The advertising trope known as “poster stamps” started in the late 19th-early 20th century. An offshoot of the large street poster craze, for the most part these stamps were faithfully reproduced versions of larger works.
I collected hundreds of them—many originally designed for the small scale, and many miniatures of what today are classic plakat and affiche.
Judge magazine, 1914, was a popular American “humor” magazine that covered culture.
In Europe, the “poster stamp craze” was, in part, triggered by a dentist, Hans Sachs, who founded the Verein der Plakat Freunde with Hans Meyer in 1905. They started the society in a small room with walls covered in international posters. Lucian Bernhard was asked to do the logo and become the art counselor. Lectures were held and gregarious evenings were common. Membership increased at first, but after the first year, interest plummeted. It was agreed that the society had to be transformed from a club of art lovers to an organization of professionals. From this grew an entire cult of posters known as the Sachplakat, or Object Poster. Out of this interest evolved the practice and passion for poster stamps.
A wide range of poster stamps is in demand today. Albums abound at book fairs and auctions. Finding them is like having an original poster in your pocket, without the need for precious wall space or flat files. And you can find them in the latest edition of Pentagram Papers, which is excerpted below.
Pentagram Papers #50: Poster Stamps
The latest Pentagram Papers is designed by Associate Partner Jane Plüer and features some of her extensive collection of poster stamps. …
Designed as miniature advertisements, they could be found stuck on envelopes, letters and bills. The stamps were created by commercial artists, illustrators and printers, who all added their own effects and interpretations, often including the work of contemporary artists of the time.
Poster stamps were printed in the same way as postage stamps, in multiples on large sheets separated by perforated edges with a glued backing. The visual style, originality and intricacy of their graphics made them popular collectables with both adults and children, with people keeping their collections in specially produced albums.
The poster stamps in issue 50 originate from German-speaking Continental Europe, including Austria, old Czechoslovakia and Germany. This was the heartland of Modernism, the main inspiration for the heyday of poster stamp design in the 1920s and ’30s, and then its revival from the 1950s to the 1970s.
Whereas the 19th-century poster stamps showed different influences, from Japanese prints to Art Nouveau, the advent of Modernism in the early part of the 20th century unleashed several new artistic styles, from Fauvism, Cubism and Constructivism to De Stijl, Dada and Art Deco. These styles took their cues from machines and technology, practicality and usefulness. They caught the popular mood and were perfect for the miniature world of the poster stamp.