{"meta":{"version":"2.1","_links":{"self":{"href":"https://api.vam.ac.uk/v2/object/O746488"},"collection_page":{"href":"https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O746488/"}},"images":null,"see_also":null},"record":{"systemNumber":"O746488","accessionNumber":"E.448-1932","objectType":"Poster","titles":[{"title":"Help Home Farms. Buy English.","type":""}],"summaryDescription":"The Empire Marketing Board (EMB) was established in 1926 to encourage the British public to buy Empire products instead of those from Britain’s emerging economic and industrial rivals after the First World War. The output served as propaganda for the British Empire in projecting an image of unity, peace, and prosperity for all who lived within it, also intended to galvanise support for the continuation of British imperialism in the 20th century. The Empire was at its largest size in the 1920s, controlling just under a quarter of the world’s population and land mass. \r\nA major part of the EMB’s seven years of activity were poster campaigns directed by Frank Pick who had overseen highly successful advertising schemes and brand development for the London Underground. Around 800 different designs were commissioned. The artists were paid very well and, in some cases, sent on trips to West Africa to sketch people and landscapes for the poster designs. Around 27,000 schools were on the mailing list to receive new posters as they were issued and at its peak, 1800 advertising hoardings were rented around the country for their display. The EMB folded in 1933 having spent most of its money on the poster campaigns, almost half a million pounds in total (around £23 million today), leading to questions over its value for money and efficacy overall. The Empire Marketing Board archives are held at the National Archives at Kew who note that: ‘The actual impact of the Empire Marketing Board posters was difficult to estimate even at the time, due to the very broad objectives of the Board and the lack of any systematic method of surveying the population.’\r\n","physicalDescription":"'<i>Help Home Farms. Buy English</i>'. Colour lithograph poster (6 sheets) promoting English produce.","artistMakerPerson":[{"name":{"text":"Leighton, Clare Veronica Hope","id":"A5437"},"association":{"text":"artist","id":"AAT25103"},"note":""}],"artistMakerOrganisations":[{"name":{"text":"Empire Marketing Board","id":"A7959"},"association":{"text":"issuer","id":"x30790"},"note":""}],"artistMakerPeople":[],"materials":[],"techniques":[{"text":"colour lithography","id":"AAT190525"}],"materialsAndTechniques":"Colour lithograph","categories":[{"text":"Prints","id":"THES48903"},{"text":"Propaganda","id":"THES48902"},{"text":"Posters","id":"THES252963"}],"styles":[],"collectionCode":{"text":"PDP","id":"THES48595"},"images":[],"imageResolution":"high","galleryLocations":[{"current":{"text":"514 (VA)","id":"THES49549"},"free":"","case":"PR","shelf":"229","box":"R"}],"partTypes":[[{"text":"poster","id":""}]],"contentWarnings":[{"apprise":"","note":""}],"placesOfOrigin":[{"place":{"text":"Great Britain","id":"x32019"},"association":{"text":"issued","id":"x45592"},"note":""}],"productionDates":[{"date":{"text":"1929","earliest":"1929-01-01","latest":"1929-12-31"},"association":{"text":"issued","id":"x45592"},"note":""}],"associatedObjects":[{"object":{"text":"E.333-1934","id":"O741572"},"association":"Design"}],"creditLine":"Given by the Empire Marketing Board","dimensions":[{"dimension":"Height","value":"584.2","unit":"cm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"part":"","note":""},{"dimension":"Width","value":"116.2","unit":"cm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"part":"","note":""}],"dimensionsNote":"Measurements taken from: \r\n<u>Summary Catalogue of British Posters to 1988 in the Victoria & Albert Museum in the Department of Design, Prints & Drawing</u>. Emmett Publishing, 1990. 129 p. ISBN: 1 869934 12 1","marksAndInscriptions":[{"content":"Signed.","inscriber":{"name":{"text":"","id":""},"association":{"text":"","id":""}},"date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"description":"","interpretation":"","language":"","medium":"","method":"","position":"","script":"","translation":"","transliteration":"","type":"","note":""}],"objectHistory":"","historicalContext":"","briefDescription":"'Help Home Farms. Buy English'. Colour lithograph poster designed by Clare Leighton and issued by the Empire Marketing Board, Great Britain, 1929.","bibliographicReferences":[{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"<u>Summary Catalogue of British Posters to 1988 in the Victoria & Albert Museum in the Department of Design, Prints & Drawing</u>. Emmett Publishing, 1990. 