Yesterday I promised a mass of posters for today’s post, and here we are. Tracing the variety of Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij N.V. (Royal Dutch Aviation Company – KLM) ‘Flying Dutchman’ themed posters. First is the set with updated aircraft types (all overlaying intentionally similar ‘Flying Dutchman’ ship artwork) as machines and routes improved in the…
Category: Ephemera
A Transatlantic Menu
A magnificently produced menu card to commemorate Alcock and Brown’s successful non-stop flight across the Atlantic, here from a blog from the RAF Museum highlighting a fascinating range of artefacts from their archives relating to the flight. As the cover of the menu says, it’s a VIP event, with Capt J Alcock DSC, and Lt…
Concorde Swirls
A record sleeve today, a first for the blog, probably not the last. Certainly not the first or the last featuring the unique shape of Concorde however. The record sleeve, image supplied by Dr Peter Hobbins, has a magnificent 1970 style aesthetic. The image features a test model of the Aérospatiale / BAC Concorde supersonic…
Airmail Pad
Sometimes it seems every other post is going to feature a poster, so I’m always on the lookout for other things. Here’s a great one-off on the blog, thanks to my friend and colleague Maurice Austin. An airmail pad, or ‘writing tablet’. The aircraft is fitted with unusually effective landing lights! Over to Maurice: “It’s…
Through the Prop
Something different again, thanks to my friend and colleague Chad Matthew Hill of Django Studios. Books with see-through pages, or pages that overlay onto the next are usually regarded as kids’ stuff, but here we can see a very adult use in explaining the complex mechanism of the Hamilton Standard ‘Hydromatic’ feathering propeller*. Here’s a…
Ghost on the Label
Another neat item courtesy Gregory Alegi in Italy, an air freight parcel label. Gregory writes: “Air freight label of ALI [Avio Linee Italiane] Flotte Riunite, hence post 1949, used to ship a model train from Rome to Milan. It was a Christmas gift for a well-to-do twelve year-old, who eventually went on to become a…
Print VC-Tenderness
A fine selection of British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) promotional material for today’s post. Shared by Shea Oakley on the Facebook BOAC Jet Junior Club (link) Shea’s personal collection displayed shows how well an airline could promote a competitive advantage with a premium type, here the Vickers VC 10 and Super VC 10 airliners –…
Sparky Card
Something rather different today, our first ‘paper aeroplane’ on the blog. Here’s the cover, of the 1930s KLG Sparkplugs promotional toy, which features the Supermarine Schneider trophy racer at top right and Sir Malcolm Campbell’s Bluebird land speed record car below – justifying the claim: ‘The fastest plug in the world’. Below is the folded-out…
Duocolour Bomba
A postcard today, from the wartime Italian era Ministerio Dell ‘Aeronautica. Of interest for two reasons – artistically, a limited colour palette is unusual in postcards and the like, and in aeronautical terms a ‘bombing up’ moment was rarely chosen as an art subject (although there are plenty of photographs, though, again, rarely as a…
Biggin Mug
Today’s art is a graphic text design – on a mug. Through the late eighties airshows I collected a mug a show, as far as I could. Some were specific to the even, or as here to the event and its year. Artistically this Biggin Hill Airshow mug isn’t anything particularly notable, except that such…
A Year of Aviation Illustration & Art 