Unique Penguin Postcards

Some time shortly after the war – there are no further clues as to its exact date – William Grimmond was commissioned to produce a poster to help sell Penguins to holidaymakers. This jobbing artist did so much for Penguin that he might as well have been on the staff. Summarising the correspondence on file at the Bristol archive it would appear that nothing was ever too much trouble; and he never got rich on the proceeds. For instance: when commissioned to produce the cover for the first original Puffin Story Book, Fell Farm Holiday, most artists would have imagined or copied a suitable Lake District panorama. Grimmond took the MS, and used clues in the text to locate the actual farmhouse on which the story was based, and then produced a wonderful watercolour of the scene. He was not so lucky with South Country Secrets. He travelled to Uffington to draw the white horse, only to find it grassed over for the duration of the war. He provided cover art for 16 King Penguins; colour versions of the Tenniel engravings for the Puffin Alices; and various other Puffins; produced maps, sketches and plans for innumerable Pelicans – whose device he also redrew. He was, quite simply, a jobbing artist that Penguin used, and probably exploited. But he was also a true artist, and this poster, a thing now so rare and fragile that it is never likely to turn up again, was well worth preserving and celebrating. When an original copy was offered for sale, the Society bought it, and presented it to the Bristol archive; but not before scanning it. We produced a limited edition of 50 reproductions (now sold out) and sets of postcards that do well to catch the subtlety of colour and character that he brought to this wonderful period piece.

Page last updated: 23 July 2005