CHICAGO – Potter & Potter Auctions will hold a 632-lot Vintage Posters sale on Thursday, March 16, starting at 10 am Pacific time. It will feature the company’s biggest selection of posters from World War I and World War II to date. Absentee and Internet live bidding will be available through LiveAuctioneers.
Handsomely rendered antique posters should take several of the top slots in this signature sale, such as Albert Bergevin’s Avranches / Baie du Mont St. Michel, estimated at $2,000-$3,000. This linen-backed example was published by Syndicat d’Initiative d’Avranches around 1910 and is illustrated with a woman with binoculars and a red umbrella catching a breathtaking vista of Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy, France.
Among the posters touting magicians is Thurston / Do the Spirits Come Back?, a color lithograph poster that spotlights Howard Thurston conjuring ghostly spirits from a skull, assisted by imps. It was published by the Otis Lithograph Co. around 1929 and has an estimate of $1,800-$2,600.
Mid-century posters featuring domestic travel destinations include Joseph Feher’s Hawaii / United Air Lines, a 1950s poster illustrated with a Hawaiian hostess holding a floral lei and a tropical beach scene with surfers, swimmers, sunbathers, an outrigger boat and a United Boeing Stratocruiser flying past the sun. It is estimated at $2,000-$3,000.
Disney-themed posters are also represented in the March 16 auction. Chief among them is David Klein’s Disneyland / Fly TWA Los Angeles, estimated at $3,000-$5,000. This linen-backed poster from 1955 is one of the earliest to advertise Disneyland as a travel destination. It features Howard Hughes’s TWA Moonliner rocket, which was part of Disneyland’s Tomorrowland exhibit at the time.
Lot #333, titled A Guide to the Magic Kingdom, has an estimate of $300-$500. Produced by Walt Disney Productions in 1971, this fold-out park map of Walt Disney World in its opening year is linen-backed, printed in color, and measures 31 by 39in.
Potter & Potter Auctions has a longstanding tradition of offering fine India-themed travel posters in its sales. The March 16 event features India / The Wonderful Land, a linen-backed poster published in 1958 by the Department of Tourism, Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity in India. It depicts the Taj Mahal and other destinations in India and is estimated at $1,000-$1,500.
The sale also features a selection of posters that reflect key 20th-century political and social initiatives. A standout is James Montgomery Flagg’s I Want You for the U.S. Army / Enlist Now, which carries an estimate of $2,000-$3,000. This is the WWII version of Flagg’s famous poster that shows Uncle Sam pointing at the viewer. It was published in 1940 in New York by the Leslie-Judge Co.
Rounding out the highlights is J. Paul Verrees’ poster dubbed Join the Air Service. Published in 1917 in Philadelphia by Ketterlinus, this linen-backed recruitment poster depicts a two-seater biplane for the Air Service, the forerunner to the U.S. Air Force. The poster is estimated at $1,200-$1,800.
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