Reaching milestones in our documentation and cataloguing work

At the end of February, we reached some significant milestones in the documentation work carried out on our museum and archive collections.

Stamp Artwork design for the Olympic Games 1948, submitted by G. Knipe of Harrison & Sons Oct. 1947. (POST 150/GVI/11/018) It was one of the five designs selected by the Council of Industrial Design and was held as a reserve for the 2 1/2d stamp. In preparing essays Harrisons were to be told "to make sure that the features of the jumper ... cannot be recognised."

The first milestone reached was the completion of an audit of material contained within the museum collection. What this means is that we have entry and location data for every object inherited by BPMA when it was formed in 2004 and for every object subsequently deposited with us. This includes objects held in our Freeling House repository and in our stores in Debden and at Christie’s.

Documentation of collections is a core part of any museum’s activity. Without details such as provenance, custodial history, physical condition and the terms and conditions relating to deposit, a museum cannot be assured of its responsibility and rights to preserve, display, digitise or even dispose (should the item not meet the museum’s collecting policy) of objects in its custody. Furthermore, precise information about an object’s location in our repository and stores means that we can carry out collections review work more efficiently and better prepare for our forthcoming move from our site here at Freeling House to the new postal museum.

This has been a significant amount of work and has taken seven years to complete. Very few museums have achieved a full audit of their holdings and it means that we can now concentrate our efforts in reviewing object collections, creating descriptive catalogues for the online catalogue and also plan our digitisation programmes accordingly. The completion of this work is due to the hard work and discipline of our museum cataloguers past and present, and we congratulate them all for doing such a great job!

Stamp Artwork, Olympic Games 1948, submitted on 29 July 1948 (POST 150/GVI/11/037)

The second milestone is that we’ve passed the 100,000 mark of records available to view on our online catalogue. We now have 100,703 records published. Our most recently published records include:
• King George VI London Olympic Games 1948 stamp artwork
• Uniforms
• Handstamps
• Posters
• Photographic stills from Post Office films, c.1969-1986
Finally, at the beginning of each year, we also open files that have been closed for 30 years. You can read in the blog by my colleague Gavin McGuffie how we process these. This year, we’ve opened approximately 100 files and the descriptions of these can be viewed via our online catalogue here.

Martin Devereux – Acting Catalogue Manager

An interview with Pieter Huveneers

Netherland born Pieter Huveneers is a designer popular amongst GPO poster enthusiasts for, amongst other things, his designs for airmail and telephones. In Europe he designed for a number of large companies including BOAC, British Railways, Schweppes, ICI, Pepsi Cola and Philips.

For some decades he has lived and worked in Australia. Before his retirement Mr Huveneers designed nearly 70 names and logos for Australian corporations and employed a dozen staff. His Australian work included logos for Australia Post, Telecom Australia, and the Westpac bank.

Now 87 and retired, he continues to make paintings, including some innovative silver metal designs, and wonderful portraits.

We are indebted to Pieter’s partner Tanis for her assistance with this interview.

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How did you become a poster artist/graphic designer?

I completed a design course at the Academy in Arnhem, Holland, during and after the war. I chose this particular course because of its wide application. You can make a design, it can be repeated in multiple applications and provide to the designer exposure to the public.

How and why did you begin designing for the Post Office? What other companies (whether commercial companies or advertising agencies) were you working for at the time?

Road Safety, BOAC, British Railways, Schweppes, Mullard, British Titan, General Electric Company, ICI, British Aluminium Company, Babcock, Pepsi Cola.

When designing a poster, did you have a clear idea of the image you wanted to create?

The image you want to create should be in line with the service offered.

Did the Post Office give you much freedom in your designs?

Yes.

How many drafts would you make before the final poster was produced?

You don’t make drafts so much – I made doodles.

You were very young when you were commissioned by the Post Office. Did you feel under a lot of pressure?

No.

What is your favourite design you produced for the Post Office?

The Post Office Guide.

