Posters – Art of the People in the Street and in the Stations

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I have selected posters of the different countries represented on my layout which would have appeared - in the streets, on station platforms, on walls - in June of 1914. I photograph reproductions of the posters on 35mm color negative film, framing each one so that the images on the negatives, in 1/87^th scale, are of precisely the dimensions of the original as it appeared full size.  Then, a sheet of contact prints is made from the negatives.  The resulting miniature posters are of the finest possible quality at a very reasonable price because one can produce 37 different posters on a single contact sheet.

The posters on the German ”Litfasssaeulen” – the advertising pillars erected by Dr, Litfass in the nineteenth century - are first assembled to fit the pillar.  A color copy is then made of the assembly on paper thin enough to be wrapped easily round the column.
    

Before clearing her tea setting, the butler reminds the Countess that dinner will be served in exactly forty-five minutes.  The observant visitor will have noticed many details in and around this area of the layout painted in red and yellow, the national colors of the Grand Duchy of Baden. I intentionally painted the ball that has bounced into the pond in those colors; the fish, however, were created by Mother Nature to feel most ”at home” in the dear old Grand Duchy.  At the right edge of the photograph is a converted American pewter figure that represents an early Gaston Lachaise bronze sculpture.
 

The Leutnant of  the Body-Guard Hussars instructs his little brother in the proper way to hold his rifle while the family’s gardener watches with a smile.  Because the older brother is garrisoned in Potsdam, he has brought a real grenadier officer’s cap from the First Foot-Guard Regiment, also garrisoned in Potsdam. A child’s version of the First Foot-Guard regimental uniform could be bought in 1914 in toyshops in every corner of Germany.   ”The First Foot-Guards” were the equal of the British Grenadier Guards, the senior infantry regiments in both armies. The ”sentry box” – Schilderhaus – is painted in the colors of the Grand Duchy of Baden as is the pedal car, a brass model kit in Z scale by the Texas firm of Micron Art = micronart.com.  The kit is not especially difficult to assemble but the finished model is quite small – 17 millimeters long. This Z scale model is nicely appropriate as a child’s pedal car in HO scale.