Harry Riley (1895-1966) was a watercolourist, cartoonist and commercial artist. However, he was best known for designing travel posters to English & Welsh seaside destinations for British Railways.
London-born Riley attended Hammersmith and St. Martin’s Schools of Art. He cut his teeth in Fleet Street where, as a junior artist, he created cartoons for inclusion in the Daily Mail, Punch and other publications. Later, he was commissioned to create figurative works for the likes of luxury department stores, Fortnum & Mason and Selfridges.
He was elected member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour and, in the late 1920s, president of The London Sketch Club.
His advertising posters are all 50s Technicolour with smiling, happy, healthy couples and families. All blonde bobs and pigtails. Summer dresses, swimsuits and cravats. Bright blue skies, sweeping golden sands and azure seas.
Born and based in Sheffield, Yorkshire, Kenneth Steel (1906-1970) was a watercolourist, lithographer and engraver of landscapes and urban scenes. In this post we’re honing in on some of his numerous travel posters – for the likes of British Railways and British European Airways (BEA).
At 12-years-old, Steel won a scholarship to attend the Sheffield Technical School of Art. He went on to become the youngest artist to be elected to the Royal Society of British Artists in 1936.
In December 1940, both Steel’s mother and his pregnant wife were tragically killed in the Sheffield Blitz; the bombing also destroying much of his studio work.
His work can be found in the collections of National Railway Museum, Fife Collections Centre and Newport Museum and Art Gallery. Originals turn up at auction – from Christie’s and Bonhams to eBay – and can fetch into the high hundreds of pounds.
In 2020, a book was published, Kenneth Steel: Catalogue Raisonné of Prints and Railway Posters. The author, Edward Yardley, has co-curated an exhibition of over 100 of his works – Places in Time: The Art of Kenneth Steel – with accompanying talk and tours. It’s currently being held at Harold Cantor Gallery, Weston Park Museum, Sheffield runs until 2nd May 2022.
Born in Romania, (1921-2010) Zvi Narkiss was an award winning graphic designer and topographer.
He emigrated to Palestine at the age of 23, settling in Jerusalem. There, he attended painting classes with Jakob Steinhardt and Mordecai Ardon. He progressed on to study graphic design at The New Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. He was so considered so talented, he bypassed the first academic year. The following year, he was invited to join the graphics department at the Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael (the Jewish National Fund). Between 1950 and 1955 he was the chief graphic designer of the IDF’s training aids unit and served as head of the manuals’ design unit of the Israeli Air Force.
In 1955, he founded his own graphic design & typography studio where, for half a century, he designed books, exhibitions, stamps, banknotes, coins, advertising posters and logos. Amongst his many projects he designed two biblical books – the Horev Bible and the Hebrew University Bible – Jerusalem Crown for which he created a special typeface. He designed Israel’s very first tourism poster (included in the montage above), the IDF pavilion at the First Decade Exhibition (1958), the Victory Medal (1967), the Peace Medal (1977) and banknotes for the national bank of Israel.
Of all the design genres he practised, his real speciality was type design (fonts). He was the most prolific designer of Hebrew types during the 20th century; throughout his career, he designed a total of 14 typeface sets. Narkis, the book types he created that bear his name (Narkiss, Narkis Block, New Narkis, Narkis Tam and Narkisim), are the most popular and commonly in use in Israel. All in all, he designed five of the ten most frequently used typefaces in Israel.
In 2006, he won the EMET Prize in the design category for his Hebrew font designs.
At Narkiss’ funeral in 2010, the head of the department of visual communications department at his alma mater eulogised that, although the population at large don’t know the name Zvi Narkiss:
…most of us ‘consume’ Narkis’ work on a daily basis, at nearly every moment… Zvi’s letters, the Hebrew letters Zvi designed over many years during his long career, appear and are in use everywhere. Nearly any material printed in Hebrew bears at least one of the typefaces Narkis designed, be it a best-selling novel, a daily newspaper, packaging for cheese, the opening of a television program, a road sign or paper currency. Narkis’ work is outstanding and very unusual. He nurtured and enriched the appearance of the Hebrew letter in a variety of new shapes – Zvi’s work has become the standard relative to which everything is designed.
In this week’s Auction Alert post, one of the lots we featured was a poster by Anthony Burrill. When I did a little research about him, I discovered that he hails from Littleborough – literally down the road from where we used to live in Todmorden!
Now based down south in rural Kent, Burrill (b. 1969) is a graphic artist known for his bold, typographic works. He attended Leeds Polytechnic and gained a masters from the London College of Art.
I’m not a great fan of the increasingly popular ‘inspirational quote’ type of wall art – but Burrill’s work is something else altogether. It’s clever in its design; powerful and intelligent without the schmaltziness.
I try to say the most, with the least and connect with people through words…
I absolutely love his striking public art piece in Leeds city centre, alongside the River Aire (shown at the top of the montage above); it’s a massive 88ft high, a gable end emblazoned with his “YOU&ME ME&YOU. Have a watch of this bit of film where he talks about the 2020 project.
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
credit: Sheffield Weekly Gazette
