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Service to Industry Brick Making poster – Charles Cundall – c1948

£4.50 – £16.00

Service to Industry Brick Making poster – Charles Cundall – c1948
Following World War II, the Rail Network across Britain was in a poor state. The additional work endured by the railways to aid the nation’s wartime effort, can be seen in wartime railway posters such as Frank Mason’s Unceasing Service, Leslie Carr’s ‘All Clear for the Guns’ poster and Reginald Mayes ‘In War and Peace We Serve’. 
The war took its toll on the railway. This coupled with the lack of investment during those years, brought many of Britain’s railway company’s  to the brink of bankruptcy. It was in need of serious change. It was considered that the railway network had performed better during wartime being run as one organisation. On 1 January 1948, the Big Four railway company’s, the Great Western Railway (GWR), London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS), London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) and Southern Railway (SR), were taken under Government control and nationalised to create one company, named British Railways.
One of British Railways earliest poster campaigns was the ‘Service To Industry’ series. A variety of artists were selected to create posters that showed Britain was getting back on its feet and that a regeneration of industry was taking place. Posters were created that,  amongst others, represented the Shipbuilding,  Steel Works, Fishing, Paper Making and Brick Making industries.
 
This reproduction is of a c1950’s Service to Industry Brick Making poster. It was illustrated by the English artist Charles Ernest Cundall. The poster is generic enough to be almost any brickworks. However, we believe it is most likely to be the London Brick Company works at Stewartby in Bedford. The Stewartby manufacturing plant railway station was serviced by the London and north Western Railway.  At the time it was the largest brickworks in the world. In 1935, the company was making over 1.5 billion bricks per year.
 
Cundall’s Service to Industry Brick Making poster shows the impressive scale of the Stewartby facility. Just to the left of the centre of the image is a green locomotive pulling several freight wagons that provides a scale of the size of the brick making plant. This kind of grand landscape scene is a familiar theme with many of Cundall’s works.
In a book titled Charles Cundall, written by Paul Liss, Sacha Llewellyn, Andrew Lambrith and Brian Foss offers a description of Cundall’s painting technique. ‘ After the war, as Chairman of the Steel Company of Wales (Air Commodore Harald) Peake commissioned Cundall to paint a series of paintings of the burgeoning production plants centered on Port Talbot in Glamorganshire’. The paintings combined grand scale, traditional landscapes with epic modern day industrial subjects.
The Stewartby Brickworks is due to be demolished, including the Grade II listed chimneys. The site is going to become a  new housing estate. To see the derelict site before it is completely demolished, there’s a superb video of the site and the remaining chimneys on Youtube. It was made in 2018 by  Jake Billing and is well worth taking a look at.
Our posters are carefully and professionally created from vintage originals. Whilst great care is taken in the production of these posters, we also try to maintain a vintage feel, so there may be small imperfections, fold marks, scuffs, tears, or marks that were part of the original poster master. If these do appear they should be visible on the larger views of the item on this listing. The originals of many of the posters we offer can cost many thousands of pounds, so whilst these posters look great, especially framed and mounted on a wall, they are intended as fun, affordable reproductionS and not intended fine art prints.

The 50x70cm version has been specially produced to be used in conjunction with Ikea’s 50x70cm Ribba picture frame which currently retails for around £15. So you can bag a bargain of print and poster for just £25.

 

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Description

These digitally enhanced posters are professionally printed with fade resistant inks on to a thick 300gsm silk poster card.

A4 posters are printed on to 300gsm silk artboard

A3, A2 and 50x70cm posters are printed on to 230gsm poster paper

Please Note: The 50 x 70cm posters on offer are printed on to a 190gsm art paper and are only available whilst stocks last.

All posters are despatched by 2nd class Royal Mail.Posters are posted  in either a hard backed envelope clearly marked ‘Do Not Bend’ or a sturdy postal tube.

This listing is for prints only, frames shown in any photos are not included in the sale.

Additional information

Size

A4, A3, A2, 50x70cm

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