The 'Post Office Guide' supplies all the answers, designed by Pieter Huveneers, July 1955 (POST 110/3226, PRD 0786)

You produced designs for various Post Office campaigns, including ‘Post Early’, ‘Buy stamps in books’, the ‘Post Office Guide’, and ‘Speak clearly’. Did you have a favourite campaign?

No.

What prompted your move to Australia in the 1960s?

I worked at Philips Head Office in Eindhoven as International Creative Director in the mid 1960s. I had made many designs. It was really an opportunity to go to a country with new horizons.

Did you find freedom and opportunity for creativity in British graphic design declined in the 1960s?

No.

Buy stamps in books, designed by Pieter Huveneers, c. 1950 (POST 110/4331, PH896)

Our archivist Anna’s favourite posters of yours are the ‘A pleasing tone always’ and ‘Speak clearly’ posters. Who, or what, was your inspiration for these posters?

I chose to portray the telephonist as young and alert.

You went on to work for Australia Post. Was there something that particularly appealed to you, or inspired you, about the postal service?

Not really.

Which was your favourite organisation to work for?

The organisations which provided a well paid salary were attractive!

What would you say the differences are between poster design in the 1950s and now?

The graphic solution to the reproduction has reduced and relies more on photography now rather than design by hand. The personal and more painterly touch is missing.

Telegrams are urgent messages, designed by Pieter Huveneers, April 1952 (POST 110/1611, IRP 056)

Would you say the development of technology has made graphic designers more or less creative?

Less creative!

Ask Pieter Huveneers

Pieter Huveneers is a designer popular amongst GPO poster enthusiasts for, amongst other things, his designs for airmail and telephones.

Send your overseas parcels by Air Mail, April 1954 (POST 110/3220)

For some decades he has lived and worked in Australia where he has designed logos for national brands such as Australia Post and the Westpac bank. But as a blog published last year by Quad Royal highlighted, little is known about the man whose designs are iconic on opposite sides of the world.

Recently we made contact with Pieter Huveneers, who is currently living on Australia’s east coast. Mr Huveneers has kindly agreed to speak to us about his work for the GPO and to allow his answers to be published on this blog. If you have a question for Pieter Huveneers, please leave a comment below or e-mail it to blog@postalheritage.org.uk by Wednesday 7 December. A selection of questions and answers will be published in January.

A Postal View of London – GPO Poster Design

GPO Posters have played a significant role in establishing a dynamic relationship between the public service and its customers. For instance, they reminded people to use the postal service more efficiently and ‘Post Early’. Thanks to open-minded PR Officers like Stephen Tallents, GPO Posters also became a mirror of British graphic design particularly from the 1930s onwards. The GPO’s public relations department – the first government ministry PR department ever – saw the educational potential of poster design and combined it with a high standard of modern art. The Post Office offered employment to many artists and graphic designers; many of them helped shape the world of design and art during their careers. These included Tom Eckersley, Frank Newbould. and George Him and Jan Le Witt, better known as the Lewitt-Him partnership.

A Postal Guide to the Maze of London, 1951, Lewitt-Him (PRD0639)

One example of how those campaigns were linked to creative design and the distribution of business information can be illustrated in the numerous posters advertising Post Office directories. This ranged from directories of the businesses and services available in cities throughout Britain to publications such as the ‘Post Office Guide’, ‘Post Offices in the United Kingdom’, ‘London Post Offices and Streets’, and ‘Postal Addresses’. They provided valuable resources for marketing and sales departments and were updated every year. The works of artists like Lewitt-Him, Alick Knight or M H Armengol illustrate how these campaigns succeeded in presenting a functional product with iconic images and ingenious designs.

London Post Offices and Streets, 1958, M H Armengol (PRD0758)

Probably one of the most prominent posters is Lewitt-Him’s ‘A Postal Guide of the Maze of London’ (1951) which depicts a postman about to enter a stylistic maze of houses. The publication provides details of Post Offices, their streets and district numbers, hours of business and a listing of street names – a perfect aid for the postman’s journey into the intricate maze of streets. The partnership of the two Polish-born artists Jan Le Witt (1907-1991) and George Him (1900-1981) was a very successful collaboration in graphic design and they created several posters for the Ministry of Information during the Second World War and murals for the Festival of Britain (1951).

