you can take it home with you for £4,500 (framed).

Peter Harrington
100 Fulham Road
Chelsea, London, SW3 6HS

The Shop is Open:
Mon-Sat, 10am-6pm

Very many thanks to staff at Peter Harrington for enabling me to share this image here, especially to Ruth for her brilliant photography and to Emilie for first showing me the original.

The author of this blog is a fully qualified and insured City of Westminster Tour Guide who runs unique walking tours and private tours in London.

All Public Walking Tours are bookable here via Eventbrite.

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