Posted by on Jul 15, 2011 in Advertising posters, Poster Art | 0 comments

Vintage Bicycle Posters

Vintage Bicycle Posters

Modern colored posters and bicycle are nearly the same age.  Chromolithography which allow the  fast and cheap mass production of colored posters was innvented in teh 1870s, after that posters started to become a good medium to advertise products as they could attract the passers-by attention with their eye catching colors and images and above all become memorable and forever associated with the products that they were trying to advertise.  The first bicycles were developed in the 1860s but you had to be almost an acrobat to be able to ride one. The famous penny-farthing, the bicycle  with the huge front wheel and the very small rear wheel, was first produced in 1870. It was only in the 1880s  with the invention of the so called ‘safety bicycle’ that cycling started to become very popular.  The safety bicycle’s design is very similar to that of our modern’s bicycle. The everybody wanted to ride and there is no surprise if there are so many vintage posters representing or advertising bicycles. Let’s have a look together at some of the best around, all of them can be bought and display in one of your rooms, not only they will look great but they are also a very affordable way to add some class and color to the same old four walls.

 

The first posters are by the artist Henri Gray that although he made several posters for Cycles Sirius, it is basically impossible to find much information about his life and other work.  These posters are now well known classics.

 

And above we have an American beauty, an Art Nouveau poster by Fred Winthrop Ramsdell.

 

This is another American poster advertising the Columbia penny farthing
French poster artists dominated at the time of the second poster above which was made in 1897 but hey were still very influential in the 1920s when the first poster was created.
As soon as bicycles became popular people started to race with them and a new sport was born, posters moved on to advertise just the products but also the events. These two posters have a distinctive Art Deco look.


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