The Handley Page HP 42 airliners of Imperial Airways are a familiar sight in the iconography of the interwar airways system as we’ve seen here – their interiors less so. What aspects and details can you identify in the images? Based (as my colleague Juanita Franzi explored so well in her paper at the Aviation…
Tag: Imperial Airways
Imperial Tube
Today’s Poster has an obvious heritage, that of Henry Beck’s iconic London Underground map. Previously ‘forgotten’, it’s an interesting take on the airline and public transport route map concept; something that has much more social history than is often realised. From the new “Airline Maps: A Century of Art & Design” book, details here. There’s…
Return of the Imperial
Here’s a pair and a quintet, with a lesson for those doing this job – check every copy found, in books and online. Several of the well known, even famous posters we’ve seen here exist in variant forms – sometimes with different text, sometimes with different backgrounds – or more, as we shall see. It’s…
Wing’d Frame
Today’s illustration is a nicely designed foldout timetable. This is the Imperial Airways winter timetable for 1931-1932 and shows the iconic Handley Page HP-42 airliner as used on the then long range routes to Africa, India and the Middle East. The unnamed artist has pulled off a very neat, simple-seeming yet complex design, using the…
Fine Frobisher
Today’s Poster is one of a series of Imperial Airways posters of the late thirties featuring their notable fleet of aircraft types, presented in cutaway form, a previous example shown on the blog, the Shorts C.30 flying boat being seen here. This time its the remarkably elegant de Havilland DH 91 Albatross four engine airliner,…
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…
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…
Posters Everywhere
Today’s Posters surprised me! Doing a project like this can start one seeing the subject pop up in all kinds of places, in a ‘seeing patterns’ kind of way, but this just leapt off the screen at me. It’s perhaps worrying that I’m so current in the topic that can point to the origin of…
Deco DH
I posted this image, on Facebook in February 2018, a year ago. It was taken by my friend and colleague the artist Ian Bott. It’s a magnificent Art Deco artwork featuring de Havilland DH.86 motif as used on an inter-war ocean liner. It’s between three and five foot long and was on show at the…
Empire Boat Cutaway
Our last post of January, and a special one. It’s a copy of an original of a well known image from the very brief era of the Imperial Airways and Qantas Short C Class flying boats. This original example was available from Christies, the auctioneers in 2012, sold for £2,500! There’s several things about this…
A Year of Aviation Illustration & Art 