129 p. ISBN: 1 869934 12 1"},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"<u>Victoria & Albert Museum Department of Prints and Drawings and Department of Paintings, Accessions 1932. </u> London: HMSO, 1933\r\n\r\nThe full text of the entry is as follows:\r\n\r\n'LEIGHTON, Clare, A.R.E.\r\n\r\nHelp Home Farms. Buy English. Poster (6 sheets) issued by\r\n the Empire Marketing Board.\r\n  Signed Clare Leighton.\r\n  Colour lithograph. (230 x 45 3/4)                                  E.448-1932.\r\n Given by the Empire Marketing Board.'"},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"The following excerpts are from ‘Buy & build : the advertising posters of the Empire Marketing Board’ by Stephen Constantine, published by H.M.S.O, London, 1986:\r\n‘Controversy was never far away from the Empire Marketing Board…and during the few years of its existence, its constitution, its financing, its aims and especially its unusual and innovative operations ensured that it was the subject of frequent political and public comment. While some contemporaries condemned it as a ‘futile and wasteful institution’, others were loud in their praises.\r\nIt has been regarded as symptomatic of an increased official commitment to Empire interests, especially economic, in the decades after the First World War. The Board’s work has also been described as an attempt to consolidate imperialist ideals and an imperial world view as part of the popular culture of the British people. \r\n[Increased] competition from rapidly developing industrial and agricultural rivals, especially the United States, Germany and later Japan [meant] the British economy [was] peculiarly dependent on export markets [and] vulnerable when foreign nations began from the 1870s and especially after the First World War to protect their home markets with tariff barriers while remaining at liberty to export their own products to the still largely free-trading home and colonial markets of Great Britain. The First World War further accelerated Britain’s relative economic decline, and the result appeared evident with the onset of the postwar economic depression which pushed unemployment rates in the 1920s almost continuously above ten per cent of the insured labour force….by the 1920s, many businessmen and many politicians of all persuasions, including some in the Labour Party, looked to the British Empire overseas for salvation.\r\nThe role of the producer, especially of the labourer, was also much emphasised. In some posters, workers in the Colonial Empire evidently laboured under the direction of white supervisors. But essentially this appeared to be a democratic, egalitarian Empire in which labour, by all races, was given an especial dignity through its dedication to a single, admirable imperial purpose… In summary, what was offered to the British public in the posters was bound to be a selective representation of the nature of the British Empire between the wars. Of course, given the EMB’s formal purpose, the Empire’s economic characteristics and value were emphasised, and the benefits of the imperial connection to ordinary British consumers and employees were inevitably claimed. But this material goal was legitimised and its self-interest muted by emphases also on the life-enhancing developmental aspect of the imperial mission, the benefits it would bring to all nations and races within the Empire, the natural harmony between the peoples, and the contribution Empire was making to world prosperity and peace.’\r\n\r\n\r\n"}],"production":"E.333-1934 is the original design for one sheet of this poster.","productionType":{"text":"","id":""},"contentDescription":"","contentPlaces":[],"associatedPlaces":[],"contentPerson":[],"associatedPerson":[],"contentOrganisations":[],"associatedOrganisations":[],"contentPeople":[],"associatedPeople":[],"contentEvents":[],"associatedEvents":[],"contentOthers":[],"contentConcepts":[{"text":"agriculture","id":"x35207"},{"text":"British Empire","id":"x46648"}],"contentLiteraryRefs":[],"galleryLabels":[],"partNumbers":["E.448-1932"],"accessionNumberNum":"448","accessionNumberPrefix":"E","accessionYear":1932,"otherNumbers":[{"type":{"text":"V&A microfiche","id":"THES50288"},"number":"25/A9-B2"}],"copyNumber":"","aspects":["WHOLE"],"assets":[],"recordModificationDate":"2025-06-02","recordCreationDate":"2009-06-30","availableToBook":false}}