I’ve posted before about Edward McKnight Kauffer. Here’s an early design, by him, for a cotton manufacturer in manchester. These simple labels were attached to bales of printed cotton for export to the South American market.
Kauffer produced a series of labels over a number of years, 36 in total – 1916 through to 1926.
Here is the cover of a railway guide to the Cornish Riviera, published by the Great Western Railway in 1934. The text is by SPB Mais and the cover is by Edward McKnight Kauffer.
Kauffer was a genius of graphic design before the term really existed…He’s included as his own section in my book, Modern British Posters (2010). Here’s the text of that section…
The American artist and poster designer, Edward McKnight Kauffer (1890-1954), made a crucial contribution to design in Britain during the period before WW2.
Kauffer was born into the relative isolation of the American mid-west. His precocious artistic talent first expressed itself through sketching and painting. In 1907, Kauffer joined an itinerant theatrical troupe as a kind of factotum with responsibilities extending from scenery painting, to sales, and advertising. Kauffer was persuaded in 1910 to travel westward, to Calfornia, by an actor colleague and friend, Frank Bacon. In San Fransisco, Kauffer was introduced, through Bacon, to the artistic circle of the bookseller and art-dealer Paul Elder. It was whilst working in Elder’s gallery that Kauffer met Professor Joseph McKnight, Professor of Elementary Education at the University of Utah.
McKnight quickly recognised Kauffer as a promising, but unformed, artistic talent and resolved to help. His motives appear to have been entirely generous and derived from a combination of religious conviction and belief in the transforming power of education. McKnight sponsored Kauffer, in 1912, to study in Chicago and to travel to Paris, and across Europe, to advance his artistic development.
Whilst in Chicago, Kauffer was able to visit the Armory Show, which after its notorious debut in New York, had travelled into the American heartland. The Armory Show introduced America to the major artistic developments of European painting and sculpture ranging from Delacroix to Duchamp and from Picasso and Braque to Kandinsky.
The response to the show, amongst Kauffer’s colleagues in Chicago, was one of cultural outrage. For Kauffer, and based on what he had seen at the Armory Show, Europe offered a compelling combination of artistic ferment and advanced cultural tolerance. In 1913 Kauffer travelled to Europe, where his itinerary took him to Venice, Munich and Paris. In the end, Kauffer’s stay in Paris was curtailed by the beginning of WW1. In 1914, Kauffer moved to London, expecting to travel onto America without delay.
A combination of factors made Britain seem especially attractive to Kauffer. The general cultural atmosphere in London was more advanced and adventurous than in Chicago whilst, at the same time, appearing less obviously intimidating than that which he had encountered in Munich and Paris.
Kauffer resolved to commit himself to an artistic career in Britain and to stay, by his own efforts, for as long as possible. His interest in both landscape painting and formal experiment allowed his to join both Roger Fry’s Bloomsbury group and the more obviously avant-gardist grouping of Vorticist artists around Wyndham Lewis.
The response to Kauffer’s painting was not encouraging. In an effort to support himself he began to search out poster commissions and other design work. A meeting with John Hassall, in 1915, provided him with an introduction to Frank Pick…
The circuitous route by which Kauffer and Pick came to meet is important because it describes the combination of influences that Kauffer brought to poster design after 1915. His beginnings as a theatrical scenery painter, in Amerca, provided him with a clear sense of how scale, colour and simplification could be combined effectively. In Europe, Kauffer immediately responded to the sophisticated simplifications of Ludwig Hohlwein’s poster designs in Munich. By the time Kauffer reached Britain, he was familiar with a wide range of artistic ideas from across Europe.
Kauffer’s instinctive disposition towards the scale and drama of the poster, along with his conceptual and artistic sophistication, was unusual in Britain. The combination was attractive to Pick who, as a founder member of the DIA, was committed to improving general standards of design. Pick immediately began to commission poster designs from the young American. In the end, Kauffer and Pick worked together until 1939
McKnight Kauffer provided a new kind of bridge between the separate worlds of fine art and poster design. The first artists to attempt poster design had, typically, simply produced their usual work in poster form. Kauffer was able, by temperament and opportunity, to develop a visual language that synthesised a number of different visual elements from modern art into poster design. By producing, over time, a coherent visual language that combined colour, scale, abstraction, simplification, and integration, Kauffer was able to advance the scope of poster communication beyond the prosaic demands of the advertising industry. Suddenly, posters appeared bigger and brighter and more audacious.
In 1924 Kauffer wrote his Art of the Poster, an important book that established the historical and aesthetic developemnts that defined the modern poster. This intelligent and rigorous engagement with the activities of graphic design began to establish a new standard of professionalism and conceptual sophistication for the industry.
