Auctions | October 18, 2023

Keep Calm and Carry On Leads Potter & Potter Vintage Poster Sale

Potter & Potter

Keep Calm and Carry On

Potter & Potter Auctions’ Vintage Posters Sale on November 10 will feature important vintage to antique posters in categories including travel and destinations, advertising, entertainment, propaganda, and modern design.

The top lot in this sale is #576, Keep Calm and Carry On. This 29-½ x 19-¾” linen backed example from 1939 carries a presale estimate of $8,000-12,000. This poster was designed by Britain’s propaganda department the Ministry of Information in 1939. It was one of three posters produced in similar styles, each featuring the crown at the top and white text against bold colored backgrounds. While the other two posters, Freedom is in Peril and Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution/Will Bring Us Victory, were widely posted, Keep Calm was rarely displayed despite a print run of several million copies. Most copies were pulped during a wartime paper shortage, and the poster was little known until two copies were discovered in a bookshop in 2000.  

David Stone Martin's Above and Beyond the Call of Duty / Dorie Miller
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Potter & Potter

David Stone Martin's Above and Beyond the Call of Duty / Dorie Miller

Jacques Debut's Cycles Rudge
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Potter & Potter

Jacques Debut's Cycles Rudge

Joseph Feher's Hawaii / United Air Lines
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Potter & Potter

Joseph Feher's Hawaii / United Air Lines

Willy Hanke's Deutsche Lufthansa / Presto Alla Meta
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Potter & Potter

Willy Hanke's Deutsche Lufthansa / Presto Alla Meta

Other highlights include:

* Lot #570, David Stone Martin's Above and Beyond the Call of Duty / Dorie Miller, estimated at $4,000-6,000. It measures 28 x 20" and was printed in 1943 in Washington, D.C. by the U.S. Government Printing Office. This handsome, linen backed WWII-era poster honors Dorie Miller, a U.S. Navy second-class cook who died in action. He is depicted wearing his Navy Cross medal at Pearl Harbor, dated May 27, 1942.

* Lot #79, Willy Hanke's Deutsche Lufthansa / Presto Alla Meta, is estimated at $2,500-3,500. This color lithograph poster is dated 1939 and was printed in Germany. It measures 23-7/8 x 16-¼” and advertises Lufthansa airlines. It features a female archer behind a four-propeller plane which is marked on the tail with the swastika. This is the Italian version; it was also printed in English, Danish, and German.

* Lot #415, Jacques Debut's Cycles Rudge, is estimated at $2,500-3,500. It was published in Paris in 1897 by Caby & Chardin. This 63 x 45-¼” color stone lithograph promotes bicycles produced by Rudge Whitworth, a British firm that made bicycles, motorcycles, and tires through 1946. It features a man who has unexpectedly stumbled upon an Art Nouveau goddess holding a bicycle in a forest clearing.

* Lot #151, Joseph Feher's (1908-1987) Hawaii / United Air Lines, is estimated at $2,000-3,000. This c. 1950s era, linen backed example measures 39 x 23-¾”.  It features a beautiful hula dancer standing larger than life on one of the Hawaiian islands, surrounded by tropical fish and plants, Hawaiian men and women on surfboards and outriggers, and a United Boeing Stratocruiser flying overhead.