Collection: ORIGINAL VINTAGE 1890s POSTERS

By the 1890s the modern advertising poster had arrived in spectacular fashion. Advances in colour lithography gave artists the freedom to work at scale, while streets, theatres and shops provided an expanding audience for bold printed advertising. Posters were becoming both commercial objects and a serious field for artists and collectors.

Surviving originals from the decade are now relatively uncommon, and condition has to be understood in the context of paper that was made to be displayed rather than preserved for more than a century. Each poster here is described individually with its date, format, condition and artist or printer information where known.

Our history of the poster puts this period into the wider story of poster design.