Advertising Cutaways

Cutaway drawings were valuable advertising tools in an age where dazzling the consumer with engineering complexity was an effective strategy. This glamorous Art Deco tableau from General Motors is publicising the Chicago Century of Progress exhibition in 1933-34. The GM pavilion included a functioning production line turning out Chevrolet saloons, a fact that apparently enraged Henry Ford when he heard about it – especially as Ford had chosen not to exhibit until year two (1934). By this time the two major car-makers had seen off or absorbed most of the minor players in the industry and the exhibition would become virtually a private battle-ground between GM and Ford. Below is a selection of advertising cutaways from the pages of mid-century magazines of varying degrees of complexity and ingenuity. Some of them are especially extreme in their disruption of topographical integrity and offer the diverting spectacle of human beings striding purposefully to the edge of a precipice or descending a disassembled staircase, oblivious to the hideous fates that await them. 

Modern Wonderland with L Ashwell Wood

Today we revisit the pages of Modern Wonder magazine in 1938-39 and focus on the work of Leslie Ashwell Wood. The editors of Modern Wonder had a team of highly skilled illustrators at their disposal but nobody brought such a stunning exactitude to the cutaway drawing as the man who signed himself L Ashwell Wood. The brilliance of his graphic eviscerations made him the first choice as cover artist in 1938-39 as this selection shows. When he delved beneath the surface of everyday reality, as in the petrol station drawing the results were every bit as fascinating as his responses to the great engineering wonders of the age. A sure and certain indicator of a mid-century middle class childhood was a subscription to the high-minded Eagle comic. This was the respectable face of comics but one of its greatest features was the weekly cutaway drawing from L Ashwell Wood that formed a double spread across the centre pages. Like many of my peers I was absorbed in these infinitely detailed images while elsewhere in the town others of my contemporaries sharpened their invective skills via the scurrilous humour to be found in the pages of The Topper, Beezer, Dandy or Beano. Many of the Eagle drawings have been anthologised and republished in recent decades but the Modern Wonder drawings, the very best he ever produced, remain unpublished as yet.

Modern Wonderland

The town of Watford has been sparing in its cultural legacy but for the single exception of Modern Wonder magazine that rolled off the presses at Odhams each week with inspirational visions of the future rendered in full colour and described in breathless prose. For 4 glorious years (1937 - 41) every Wednesday, exciting news from the frontiers of knowledge was presented to an audience of impressionable schoolboys of all ages. The cover artists portrayed a universe of technological superlatives where everything was the highest, fastest, deepest or most versatile, most lethal or most advanced. Two artists stood out – Bryan de Grineau for his dashing images positively glowing with patriotic fervour and at the other extreme, Leslie Ashwell Wood with his precise and forensic exposures of the inner workings of engineering excellence through the medium of the cutaway. The long slow descent into global warfare was increasingly reflected in the magazine content with a parade of deadly weaponry from land, sea and air.

More Cutaways

No apologies for returning to this subject so quickly. Today’s cutaways are all the work of Leslie Ashwell Wood whose drawings were a regular feature in the Eagle comic each week throughout the 1950’s. The monochrome illustrations come from an Odhams Press book on railways (The World’s Railways and How They Work) published in 1947. This was a major commission for Ashwell Wood and included over 20 of his cutaway drawings. The production values are low, the quality of reproduction is poor but despite that it is well worth posting a generous selection for wider consumption. Above is a drawing in colour from 1959 published in the Eagle. It features an electric locomotive as employed on the Metropolitan line between Rickmansworth and Liverpool Street. These were a familiar sight to your Metroland correspondent as he travelled, with some reluctance, to a seat of learning in Watford.




As for Wood himself, Steve Holland did a brilliant, if inconclusive, piece of biographical research published on his Bear Alley blogsite. The bibliography reveals how prolific he was and it would seem a possibility that in his later years he became a self-publisher. These examples from his earlier work for Odhams gave him the opportunity to apply his talents to such diverse subjects as Grand Central Station, the Sydney Harbour Bridge and a Train Ferry, all of which were remorselessly dissected and labelled in the time honoured fashion. There will be more from this genre in future postings.