The glamour and appeal of Swiss ski resorts extends to vintage posters

Of all the vintage snowsports posters auctioned at Lyon & Turnbull in Edinburgh last week, the one that perhaps best encapsulates the carefree golden age of pre-war skiing is Martin Peikert’s 1939 image for the Swiss resort of Gstaad. Wearing nothing but casual shirts and trousers – no need for hats or gloves, folks, even at 2,000m – a glamorous young couple are riding a chairlift towards two distant snowy peaks, their skis and poles resting against their knees, the gent puffing elegantly on a cigarette. Neither of them seems bothered about the fact that their chairlift is swinging about 30 degrees off-axis – which is just as well, really, as its rakish angle makes the whole composition much more compelling.

Peikert’s image was expected to fetch between £5,000 and £7,000 when it went under the hammer as part of Lyon & Turnbull’s annual Edinburgh Ski Sale, held in association with vintage poster specialists Tomkinson Churcher. In the end, though, it sold for £9,375 – the joint-highest price of the day alongside another Peikert design for Champéry.

The sale featured approximately 70 poster lots, with estimates ranging from £300 to £9,000. Many of them were drawn from the private collection of Roland and Marie Louise Zahnd, who inherited a large number of posters from Marielouise’s father, Louis Nicollier – a graphic designer who worked in Switzerland and Belgium during the 20s, 30s and 40s, allowing him to acquire work direct from lithographers and artists. All told, the auction raised £117,640, with a healthy 94 per cent selling rate.

According to Sophie Churcher of Tomkinson Churcher, while the ski industry itself is going through a challenging time, not least thanks to the effects of global warming, the market for vintage ski posters remains healthy. There are even companies like Pullman

Editions which now commission contemporary artists to make new posters in the classic style.

“The market for ski posters continues to grow,” she says, “as collectors and decorators look for creative and interesting ways to decorate their ski chalets and homes. The posters so perfectly convey the spirit of the sport, which is one of the reasons they are so sought after.”

Churcher cites Peikert as one of the more significant artists featured in the auction. Born in 1901 in the Swiss town of Zug, he studied at the Ecole des Beaux-arts in Geneva and worked as an advertising illustrator until he graduated in 1921. From 1925 to 1927 he worked as a designer on the newspaper Wochenschau, and from 1927 he worked as a freelance graphic artist and painter. By the 1940s he had moved to French-speaking Switzerland, where he created tourism posters for the Valais and the Bernese Oberland.

Other notable Swiss poster artists whose work featured in the auction are Herbert Leupin, Otto Baumberger, Emil Cardinaux and Alex Walter Diggelman. “His style is more painterly than Peikert’s,” Churcher says of Diggelman, “and his work conveys a romantic view of life in Switzerland in the 30s and 40s.”

In the ski poster market, however, there’s more at play than artists’ reputations. For a start, posters featuring skiers seem to sell for more than posters with generic views of mountains or resorts. Churcher confirms that, “generally speaking” there is more demand for posters featuring active skiers, although she maintains that the particular resort a poster promotes is also an important factor for many collectors. And then there’s the vexed question of nationality.

“We usually see Swiss posters fetch the highest prices at auction,” she says. “This is in part due to the glamour and popularity of Swiss resorts, but also because Swiss artists were exceptionally good at capturing the essence of Swiss alpine scenes and holidays. However, we do include posters that promote resorts from all over the world and we find that French, Austrian, Italian and Norwegian posters are also in high demand.”

So what are the magic ingredients that make a great ski poster?

“Collectors love to see colourful, bold posters that demonstrate the pure joy of skiing,” says Churcher. “That could be a dynamic skier racing down the slopes, or it might be a glamorous apres ski scene. As you might expect, some posters are rarer than others, so this will also affect the interest at auction.

“Finally, resort is still one of the most important elements that will drive up the price of a poster. Places like Gstaad, Davos, Klosters and St Moritz will always see lots of bidding activity.”

No surprise, then, to see that eight of the ten posters that commanded the highest prices at the Edinburgh Ski Auction were for Swiss resorts. Still, a poster for the French resort of Megève managed to sneak in at number nine, selling for £3,500, while a generic “Winter in Austria” poster from Atelier Binder made it to number ten, selling for £3,250, so perhaps there’s hope for the other Alpine nations yet. n

“Collectors love to see colourful, bold posters that demonstrate the pure joy of skiing”