During the 1920s and 1930s Kauffer established himself as the most important poster and graphic designer in Britain. He worked for Pick and for Stephen Tallents at the Post Office and for many, many other clients.
Kauffer forged an especially productive relationship with the sophisticated Jack Beddington of Shell. A more-or-less continuous stream of Kauffer posters contributed to the Shell campaign from 1929 onwards. The posters show the constant experiment and range of influences that drove Kauffer onwards.
In addition to the consistent patronage offered him by these figures, Kauffer was also helped by the support of Peter Gregory, a director of the printing firm Lund Humphries. The printers were also the publishers of The Penrose Annual. This book was the trade annual in which were combined writings and examples of technical innovation, aesthetic experiment and cultural engagement.
Gregory was conscious of the relationship between modern technological development in the print industry and the opportunity for new forms of visual communication. Lund Humphries positioned themselves, within the print industry, as pioneers of both technological development and innovation and also of design and visual invention. In practical terms, this meant attempting to understand how photographic elements could be integrated into the existing visual language of the print economy.
In order to drive this project forward, Gregory gave Kauffer a studio at the firm’s London offices in Bedford Square. With the resources of the printing firm behind him, the Kauffer studio became a kind of visual laboratory. The studio was a bigger and more collective environment in which to work. The implicit direction, across every activities of the studio and its resources, was towards experimentation and problem solving in creative design.
The offices also included a gallery space where exhibitions of international and new work were presented to the public. These spaces became, by the end of the 1930s, the main entry point for émigré artists and designers into London’s creative economy.
By the 1930s, Kauffer had become established, by reputation and work, as the major modernist designer in Britain. His work for Shell provided him with a direct association with one of Britain’s largest companies. The campaign was recognised as the most sophisticated of artistic advertising and the work was seen and recognised at local and international level. In addition, his studio at Lund Humphries became the starting point for a dialogue, with other designers, about efforts to integrate surrealist and photographic elements into the visual repertoire of poster design.
Kauffer designed a number of posters for the Great Western Railway for holiday destinations in Cornwall and Devon.
Here’s a lovely bit of “home-made” graphic design for an Ian Allan. It’s a pocket-sized quiz book. Ideal for the time spent waiting for things to happen on the railway station platform.
I love the arbitrary design choices – it’s just what they had to hand. The idea of using an appropriate typeface, for instance, didn’t worry them. Incidentally, the oversized shadow italic used for the title was popular for shop-fronts in the 1950s.
The lettering looks like a rub-down. Letraset started in 1959 and was huge in the 1960s. But, this looks like a 1950s design and the engine is from the 1930s.
It’s a real throwback.
PS
The questions are really difficult and need a detailed knowledge of railways to answer. So, not just a game.
In the years after WW2, the French railways, SNCF, began an ambitious project to electrify their mainline services. This was all part of rebuilding the railways after the war and, also, of re-establishing France’s reputation as a technical power-house.
By the 1955, French passenger trains held the world speed records for railways at just above 300kph. The engine was a type CC7100, built by Alstom.
There’s an old black-and-white film of the 1955 record on YouTube.
The more recent TGV record stands at almost 60okph! Also, powered by Alstom. If you want to know how fast 600kph is at ground level, watch the film on YouTube.
Don’t forget that film will tend to slow things down!
Here’s another picture found by my colleague, David Hendley. In this one, the engine is moving and the picture is taken, I guess, from a bridge above the tracks.
The photographer has chosen his spot well. The train is moving slowly and applying power to get the heavy freight train moving. There may be a little up-hill slope to make things more interesting. The blowing engine – with steam and smoke flying – is working really hard.
The best place to get this kind of image in London is on the pull up from Euston to Camden. You just need to know when a steam train is scheduled. The cutting, out of Euston, is pretty steep to Camden. In the early days there was a system of ropes to haul trains up. Later, the engines were doubled up.
Because of the way that the cutting is built, you’ll have to take a small photographer’s ladder to see over the wall.
Incidentally, the steam, smoke and soot, associated with all this effort is what blighted the area north of Euston. Camden and Primrose Hill were both blighted and given over to cheap bed-sits, with large populations of people coming and going.
The west-coast mainline electrification in the 1960s was the signal for the gentrification for this part of London.
My colleague, David Hendley, photography tutor at CSM has been busy finding me fabulous old pictures of railway engines.
Here’s a streamliner from France (Paris-Lyon-Marseille).
It’s not easy to get a good photo of a train – moving or standing still. The engine is big, but can usually only be viewed from a three-quarter angle and to the side of the track.
Here, the photographer has done several clever things –
One, the loco is polished so that its streamlined shape has some interesting highlights and reflections. That definitely adds interest and increases the three-dimensional quality of the image.
