Brand New Monkey Year

Our simian jester braves the cold to glide with grace across the frozen lake to wish us all A Happy New Year. The year in question was 1900, the last year of the 19th. century. Oscar Wilde and John Ruskin died that year; Aaron Copland, Ayatollah Khomeini, Luis Bunuel and Jacques Prévert were born. The Exposition Universelle opened in Paris in the spring and the first Métro trains ran in July. In South Africa the Boer War was in full swing providing the indigenous population with the diverting spectacle of two groups of colonists slaughtering one another in pursuit of gold. The "Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists" was engaged in violent resistance to Western Imperialism in China and lay siege to Beijing for 55 days.

A Crockwell Christmas

Render yourself flat, lose an extraneous dimension, enter the world of minimal density and prepare yourself for a Crockwell Christmas where the picture plane is triumphantly flat. The smiles are cryogenic and the gestures come deep-frozen. The decorations and the mistletoe go up as spirits go down. Disaster is only inches away. Joy is obliterated by tragedy. At its own expense, the American insurance industry warns us all of the awful dangers that haunt the festive season. If the young girl trips over the rug, if Father drops the hammer on her brother’s skull while Mother is convulsed by an electric shock, they can all take comfort from the protection that insurance provides.


It is said that Douglass Crockwell enlisted friends and neighbours to model for his illustration assignments. It would be pleasing if the muscular sculptor, David Smith, a neighbour and occasional cinematic collaborator, could be identified in one of Crockwell’s images. Just to see him out of his customary proletarian clothing and dressed for suburban respectability would be an intriguing prospect. Finally, an undiluted pleasure. The divine Joan Crawford comes a-knocking at the door bearing Tobaccoland’s Finest Gift. Cough your way through Christmas.

Blue-Collar Painters

These men are employees of the R. C. Maxwell Company, America’s oldest existing outdoor advertising company. On this occasion we see them enjoying a well-deserved ground level break from their high altitude brushwork, to accompany a carnival float celebrating the achievements of the Maxwell Company. Everything about this float is sheer delight from the gigantic palette to the threatening tone of the slogan Here and Everywhere. A generous selection from the Maxwell photographic archive can be viewed at the Emergence of Advertising in America website hosted by Duke University and presents a fascinating insight into this essential component in the all-American landscape.

Back in July 2007 we paid tribute to America’s billboard painters, (Billboard Artists – All American Heroes) blue-collar heroes of capitalism. The Maxwell cameras were on hand to record their epic risk-taking in the service of publicity as they crawled over the massive steel skeletons steadying their brushes to create images of joyful consumption. Another treat is the final image exposing what lies behind every billboard. The Maxwell photographer’s priority was to produce the best possible record of the company’s output, everything else was secondary. This dictated the point of view and composition with the result that some very unusual figure compositions that would have pleased the eye of Degas can be seen. Ralph Steiner, one of America’s unsung photographic heroes, noted the intimidating power these images exerted in the visual environment and made a number of photographs carefully calibrated to confront their massive scale.

Showplace of the Nation

A postcard trip to one of New York City’s landmarks, Radio City. The very name reminds us of a time when radio was the foremost broadcast medium and it survives to the present as the venue for the annual Radio City Christmas Spectacular. It was constructed as part of the vast Rockefeller Center development and the doors opened in December 1932. An Art Deco aesthetic prevailed over the design and presentation and it quickly earned itself a much loved place in American popular culture. Millions of postcards exist of which this is just two, together with a card of a nearby hotel and a programme brochure from July 1934.

“I’ll be Home for Christmas”

The trusty Greyhound bus barges its way through the snow to reunite the post-war family for Christmas. The illustrator paints a picture of togetherness embedded in the deep shadows of Forties film noir. The copywriter rises to the occasion with “millions of men rolling home, framed in the windows of every bus”, evoking the photographs of Esther Bubley and Robert Frank. A new car may seem an extravagant Christmas gift but a new truck really stretches the bounds of credulity. The theme is that all the trappings of Christmas are conveyed to us in trucks for which we should all be grateful. There was a time before road transport when Christmas trees travelled by train. Ernest Hamlin Baker imagined what this would have looked like for a characteristic Fortune cover in December 1931.

Félix Potin

An assembly of carnivores, clad in winter coats is gathered in the Boulevard Sébastopol on a Saturday morning to attend the grand opening of a new butchery department in the Félix Potin store. The date is January 14th. and the best estimate is that the year is 1905 when January 14th. fell on a Saturday. Potin (1820-1871) was an innovative retailer who pioneered the concept of manufacturing a wide range of goods, branding them as his own and selling them in his own stores. This store, opened in 1860 was his flagship. The cavernous food hall with its grand arched ceiling and lavish decoration is piled high with carcasses awaiting the attention of the butcher’s knife. Look for the Adoration of the Golden Calf that adorns the back wall. These are timely images of over-consumption as the season of gluttony overwhelms us.

