In 2005 Eyestorm published a series of five limited edition prints with legendary British Pop artist Sir Peter Blake that were inspired by his collection of old Victorian postcards. Read more about the work below.
I feel lucky to have worked closely with
Peter Blake during my time at Eyestorm. He is of course one of Britain’s best-known living artists, with works held in major collections such as the Tate and the National Portrait Gallery, and has become a somewhat legend since creating the Sergeant Pepper album cover for The Beatles almost 50 years ago. I never actually visited his studio as we always met at the printers, but as rumour has it he’s a bit of a hoarder, which I’m sure anyone who’s familiar with his work won’t be surprised to hear seeing most of it centres round found objects and culture references from the past.
When we published the ‘Fag Packets’ series back in 2004, Peter came to the first meeting with a box of old cigarette packets that he’d collected over the years, with some dating back to the 1940s. Looking through them was like going back in time; I loved seeing all the retro designs on the packets and thinking about where each one had been before it ended up in a London screenprinting studio in the 21st century. We eventually selected the ones we thought would make fantastic prints, and the result was works such as
Fag Packets (Visa) and
Fag Packets (Fifth Avenue), which we currently have one of each available on the secondary market.
The Victoria Postcard series came about in a similar way to the Fag Packets in that they were created using found objects - in this case postcards - that Peter had collected over the years. Whether they were found all together or at various different times and locations is unknown, but either way they’ve been brought together to make a curious collection of works that exemplify Blake’s love for times gone by.
Each featuring a different lady in Victorian attire posing for the camera, the images are intriguing as we wonder who these young women were, where they lived and what their lives were like. Something interesting here is that while four of the images appear to be straight photographs of a solitude female posing with flowers, presumably to increase the ‘femininity’ of the image,
Victorian Postcard Series 1 sees the subject posing in a large brimmed hat and the photograph seems to stop at her waist. To avoid her looking like she’s been decapitated, her body from the waist down appears to have been drawn into the image to create a skirt, along with the background to make her look as if she’s standing on a beach. The drawing was done onto the postcard after the photograph was printed, which gives us an interesting insight into the creative processes that were around at the time. This postcard could have been sent from someone’s holiday by the sea, and so they drew in the landscape to give it more of a context. Why the bottom half of the woman was missing I’m unsure; the Victorians were known to ‘adapt’ photographs on occasions, either by tinting them to add colour, or by scratching away at the image to remove parts of it they didn’t want to appear in the picture.
Another one that stands out is
Victorian Postcard Series 2, which sees the subject look to the side of the camera as opposed to meeting the viewer’s eye as the other four do. This girl looks peaceful and content, a little shy perhaps as she poses naturally, in contrast to others who seem happy to confidently pose.
The many stories that can be applied to each and every one of these pictures, stretching our imagination, is a captivating aspect for me. Printed beautifully in vibrant colours with a silkscreen glaze, each exists in a limited edition of 95, signed and numbered by Sir Peter Blake. We have a very limited number available of each.
See the works in more detail
here.