ECKERSLEY LOMBERS

"Following two short visits to London about a year ago [1935] while still studying at Salford School of Art, Eric Lombers and myself decided that, if we were to succeed at all in the field of commercial art, we would have to take a chance and go to London. We were given the opportunity on the condition that if the outlook after six months was not promising, we were to return to Manchester. Then came the really hard period. We were in town seven weeks without being receiving a single drawing to do. " They were generally advised to go into a commercial studio as an employee. An early patron was the Nickeloid Electrotype Company to do a series of drawings "and given an entirely free hand on them." (see TE 'Searching London for Work'.)

Eric and I had two rooms in a house run by a French woman who took a few lodgers We had one room to work in, another to sleep in. We were there right up to the start of the War, when the partnership was dissolved.

Eric was a fellow pupil at Salford and we started to work together then on the same poster. Can you imagine that happening at an art school today? We used to push two tables together and get into a corner, working alone. He was from Manchester. He was thin - slim really - and very good at the technical side and developing things. He had a lot to do with that Scientists prefer Shell. Perhaps the idea would come from me and he'd take it up and make it better. He was very good at lettering. Lewitt-Him worked like that. We liked to go to the cinema Eric and I. To the theatre too. I often went to Lords and the Oval to watch cricket during this period (the Thirties).

EARLY WORK IN LONDON

I don't have much of the early work left. We did some illustrations for the newspapers, such as the News Chronicle which was a very good newspaper at that time. and they used to have a five day serial which they ran once a week. Eric Fraser did it some times, and Stanley Herbert and Arthur Wragg. Gerald Barry was the Editor then. Every Saturday they would do a green page, a children's story that would take up the whole page.

You'd find opportunities in the most unlikely places, finding a sympathetic spirit. We did some work for the Drapers' Record. There was a magazine called Man and his Clothes at that time that I remember.

We went for an interview with Christian Barman after we'd settled in London and started work for London Transport.

Our three pain sources of work were London Transport, Shell and Austin Reed. We did more work for LT than Shell for whom we did 4 published designs.

Did you ever approach Guinness?

We did after the War, but before, it was all Gilroy and his ilk there. I wouldn't have thought they would have considered the sort of things we were doing. It was all personal to Guinness.

Is it possible to break down your separate contributions to the poster?

I think he had his way of using one or two things. I put things in, he took them out, and vice versa. It is difficult to say. I don't think our posters look dated now. Looking at a Newbould, you knew exactly how it was done. With ours...? For the You can be sure of Shell with a Jockey's cap, we got an actual race card from Epsom and used it with all the names of the horses. This intrigued the viewer.

In 1939 Eric and I did a poster for the Peace Pledge Union. I felt what a lot of people felt, that I didn't want a war. People then didn't know what form it would take. I remember going to a cinema to see a documentary in 1936 about the First World War and thinking God I hope it doesn't happen again. I was otherwise never asked to do political posters. I would have done if it had been something I really believed in.. I couldn't do a poster for tobacco now (although I used to smoke) because my boys smoke and it worried me. I feel it would be wrong to do.

I wasn't really aware of Nazi propaganda, at least till afterwards. I did see the Spanish Civil War stuff later, and powerful stuff it was. I also did a poster on the French Resistance for the LT. In fact I did two on the theme of the swastika breaking up. I did one with a line of type breaking up the swastika and another without type which I liked more. The art director took the first. He apologised after. It was my mistake showing two designs.

FILM POSTERS

About 1937 we went to see Francis Meynell who had been appointed the Publicity Officer of United Artists in London. Meynell said it was very difficult to get anything interesting and fresh through Wardour Street. He asked me to do something for H.G.Wells, The Man who Could Work Miracles. They didn't use it. But he did commission a few things from us. But he left and went to an agency. Crowthers' I think.