1961: The Adrian Mole Years

This is an image of our unforgettable family holiday destination in the summer of 1961. Modest accommodation with few concessions to comfort, it fully embodied traditional Norfolk hospitality, a county where the locals are quick to establish their superiority with constant corrections of mispronounced place names. We found ourselves in a landscape of remarkable desolation with vast windswept beaches, tides that receded halfway to Holland and battered stumps of ruined church towers rising unsteadily from the waves – grim reminders of long since inundated villages. I bought this postcard in the local timber built store in case an opportunity arose to show it to a social worker. It’s entirely possible that my lifelong interest in marginal communities poised on the edge of oblivion, dates from this time. The Bush Estate survives to this day with, it would appear from this link, some of its unattractive features carefully preserved.

Meanwhile in the wider world, the news was all about the construction of the Berlin Wall and I found myself thinking, with all the captious reasoning of the adolescent intellect, how unfair it was that the good citizens of the DDR were so brutally denied access to the wonders of the free world and the chance to spend their holidays in such distinguished surroundings. It’s easy to imagine W G Sebald (who would find himself, decades later, only a few miles away) tramping through this landscape, silently rejoicing at the dismal prospect. The other cards show the local churches losing their battle with the might of the North Sea. More evidence of an unhealthy juvenile interest in decay.

North Country Arcadia

This is a tale of two arcades in the north of England, either side of the Pennines in Manchester and Huddersfield. Two multi-level Victorian shopping arcades that display some striking contrasts in the contribution they make to local distinctiveness. The Barton Arcade in Manchester, built in 1871, is an “h” shaped arcade constructed in iron and glass with two octagonal glass domes. The two balconies are graced with handsome ornamental balustrades with mahogany handrails. The paintwork is a dazzling white, with ornamental detailing picked out in gloss black and a tiled floor (not original) in shades of grey. The Byram Arcade in Huddersfield was built in 1881 within the interior of the Byram Buildings designed by local architect, William Crossland (who would later design Royal Holloway College). Like the Barton, there are two upper levels with decorative ironwork. The glazed roof is of simple pitched construction.

The eye is drawn upwards to the complex roof structure in the Barton Arcade and a cool and airy sensation is created. The upper levels are given over to office accommodation and access is via large plate glass doors making them feel like private space. The retail activity includes a travel agent, a sandwich shop, a wine shop, and a restaurant as well as menswear and fashion shops; not as high-end and exclusive as it appears at first glance. The fabric of the building is in excellent external condition but it feels as if the presence of a plethora of glitzy outlets in surrounding streets make it difficult to attract much footfall into the rarefied atmosphere of the arcade.

The Byram Arcade has a warm and enclosed feeling. The upper levels are all retail with an eclectic mix of shops selling art materials, leisurewear, musical instruments and haircuts. There’s a superb restaurant (The Oak Rooms) on the ground floor that attracts a lot of custom but there’s no through traffic, the entrance and exit being one and the same. The Byram has fine spacious architecture and wonderful decorative detailing and the excellent condition to which it has been restored is a joy to behold. Both arcades offer a special experience but seem to fall short of their full commercial potential, but for the disinterested observer, therein lies their charm.

Postcard of the Day No. 32, Sur la Plage

A gourmet’s dream. An itinerant Maître Pâtissier in full dress uniform cruises the foreshore with a choice selection of the very finest in Viennoiserie for the comfort and pleasure of ozonally invigorated and parasolically sheltered ladies of privilege. The overcast conditions suggest we might be in Normandy or Britanny – so Breton Far or Kouign-Amman could be on offer. Breezy conditions could leave a dusting of sand on the glaze of the tartelettes but we cannot allow even the smallest shadow to fall across this vision of a life of leisure, whether earned or unearned.

Paris 1937

The Paris exhibition of 1937 was a famously ill-tempered affair. With the Spanish Civil War in progress the exhibition became a battleground for competing ideologies. The prevailing architectural style was an angular, monumental Neo-Classicalism stripped of ornamentation. These contrasting advertisements come from Britain and the US. The American visitor was tempted by a colourful image, made attractive with some lively line drawing, creating a light-hearted mood at variance with the sombre character of the exhibition. The British publicity seemed better calculated to catch the feel of the times with a heavy font and monochrome cuboid blocks arranged into an intimidating tower. The Tour Eiffel has been reduced to the status of a cut-out.