Stick No Bills was founded by vintage travel poster collectors who also loved surfing. So it's no surprise we feature artworks from some of the best breaks in the world.
Some swells you paddle for. Others you frame.
Our newly-curated Surf Collection brings together licensed poster artworks from Bali to Sri Lanka, Hawaii to Cornwall, Australia and beyond. Some are contemporary, vintage-style posters. Others are sourced from the archives of legendary travel brands including Pan Am, BOAC (precursor to British Airways) and British Railway.
'Radical Cutback, Uluwatu, Bali' is one of our newest, best-selling surf posters, dedicated to one of the best barrels on the planet, all snap and spray and that unforgettable drop. Beside it sit two colour derivatives of 'Elephant Surfari', East and West editions, pulled from our Sri Lanka Collection. One glows blush pink. The other burns warm gold, and here, the elephants look like natural surfers.
A design story that spans the golden age of air travel
Pan Am's Hawaii posters are a masterclass in mid-century commercial design, and they're only part of a much wider Hawaii selection within the Surf Collection. 'Hawaii, Pan American, 1940s' brings evocative sunset colours and a beautiful landscape into this very early surf poster, while further pieces from the same era, including the 1960s photographic works 'Surfers' and 'Wave', are licensed poster artworks that have been remastered and revived with eye-catching graphic precision. Together they trace decades of surf culture through the lens of one of the most well-known names in air travel.
Two coastlines, one important connection
'Australia, Fly there by BOAC & Qantas, c.1955' and 'Newquay, on the Cornish Coast, 1937' both feature blonde surfing women, decades and continents apart. It's a detail we want to highlight. Stick No Bills was founded by a blonde surfing woman, and we've no doubt that if our co-founder Meg Gage Williams had been born in a different era, even on a different continent, she would have been paddling out right alongside them. As it is, she still surfs her local break in Cornwall now.
What "licensed" and "authorised" actually mean
Every poster artwork in the Surf Collection is either an authorised, licensed reproduction sourced from an archive we hold a formal agreement with, or a newly commissioned, vintage-style piece created by our own artists. Nothing in the collection is an unauthorised copy or an unlicensed scan.
This distinction matters more than it might seem to. The vintage poster market is full of unlicensed reproductions with no attribution, no quality control and no connection to the artists or institutions that hold the rights to the original work. Stick No Bills works directly with archives, estates and institutional partners to secure proper licences, pay royalties where due, and credit the original artists and photographers. When a poster carries our name, it has been through that process.
Why surf art belongs on your wall
Surfing holidays tend to leave people with more feeling than souvenirs, a specific stretch of coast, a particular light at a particular hour, a wave that never quite leaves you. Vintage surf posters do something photographs rarely manage: they distil that feeling into a single, considered image, built to last rather than scroll past.
Bring home some of the Stick No Bills surfing spirit. Explore the full Surf Collection from some of the world's best-loved breaks online today, or visit us in one of our galleries in Palma de Mallorca, Dubai or Galle Fort, Sri Lanka.
The journey has only just begun.
