Something extra to normal service here. In November I will be attending the Heritage of the Air conference in Canberra at University House, ANU, where I will be convening a session on Operating Historic Aircraft. Website here, call for papers details here. And the headline. Papers are solicited ASAP, (7th June) so please, if you’re…
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…
Killer in a Harry Tate
Today’s Poster. From Heritage Auctions, a newspaper strip featuring Great war ace Captain F.R. McCall, and drawn by American artist Clayton Knight. This was one of a series of posters, I chose this one because it shows a typical final artwork as photo-reproduced for newspaper publication, and it features an ace with an unusual career, as…
Rupert’s Aeroplane Adventure
From a Facebook post come these two photographs of delightful period book illustrations from the Rupert Bear series, Rupert being a much-loved children’s book character in the UK, still going strong from these early adventures starting in the 1920s. Annie Hughes writes: “With thanks to a correspondent following the Ch5 Programme ‘British Airways- 100 Years…
3,000 km Across the Atlantic
Today’s Poster. Commemorating Italo Balbo’s 1930 flight of twelve Savoia-Marchetti S.55 flying boats from Orbetello Airfield, Italy to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil between 17 December 1930 and 15 January 1931. The poster is listed as from 1931 – I.G.A.P. Roma, 98 cm x 140 cm, artist : Umberto Di Lazzaro. This is where the term…
Eely Nude
Today’s Poster. Certainly not the sort of thing one might expect promoting a flying week. Apparently nude women in the reeds (with eel tails!?) were a thing in the 1900s. Antwerp’s 1909 week of aviation. (Anvers being the French name for the town.) The aircraft are (more?) realistic, featuring a dirigible, an Antoinette monoplane (probably…
Brassy Demoiselle
A very neat piece of silverware, with a brass aircraft, representing a Santos-Dumont Demoiselle. More later. James Kightly, Vintage Aero Writer.
Night-Light-Mare
Two similar themed nightmarish civil defence warning posters issued by German authorities. The first has a skeleton riding a British Bristol Blenheim, while the lower one a very approximate American-starred four-engined bomber above a bomb-spitting skeleton. Turn those lights out! James Kightly, Vintage Aero Writer.
Power’s Swirl
Today is a 1935 linocut, the original print being just over a foot square. A dramatic and dynamic work, by Cyril E Power, it fits well with his oeuvre, many of the linocuts featuring dynamic, swirling, moving shapes inside a square frame. It’s entitled ‘air raid’, which is interesting as it would be better entitled…
Service on Air
Today’s Poster.A classic from Fougasse, for Imperial Airways of his lightfooted airline steward. Fougasse was the pen name of Cyril Kenneth Bird, CBE. Not only is the poster a classic design with Bird’s light, sure penmanship, but it is, apparently in recent use as part of British Airway’s menus. James Kightly, Vintage Aero Writer. Image…
A Year of Aviation Illustration & Art 