Two, the S-shaped line on the front of the engine adds a lovely sinuous quality to the machine.
Three, the steam escaping from the piston valves adds drama.
Fourth, the engine driver adds a note of human interest and scale. Also, the figure makes the scale and size of the machine comprehensible.
Fifth and finally, the low-POV super-sizes the front of the engine and makes the vanishing point of the perspective more dramatic.
So, that’s a really well thought-through photo where the static engine has been made interesting, dramatic and dynamic to compensate for a lack of actual movement.
Brilliant.
If you use a wide-angle lens the vanishing-point perspective of the train will be exaggerated to dramatic effect, (that’s the diagonal of the train disappearing down the track). The depth-of-field associated with wide-angle pictures is much deeper than that with a standard lens. So, if you light the picture well, everything is pin-sharp, even though it seems further away.
If you use a lens with a longer focal-point, the depth-of-field will be compressed and more of the picture will be out-of-focus. That adds a different kind of drama.
The technical parameters of the photograph are set by movement and light. Balancing exposure, light and focal depth-of-field is tricky; especially when the train is travelling quickly towards you.
But, the railway provides a pretty consistent picture opportunity. You know that the train will pass at a certain time and you can practice the shot! Nevertheless, a good railway picture is difficult to achieve.
This is a picture, from Friday evening’s Standard, of a young woman standing on a freight train parked at Hackney Wick station in East London. A harmless, if stupid, bit of fun you may think; except that the train is powered from overhead electric cables with tens of thousands of volts in them…so, her head is roughly where the cables are! The electricity in the cables will be making a fizzing noise too.
She lasted 15 minute larking about and then touched a cable – and was thrown 20 feet across the station and, amazingly, survived. How she managed that is almost incomprehensible.
Larking about on the railway is always dangerous – there are a huge machines, moving fast and big electrical forces. The railway goes to great lengths to warn people of the dangers.
It’s worth reflecting that, with power in the cable, there would have been an audible fizz of electricity. Added to which, the woman was standing, or dancing, or whatever, on a metal container. It’s a good job for rubber-soled trainers. And AC current.
If you want to know about the difference between AC and DC electricity, look at the work of Nikola Tesla.
I found this wood-engraving on google by accident…it shows happy factory workers leaving the railway workshop against a backdrop of brand new diesel locos…This is obviously an image associated with the great Chinese modernisation of the 1950s. Implicit in this image is the idea of technology and production expressing the idea of progress.
The Chinese weren’t the only people to embrace this idea – each of the major western economies recast themselves as technologically and socially progressive in the years after WW2.
These Chinese engines look like the French SNCF locos that were the fastest in the world at the time…obviously, the French were pioneers of electric power and overhead cables; so diesels didn’t really cut it. But they certainly looked modern at the time.
Incidentally and with the benefit of 50 odd years of hindsight…it would have been better for developing economies to embrace the modernisation of steam power. The rush to electrification or diesel power, ruthlessly promoted by western industrial interests, has tended to place developing economies in-hock to western suppliers.
In Africa, steam power has allowed for a level of local autonomy and allowed operators to side-step problems with parts, maintenance and fuel. Still, it must have seemed like a good idea at the time.
What most of the world really needs is actually a 21C super-efficient steam loco. Jonathan Glancey has written convincingly about this.
Still and in the great scheme of things, railway engines are the least of it.
When I was small, there was a TV series of train driver adventures with Casey Jones…he always wore a particular kind of cotton jacket with a distinctive woven stripe. You can see the effect on the cap that Casey wears on the stamp.
This was distinctively different from the bleu de travail worn by French railway workers.
A lot of people in design wear vintage style work wear – I do myself. Heavy duck dungarees, by Carhartt, and a WW2 submariner sweater from NSC, since you ask. I guess I am trying to pretend that sitting about all day watching old movies and reading magazines is real work…the new building at KX is on the railway lands site and the whole place has something of an enormous machine about it…a bit like the USS Enterprise; but steam powered, not WARP.
Back in the 1920s the Soviet designers of the avant-garde wore work wear and leather jackets to align themselves, as constructors, with the builders and factory-workers of the revolution…the association of workers and intellectuals was identified by left politics as providing a decisive force for change – brains and critical mass! Frustratingly, this class alliance has generally not been very effective or long-lasting.
The intellectuals take the view that jobs in the service of capital are exploitative and undignified; the workers proudly cling to their traditions and identity associated with their work and trades.
Here’s an early 19C trade card, engraved on metal with a lovely old loco and some elegant typography. The black and white provides a terrific sparkle, or dazzle, that catches the eye.
