Today’s Poster, featuring the first flying competition at Berlin, Germany’s new airfield. Recognisable types include, top, a Wright Flyer, and below it, a Bleriot. Details from the Swann auction site here: “LUCIAN BERNHARD (1883-1972) KONKURRENZ – FLIEGEN / AVIATIKER. 1909. 45 1/4×34 1/2 inches, 115×87 1/2 cm. Hollerbaum & Schmidt, Berlin. “For this event,…
Tag: 1900s
Tivoli Flyver Fest
Today’s Poster is from the remarkable Tivoli gardens in Denmark. It’s not clear whether this is a 1911 or 1916 poster (going by the aircraft looking a little like the Etrich Taube, I’m suspecting the earlier date). It is, however, by the Danish artist Thor Bogelund-Jensen and is advertising a ‘flier’s festival’ in Tivoli Gardens,…
Benz Power
It’s been a while since we’ve had a pioneer era item, and today’s poster is specifically advertising Benz engines for the pioneer aviator, 59 x 46 cm in size. The array of aircraft configurations encircling the giant motor, looking like an architectural memorial, seem to cover all (heavier than air) options – clearly for all…
Card Game Biplane
Lots of games and toys have representative ‘aeroplanes’ within them. Here’s one for the App Solitare by Mobility Ware from my phone. This is a biplane (so extra points) and while it ‘cheats’ by changing the dimensions of some cards to fill some bits of the structure, I think it captures the spirit of both…
Flight Food
Aviation gets used in advertising in many – some surprising – ways. Food advertising can include logical connections, but in the earlier days of aviation, when it was new and exciting, aviation was sometimes used where no connection existed. The idea of selling oats through an aircraft link seems odd today, but was clearly an…
Eastchurch Aviation Shrine
Creating representations of aircraft in stone is very difficult to do effectively, something about the lightness of early aviation and the sharp edges of most aircraft often does not translate well to stone. The Memorial to ‘The Home of Aviation’, at Eastchurch, Kent, UK, is a fascinating effort. Image: Eastchurch aviation memorial. Copyright Historic England…
Wright at Templehof
Today’s Poster features Orville Wright, of the pioneer aviators the Wright brothers making demonstration flights in Germany in 1909. The story behind these flights is told here. The poster is by Hans Rudi Erdt (1883-1918) and entitled ‘WRIGHTS Flugvorführungen‘, or ‘Wrights Flying Demonstrations’. Tempelhof was to become one of Berlin’s main airports, closing only recently…
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.
Mind the TREE!
Cranky, ‘homemade’ aircraft are a longtime staple of children’s illustration, but we mustn’t forget they would’ve seemed very different to readers in the early decades of heavier-than air flight in the early Twentieth Century – rather as we would look at homemade Mars Rovers or the like today. Here’s a somewhat eerie illustration by Austrian…
A Year of Aviation Illustration & Art 