I promised something more cheerful today, so here we are. Today’s pulp cover is the unarguably excellent ‘Zeppelin Stories’, this issue featuring ‘The Gorilla of the Gas Bags’ by Gil Brewer. With a cover like that, you know it’s going to be all good stuff inside, right? A bit of background from the website ‘The…
Tag: Animal
Fly Down to Africa
Today a pair of posters that feature semi abstract African themes, and promoting the ‘Jet DC-8’ (when a jet was a notable differentiating advantage in airline advertising). Two different airlines though, UAT (Union Aéromaritime de Transport) and Air Afrique, which developed as an African owned and operated airline from UAT and other elements. Both posters…
Air France World 2
Today’s Poster follows yesterday’s. Designed by Lucien Boucher, it’s a 1949 poster advertising the ‘Orient – Extreme Orient’ destination with a orientalist design theme. A magnificent bird faces a Chinese style pagoda, with an Indian building behind it, all located over a map extending from India to China and the Oriental nations in between. Top…
But wait! Balloon Races!
Today’s Poster. A classic interwar post art deco design in 1933, featuring an eagle, Gee Bee and allied racers – and a balloon race! Well there y’go. James Kightly, Vintage Aero Writer. From the Smithsonian’s online catalogue here. Sponsor: Chicago Daily News, Other: National Aeronautic Association. Medium: Poster, Advertising, Air Shows and Races. Dimensions:…
Lysander’s Bones
Today’s Poster is a very rare one. Not because of the topic, which strangely enough inspired multiple posters, but because of the subject aircraft. The Westland Lysander has appeared in a number of adverts promoting its role, but not often as just a backdrop to another topic. The text reads: “Salvage Bones to make Glycerine…
Tidy Bombing
An Argentine cartoon from ‘Quino’; or Joaquín Salvador Lavado Tejón. It’s a great visual gag, worked through in detail. The aircraft connection? The picture on the wall is, of course ‘Guernica’, by Pablo Picasso, the searing indictment of Fascist bombing, by Italian and German aircraft of civilians in the Spanish Civil War. The painting, of…
St Rota & Dragon
One of the numerous boy’s magazines from the inter war era, featuring a Cierva C-30 or Avro Rota autogiro. Specifically The Modern Boy No. 387 Vol. 15 19th January 1935. The registration, G-ACMB was in reality allocated to a DH.60X Moth. Even more surprising is the other subject, a inflated monster, something like a Nessie,…
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…
Story of Some Sticks
Something not often seen in detail. This is the Italian Fascist symbol cut from the fuselage of an unnamed Italian Regia Aeronautica aircraft during World War Two and kept as a trophy by an RAAF airman, and previously on display at the RAAF Museum Point Cook. (Excuse the lighting hot spots in the image.) Captured…
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 