Stick No Bills® means Do NOT put up posters. And so with this somewhat provocative name the Britishcartelistas Meg Gage Williams and Philip James Baber initiated their adventure as curators of vintage posters inaugurating their Asia Flagship gallery in Sri Lanka in 2011 and Middle East Flagship gallery in Dubai in 2023.
Now Stick No Bills has relocated their third continental flagship gallery to Barcelona from Palma where they retain their global Printworks at Mallorca´s emblematic Imprenta Nueva Balear (Est.1913). The new Europe Flagship gallery charts the 160 year history of graphic art as played out in the genre of destination marketing posters capturing the spirit of hedonistic travel to iconic places Europa-wide and beyond.
Since printing on paper began, the instruction to “Stick No Bills” has plagued the facades of power houses throughout the English-speaking urban world in their custodians´ perennial struggle to keep them clean of adverts. In spite of which the poster became, for decades, a potent and prolific means to communicate and announce events, exhibitions, films, ideological slogans, products or travel destinations with bold “visual shout” images mixing typography with illustrations.
“We want to raise the prestige of the finest illustrated travel posters of all time, restoring them to their rightful place within the art market from which they have, for too long, been excluded; discarded as just momentary clamours for attention. But the fact abides: the commercial illustrators commissioned by the greatest brands of their day were themselves often THE greatest artists of their day. So there is much treasure to be hunted for, salvaged and upheld” explains Meg Gage Williams, experienced traveler and lover of art.
In their quest to form a definitive collection of the world’s very best travel posters they attend auction houses and visit train, cruise ship and airline museums; institutions which for decades attracted their clients with emotive graphic art playfully depicting the merits, customs and landmark natural and architectural places to be discovered at the destinations to which they transported their passengers.
After a meticulous authentication process The Archives Design Group digitises each original artefact on behalf of Stick No Bills and its licensors and then works pixel by pixel to restore, augment and test print 21st Century limited editions printed using excellent museum-grade archival cotton and fade resistant inks - ingredients that were simply not available when the first editions were produced, largely on flimsy paper using toxic inks that discolour.
Today’s superior technology is not just engendering whole new leases of life for hitherto disappearing art. It also enables faithful recovery of the best attributes of less efficient antique printing techniques like lithographic, typographic and silkscreen printing.
Stick No Bills´ series of Modern Art Deco posters stand out, with sinuous lines and a tendency towards abstraction and an overall lauding of the beauty in the imperfect graphics and colourful aesthetics of the mid 20th Century. In the sixties, photography began to spread in posters, hand-drawn illustration lost its fuel and image authenticity and impact declined in accordance.
Also striking are the collection of iconic Pan Am posters originally commissioned by Pan American Airways LLC during its operational years 1927-1989 and now diligently revived by The Archives Design Group and Stick No Bills under authorisation, inclusive of motifs hand painted by renowned artists including Paul George Lawler in the 1930s and 40s and Jean Carlu in the 50s and 60s.
British Airways predecessor airline British Overseas Air Corporation produced an extensive series over the years with that of Frank Wootton being seminal amongst them. B.O.A.C flew Mr Wootton around the world with his easel to produce oil on canvases and water-colours capturing the specific vibrancy of these destinations.
In the unique Master Edition 1/1 pieces (100 x 150cm and selling for 12,000 Euros rolled, boxed and delivered) available Made To Order of the full Stick No Bills image library, this one-of-a kind format showcases the original artworks boosted to twice their original size as if hyperreal with 24 Karat gold lettering diligently overlaid onto the cotton fabric by the royal yacht gilder. A rare edition of 1/9 at 80 x 120cm of “Fly To Spain” produced by Frank Wootton and BOAC in 1949 is exhibited at the flagship framed with a sale price of 10,000Euros.
To mark its arrival on the art scene in Barcelona, Stick No Bills presents a series of posters specifically dedicated to the city incorporating the old cartography, with a magnificent monumental plan of Barcelona from 1917. Likewise in 2022 the firm revived, in collaboration with the haute couture fashion store Santa Eulalia (Est 1843) their well preserved original 70 x 100cm lithographs promoting new seasonal fashion, painted on order of Santa Eulalia by the highly talented artist José Luis Rey among others during the late 1920s and early 1930s.
“My hometown of Barcelona represents a natural next step for Stick No Bills, which recognises in the city a long tradition of excellence in design, printing and commercial advertising,” states Carlos Andreu Cantarell, Group Managing Director.
Today Meg has a private collection of antique posters and high resolution files incorporated into The Archives Design Group in London that amounts to more than a thousand pieces. What was your first original illustrated poster?
Meg recounts the passion of her husband Philip James Baber (who died last October) for posters of the cinematic genre alongside those designed to compel travel. And how just before their wedding, at the tail end of his bachelor party at a hotel in Istanbul, he found an original poster promoting the 1964 film The Pink Panther in a bin and couldn't resist the urge to take it home. Then came their Creative Directors´ travels through India and the seduction of Bollywood posters from the 1930s found in flea markets in Bombay.
As critical mass builds the Stick No Bills enterprise gains gravitas in the Fine Art Print and Collectors´ realms, with which it can, with greater ease, now gain rights clearance from attested artists and trade mark owners to make high-quality editions under licence.
These are exquisite images illustrated with the innocence of the early days of tourism. And they transmit this vintage nostalgia with all of its lost candour and charm.
