Doe and Hope

Description

The anomalously designed original colour process lithograph, published by GPO London, the whole showing a busy everyday scene with mail man and van and to the background one of the oldest buildings in Cambridge, the Round Church situated on Round Church/Sidney Street, with stamp PRD 1256 was printed by Sydney Lee in the third quarter of the twentieth century.

Condition is very good there is some light vertical creasing where the poster has been folded prior to being framed. The poster is presented in a large simple frame and glazed ready to hang.

The period between 1930-60 was the golden age of GPO artwork with artists such as Edward McKnight Kauffer (1890-1954), Tom Eckersley (1914-1995), Leonard Beaumont (1891-1986) and F. K. Henrion (1914-1990) working making the General Post Office at the cutting edge of poster design and mass communication. Through the medium of basic text, images and colour the posters show how the posters translated, often complex, messages to the public in order to educate them. Technological developments in the postal service, which comment on social changes, such as the introduction of airmail, can also be traced through the posters. These artists all had individual styles but they all achieved the same ends to communicate sometimes complex messages via colour, brief text and image.

The General Post Office (GPO) was established in 1657 as a monopoly service, combining the functions of state postal and telecommunications carrier and spawning similar services across the British Empire. From 1660-1969 it was a State Department but in 1969 it became a statutory corporation named The Post Office.

Of special interest to those with links with Cambridge.