London Post Offices and Streets, 1958, Alick Knight (PRD0939)

Other poster artists may have remained relatively obscure but their creativity had resulted in some fine GPO poster art. Alick Knight, for example, contributed to several Post Office campaigns, including for the Post Office Guide during the 1950s. Several of his posters feature drawings of iconic buildings like the one for the ‘London Post Offices and Streets’ (1958). Although these posters advertising the London Post Office Guides were designed to have an immediate impact and relate to a particular product, their designs give them a surprising agelessness and relevance to anyone living in or coming to London.

A Postal View of London: London Post Offices and Streets, 1953, H W Browning (PRD0698)

The BPMA have produced a new set of postcards featuring the London-themed posters in this blog. It is now available in the BPMA Shop and further Post Office Guide posters can also be found on our print-on-demand website.

London Post Offices and Streets, 1960, Carol Barker (PRD1072)

- Jana Harnett, Marketing & Development Assistant

A pleasing tone always…

Sometimes I find items in the archives that just ‘speak’ to me, and two posters, designed by Pieter Huveneers, certainly do. In my opinion, the vivid colours and benign faces of the ladies featured, with their outsize (and even technicolour!) eyelashes, have a particular charm. However, items that are now archive records can be viewed very differently by archivists than they were by those at whom they were originally directed.

Speak Clearly Always! 1958. (POST 109/23)

Indeed, the subjects of these posters by Huveneers were not so happy with their aesthetic portrayal. Female telephonists at Liverpool Telephone Exchange believed the ‘Speak clearly’ illustration gave ‘such a strong impression of a vacuous mind’ that ‘it reflected adversely on their attitude to their jobs’. Despite the posters only being intended for display on staff notice-boards in telephone exchanges, and were therefore not visible to the public, the level of objection to the ‘Speak clearly’ poster was strong enough for it to be withdrawn.

A pleasing tone - always! November 1957 (POST 110/1636)

Although the posters achieved their fundamental aims of being striking and capturing attention, it is difficult to see a clear link between the message and the accompanying illustration. It’s understandable that some telephonists felt attention was being directed more towards their appearance than the intended subject of ‘business efficiency’.

According to the Chairman of the Post Office Internal Relations Panel/Joint Production Council Huveneers was ‘trying to illustrate an idealised notion of the impression made by a telephonist who speaks clearly’. This implies that the purpose of the well-spoken telephonist was to conjure up an image of being easy on the eye!

Although the young telephonists at Liverpool Telephone Exchange didn’t want to be seen as doll-like caricatures, neither did they want to be seen as drab and old-fashioned. In 1958 some 53% of permanent female telephonists in London and the provinces were aged 25 and under compared to 3.5% aged 51-55.

An attempt to introduce a different style in the form of the ‘All depend on you’ poster also received an unenthusiastic response. The general feeling being that if a women of her more mature years (she looks fairly young to me!) had been any good ‘she would have been promoted long since and not still be sitting at a position’.

All depend on you! August 1954 (POST 110/1626)

Perhaps if the men in charge at the GPO had not mistakenly thought that female telephonists were vying to be the pin-up voice of the telephone service they would have found them less ‘hard to please’. Thankfully for us they did, as otherwise we wouldn’t have these two wonderful posters!

Source: Internal Relations Panel/Joint Production Council (IRP/JPC): Comments on IRP posters IRP 127, 128, 131, 132, 135 and 136 ‘A Pleasing Tone Always’, ‘Speak Clearly Always’ and ‘They Depend on You’. Complaints from staff at Head Post Office, Liverpool (POST 122/2937)

- Anna Flood, Archivist (Cataloguing)

Stocktaking at the archive

Regular visitors to the BPMA’s search room will notice that we have been closed for ‘stock take’ since the start of last week and won’t be reopening until next Monday, 24th January.

