The Poster Collection
The collection-within-the-collection
Unique to “The Sarajevo 1914 Collection” is the collection-within-the-collection of posters representing the immediate pre-First World War period in HO scale. They’re produced on fine-grain film as 35mm contact prints. Only posters that would have appeared in the time and places represented in the collection are included. Their height varies between 13 mm (1/2 inch) for the smallest of those posted on hoardings, and 65 mm for the largest appearing on the exterior walls of buildings. The photograph below shows a poster hoarding in a working-class Paris street in 1914.
The work of many of the best-known graphic artists of the day is represented in the collection: Lucian Bernard, Julius Klinger, Hans Rudi Erdt, Ludwig Hohlwein, T.T. Heine and several others. Those artists dominated the German graphic arts prior to 1917, while French designers would dominate after the war. Hard to find, though essential to a truly representative collection, is the work of “ordinary” poster artists, many now forgotten – especially among the French posterists of the pre-1914 period. Their advertising of everyday events and household products gives us sharp glimpses into the world of 1914 that can’t be gained any other way. Exuberant colors often make up for a lack of design sophistication as we’re presented with the names of products long forgotten among the surprising number of those still with us.
In the photograph of the French HO scale hoarding at the top, I’ve been careful to let “ordinary” work dominate. The haphazard mixing of a potpourri of products creates an oddly dynamic impression that can be appealing, even amusing. Because there are very few photographs showing pre-war paper posters in place, I’ve based my choices on whether or not a product or spectacle would have been distributed or booked “nationally” or merely “locally”. “Local” products were far more common in 1914 than today. A poster advertising “Mistginguett”, the music-hall star, would not have been displayed in a rural town far from Paris where the inhabitants would have had little hope of seeing her perform. Did she ever perform in Strassburg before August of 1914? I would need an authoritative “yes” answer to that question with the dates of her appearance before I would display one of her posters in Alsace.
Ernst Litfass – Litfaß – invented the advertising column - the Litfaßsäule – first erected in Berlin in 1855. This photograph shows a German HO scale plakatankleber – a poster “sticker” – having just mounted posters on 3 Litfaßsäule.
