Kew Gardens Art for London Transport Book of Postcards

The modern graphic poster, made possible by advances in printing technology in the 1890s, subsequently revolutionized the field of advertising. This new medium was put to good use by an early director of the London Underground, Frank Pick, who was charged with the Underground s publicity in 1908. Pick recognized the potential of this new medium to increase ridership and began commissioning artists to produce designs to promote the Underground s many destinations.
A very early poster, from 1908, was one for Kew Gardens that depicted the gardens famous ten-story Great Pagoda. Already a well-attended attraction by the mid 1800s, Kew Gardens, with its beautiful grounds and picturesque location beside the Thames River, continued to grow in popularity throughout the years, and the expansion of the London Underground made it easier for people to visit. London s gardens have always been extremely well promoted on posters for the Underground, as the subject lends itself perfectly to bright, vibrant, and eye-catching design. Many posters simply publicized the seasonal bloom, including bluebells, crocuses, and daffodils, and the posters for Kew Gardens were no exception.
Dozens of posters advertising Kew Gardens were produced in the first three decades of the twentieth century; all but one of the posters in this collection are from that period. The thirty images in this book of postcards are from the London Transport Museum, one of the finest poster archives in the world. For a century, copies of every poster produced for the Underground were kept, and when the collection was transferred to the Museum in the 1980s, it contained more than 5,000 printed posters and almost 1,000 original artworks. Steadily growing since then, it now offers a uniquely comprehensive overview of a century of British graphic design.
Pomegranate s books of postcards contain up to thirty top-quality reproductions bound together in a handy, artful collection. Easy to remove and produced on heavy card stock, these stunning postcards are a delight to the sender and receiver. Postcards are oversized and may require additional postage.