Why does the BPMA close for stock take and what happens during this period? Stock take gives BPMA staff both the time and almost as importantly the space to concentrate on large sorting or repackaging tasks that would be very difficult to progress otherwise. Up until this year stock take has taken place for two weeks in December; this year we’ve moved it to January but we’re always open to suggestions as to the most sensible time to hold it and haven’t decided for certain when to schedule it into 2012.

Re-housing film stills and checking duplicate posters.

It involves almost all the archivists among the BPMA’s staff, both in the archive and records management and cataloguing teams (about ten staff in all), working on a number of projects.

What tasks have we been doing? This year’s stock take has concentrated on three main activities: the sorting of Second Review registered files from the 1970s and 1980s into an order that reflects the alpha-numeric code on them prior to cataloguing this material; the repackaging of POST 118 film stills into appropriate preservation housing; listing the contents of boxes from the old National Postal Museum library to fill gaps in the BPMA Library and identify duplicates and redundant material. We have also been sorting and identifying duplicate posters, weeding ‘portfolio’ files (files of secondary non-archive information on various subjects held in the search room), taking photographs of large plans using a rostrum camera and a couple of activities involving our philatelic material.

Photographing a large rolled building plan using a rostrum camera.

One major benefit of many of these activities is that they will create some badly needed space in our very full repository. They should also speed up the process by which we can make archival material available to the public. So far the activities have been going well though as expected they are taking plenty of time and will generally not be complete at the end of the two weeks.

To anyone who has had to postpone a visit to the search room thank you for your patience and we hope you’ll appreciate the importance of this work.

The BPMA Search Room has new opening times in 2011. In response to a survey carried out in 2010 we will be increasing our Saturday openings to one a month. In order to staff our Saturday openings adequately we will be closed on the Mondays following our Saturday openings. Our next Saturday opening will be 12th February. Full details of our new opening hours  can be found our website.

Virtual Advent Calendar – 22nd December

In the lead-up to Christmas we are showcasing some of the festive items in our collection across our social networks. Behind the door of our virtual advent calendar today is…

Overseas Christmas mail 1981. Recommended last posting dates (1981)

Poster advertising a leaflet giving final Christmas postal dates.

Artist: Not known.

See larger images of all the items in our Virtual Advent Calendar on Flickr.

Virtual Advent Calendar – 21st December

Virtual Advent Calendar –

In the lead-up to Christmas we are showcasing some of the festive items in our collection across our social networks. Behind the door of our virtual advent calendar today is…

The last date for posting Christmas mail to Japan is… (1970)

Poster advertising a leaflet entitled: ‘Guide to Overseas Christmas post dates’.

See larger images of all the items in our Virtual Advent Calendar on Flickr.

Virtual Advent Calendar – 10th December

In the lead-up to Christmas we are showcasing some of the festive items in our collection across our social networks. Behind the door of our virtual advent calendar today is…

Post earlier for this Christmas (c. 1935)

Poster advising on early posting times over the festive period.

Artist: Leonard Beaumont.

See larger images of all the items in our Virtual Advent Calendar on Flickr.

Design: GPO Posters

Design: GPO Posters, a new book by Dr Paul Rennie, has just been published. Dr Rennie is Head of Context in Graphic Design at Central St Martins College of Art, and a past contributor to the BPMA podcast.

Design: GPO Posters

Featuring over 100 posters commissioned by the General Post Office (GPO) from 1930-1970, the book showcases the work of artists such as Edward McKnight Kauffer and Tom Eckersley.

The book is part of the award winning Design series produced by the Antique Collector’s Club and designed by Brian Webb, another past contributor to the BPMA podcast, and also a noted stamp designer. Other books in the Design series include Design: David Gentleman.

Design: GPO Posters and Design: David Gentleman are both available from the BPMA online shop for £12.50.