“This is not a museum …

… it’s a conservation and storage facility.” The first words of our guide on a tour of the Hawking Building at the Science and Innovation Park at the former RAF Wroughton airfield. The Hawking Building is a vast purpose-built warehouse box that, along with a number of old aircraft hangars, holds the reserve collection of the Science Museum. Over 300,000 objects, large and small have been moved in from their old home in Earl’s Court, most of which are stored on pallets or open shelving in carefully controlled temperature and humidity settings.  The tour is focused on “the grid”, a large open space on the ground floor mainly occupied by a spectacular display of road vehicles from bicycles and milk floats to trucks and buses.  Collecting policy is not to collect an example of every known vehicle but to look for items that represent a technological step change or have a strong association with an individual of interest or an important historical event.

Conservation is aimed at the preservation of exhibits in the condition when acquired. Making them safe is a priority, removing hazardous materials - where vehicles are concerned this involves extracting batteries, draining oil and petrol, and degreasing components to protect against further deterioration. Restoration is never undertaken, partly because of the frequently inordinate expense, partly because, in many cases, restored examples already exist thanks to individual and group efforts and not least, the problem of finding agreement on the chronological point in the long life of the object to which it should be returned.

In the first image we see the balloon gondola used by Swiss physicist, Auguste Piccard on his altitude record-breaking ascent of 16,201 m (53,153 ft) using a hydrogen balloon becoming the first human to enter the upper atmosphere.  This gondola was presented to the Science Museum in 1935. In a triumph of adaptive re-use, Piccard went on to convert his gondola into a vehicle for deep sea exploration.

There’s a group of vintage cars from the first decade of the last century, an era of experimentation with three forms of motive power - steam, electricity and petrol - battling for supremacy. Steam power was the first to be eliminated despite surviving just into the 1950s for heavy haulage.  Electricity foundered quickly due the weight of the batteries although it clung on in the form of lightweight delivery vehicles where lower speeds were more acceptable. The race was easily won by petrol and diesel, greatly assisted by the predatory instincts of the American oil barons of the period. Lithium battery technology has brought the electric vehicle back into contention although it remains locked in mortal combat with the descendants of the oil baronetcy and their political enablers.

 

Misleading Postcard Captions

At the height of the picture postcard boom, the volume of publishers, local, national and international, piling into the industry drove competition to unprecedented levels. As business always does, cost-cutting became the default setting for lazy operators. Quality declined as cheaper card and economy printing with unstable inks produced cards that faded as rapidly as they disintegrated. Publishers developed generic subject cards - stormy seas, sunsets - that could be sold in almost any location with a local caption, from Maine to Florida. More dishonest was the practice of labelling a card with various place names to suggest a local connection that didn’t really exist. Here’s a few examples that have come my way over the years - there must be many, many more.

 

In Honour of Glen Baxter

In a long career Glen Baxter (who died at the end of last month) created a fine body of work that resisted categorisation. Evolving a style of drawing that gently parodied the banalities of mass market illustration, his imagery had the clarity and simplicity of a textbook diagram combined with the sense of mystery that lay beneath the expressionless surfaces of Magritte’s paintings. In vintage picture books for children he discovered the joys of captions that stated the obvious in utilitarian language with a reckless disregard for the perils of the double-entendre or misinterpretation.  Many of his regular cast of characters came from the same source - the intrepid but hapless explorer, the denizens of Sherwood Forest, cowboys, boy scouts, ancient mariners and deep sea divers. The frisson generated when caption and image pull in separate directions amplified the incongruities that he delighted in exploring. Defining his work by genre or designation feels like a fool’s errand. For some, he was a cartoonist, others saw an illustrator, for me, he was simply an artist. Art world references abounded and it’s intriguing that he exhibited in such disparate galleries as Nigel Greenwood (home of Artists’ Books, Conceptualism and Gilbert and George) and Chris Beetles (citadel of figurative illustration).

In his 1980s prime, Baxter found himself approached by advertising agencies and his artwork began to appear in newspapers and magazines.  In 1987/88 Brooke Bond tea made use of his talents in a trio of full colour amusing drawings - the image of tea-making on the ocean floor was especially arresting.  A commission from Gilbey’s Gin was not without problems due to the client’s persistent efforts to include a ‘pack shot’, it eventually appeared in both newspapers and magazines.  Art postcards enjoyed a season of popularity in the 1980s and many Baxter drawings were reprinted in this format. A further ‘brand extension’ came in a range of Poole Pottery with Baxter designs. There are few more prestigious clients for editorial illustration than the New Yorker and the Glen Baxter Wall Art page displays 79 examples. And the books kept coming, in which every few pages an image guaranteed to astound and amuse would surface. As long ago as 1983, Miles Kington in a slightly ungracious review concluded that Glen Baxter needed to find a new act. Thanks perhaps to never scaling the heights of celebrity status he was able to refresh and renew his distinctive offer, while avoiding ubiquity and the deathly slide into unfashionability.

 

Advertising Art in Russia (2007)

There’s a generally accepted view that Russian Twentieth Century graphics can be exclusively defined by the post-revolutionary creative explosion of Constructivism-inspired book and poster designs that went on to influence designers around the world.  This fascinating book, Advertising Art in Russia (Moscow, 2007, ISBN: 9785 903406 012) includes some of the Avant-garde pioneers (mostly Rodchenko) but the principal focus is on illustration for Russian consumer advertising between 1880 and 1970. Included are 4 brief essays in both Russian and English and over 240 pages of full colour illustrations. While the state controlled almost all production in the Soviet era, consumer products were marketed and promoted to the public in visual formats that paralleled those of their western counterparts. It may have been illusory but it created the impression of a world of infinite consumer choice that looked familiar to the citizens of capitalist economies.  The influence of western practitioners such as Leonetto Cappiello, Marcello Dudovich, Ludwig Hohlwein, Joseph Binder etc. is easily detected, suggesting that Russian artists and designers had easy access to a wide range of international design periodicals and consumer magazines.  

Moscow’s design studios must have been lined with shelves holding volumes of Das Plakat, Gebrauchsgraphik, Graphis, Commercial Art, Art and Industry et al. Some of the largest state monopolies, such as Tabaktrest (based at the Petrograd tobacco factories) had their own studios and printing facilities for producing posters. In 1935 Stalin made a major speech in which he declared “Life’s become better, comrades, life’s become merrier!” A sentiment that would sound hollow to the victims of the great wave of purges and show trials that got underway in 1937. Despite this the production of consumer goods was accelerating and in 1936 a state advertising agency was established. Posters in every market sector projected an aura of sunny optimism and consumer satisfaction. A regiment of happy smiling faces stood in contradiction to the western stereotype of the downtrodden Soviet citizen forever trapped in a drab colourless world of material shortages and state surveillance.