London 2026 A.D. This Is All In The Air To-Day by London Transport – £3000 at Ewbank’s.
Titled London 2026 A.D. This Is All In The Air To-Day, it shows the Underground which takes you to Glasgow in ‘2 hours 45 minutes’ and a sky filled with a variety of flying vehicles. Shown against a sunset sky are the London Bridge Air depot, the London Air Taxi service, the Gravity Gas Co Ltd and Mars Stores skyscrapers.
The rare design, now 96 years old, took a mid-estimate £3000 at the Surrey specialist poster sale.
Leading the auction at £4400 was a ‘very good’ example of Tom Chantrell’s British quad version of the 1977 Star Wars poster. With only minor pin hole damage to the corners, it was clearly signed in silver pen by four cast members: Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia), Dave Prowse (Darth Vader), Kenny Baker (R2-D2) and Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca).
Job well done
Alphonse Mucha’s design for Job – £7000 at Swan Fine Art.
A much earlier advertising poster appeared for sale at the Swan Fine Art (21% buyer’s premium) sale in Twickenham on February 1: the first of two striking Art Nouveau designs created by Alphonse Mucha for Job cigarette papers.
This small-format ad was first printed by Champenois, Paris, in 1896 when the colour lithograph poster was a relatively new medium. It was the image that cemented the idea of the ‘Mucha woman’ with her abundant locks of hair and cigarette issuing curls of rising smoke.
There are several colour variants (such was its popularity that it was sold as an artwork as well as a commercial advert), with this 23 x 17in (58 x 44cm) sheet printed with green lettering on a maroon ground.
Estimated at £400-600, it sold at £7000 to an online bidder via thesaleroom.com – a price in keeping with other versions sold at recent specialist sales.
Job cigarette rolling papers, offered in small packets, were the brainchild of Jean Bardou, a baker in Perpignan. On the cover of these booklets he put his initials separated by a diamond. The public interpreted this as Job and the name stuck.
