Vintage ski posters hike up the market slope: with the Winter Olympic Games just around the corner and the sport of skiing more popular than ever, vintage ski posters have become art markets stars - Vintage Ski Posters - Statistical Data Included - Brief Article

Art Business News, Jan, 2002 by Laura Meyers

When Winter Olympics enthusiasts escape the cold in Salt Lake City, Utah, next month by sauntering into the Downtown Marriott Hotel, they may feel transported back up the mountain. After a $10-million facelift, which was completed in October, the hotel has opened Elevations, a restaurant that is decorated as an Alpine lodge, with slate floors, a river rock fireplace, antler chandeliers, a buck's head over the mantle and vintage ski posters on the walls.

Hearkening back to the first period of mass ski tourism, these bold and colorful vintage posters capture the pleasure of a brisk outdoor vacation in the mountains. One can almost feel the swoosh of an athlete's skis as they glide down the powdery slope through an evergreen glade, the exhilaration of a perfect ski jump or the thrill of viewing breathtaking vistas of majestic snowcapped peaks.

Sought after by art collectors and ski aficionados like, vintage posters depicting skiing, ski resorts, ski equipment and clothing convey the fun and excitement of playing and competing in the snow. These period posters, dating from the turn of the century until the 1960s, reflect the history of skiing itself, as the activity was transformed from a leisure class holiday pastime to a mass market sport, to a major industry attracting nearly 26 million skiers worldwide. The posters represent skiing's changes in techniques and equipment and in the resorts themselves over the decades.

And the market for vintage ski posters is booming. According to Nicholas Lowry, president of Swann Auction Galleries in New York and the firm's poster specialist, "The market for ski posters has been growing over the past few years ... As recently as four years ago, ski posters were considered primarily a European phenomenon, but American ski posters have begun to make tremendous gains." One example, noted Lowry, is the fact that rare lithographic ski posters at the high end of the market have more than quadrupled in value in the past five years.

An Interest of Olympic Proportions

Interest in vintage ski posters is expected to be markedly high at two specialist auction sessions scheduled in February during the Olympics. On Feb. 8, the opening day of the 2002 Winter Olympics, Swann will hold its annual winter sale of vintage posters with an evening session devoted solely to ski posters. The following week, on Feb. 13, Christie's South Kensington (London) will hold its fifth-annual Ski Sale, which is devoted solely to vintage ski posters, paintings and sculpture.

"There's definitely crossover generating more interest," said Nicolette White, Christie's 19th-and 20th-century poster specialist. "People are more aware of winter sports during the Winter Olympics. Just as we tend to find that summer sports posters garner more interest [in related art] in the wake of the Summer Olympics, we might see the same thing this winter."

An Historical Overview

Skiing was transportation, not sport, until the 1880s. As the social and sporting elements became a part of the activity, the first ski posters were commissioned around 1890 to entice a public which did not yet ski. These images weren't necessarily realistic. An early poster, created by Abel Faivre in 1905 for PLM Railway, depicted a pretty blond girl on a snow-covered mountaintop perfectly coifed--a feather in her cap--in an ankle-length touring dress.

After World War I, skiing became a viable holiday option for many Europeans and Americans. During this first period of mass ski tourism in the 1920s and 1930s, some of the era's best poster artists were commissioned to create advertisements promoting the sport itself, the resorts and the lifestyle. Until the 1940s, most of these vintage posters were hand-pulled stone lithographs. In the 1950s, offset printing processes began to be used. By the 1960s, this style of poster to promote skiing became passe, with advertisers switching instead to enlarged color photographs of, for example, a skier catching air.

The Market for Vintage Ski Posters

Ski posters bridge three categories found in the vintage poster market--sports, transportation and travel--and tend to appeal, unsurprisingly, to ski devotees. But there is broader interest as well.

"In general, ski posters are widely popular because they tend to be visually appealing with a lot of action, trying to convey the fun of skiing," said dealer Pam Immendorf, owner of Joie de Vivre Vintage Posters in Bainbridge, Ga.

Like most vintage posters, ski posters "were designed to catch people's attention," added Lowry. "Ski posters are bright, sunny and even loud. They use bold images, large blocks of color and, often, bizarre juxtapositions."

For example, a unique circa 1945 poster of ski champion Gretchen Fraiser depicts her standing on the slopes of Sun Valley, Idaho, listening to an out-of-place, short-sleeved accordionist sitting beside her.

According to dealers, a popular type of ski posters are those that promote snow trains--special passenger trains that carried skiers to resorts in New England, the Western U.S. and throughout Europe. Often these snow trains were a "self-contained ski trip on wheels, in which the train itself was used as a ski lodge, and people ate in the dining car," according to a Swann catalog description.