{"meta":{"version":"2.1","_links":{"self":{"href":"https://api.vam.ac.uk/v2/object/O85159"},"collection_page":{"href":"https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O85159/"}},"images":{"_primary_thumbnail":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2018LC6560/full/!100,100/0/default.jpg","_iiif_image":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2018LC6560/","_alt_iiif_image":[],"imageResolution":"high","_images_meta":[{"assetRef":"2018LC6560","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false}]},"see_also":{"_iiif_pres":"https://iiif.vam.ac.uk/collections/O85159/manifest.json","_alt_iiif_pres":[]}},"record":{"systemNumber":"O85159","accessionNumber":"E.35-1973","objectType":"Poster","titles":[{"title":"Soaring to Success! - The Early Bird","type":"popular title"}],"summaryDescription":"Edward McKnight Kauffer's poster is a masterpiece of progressive poster design. It advertises the launch of The Daily Herald, the Labour Party newspaper, on 31 March, 1919. The image is based on 'Flight', a woodcut (inspired by a Japanese print) made by Kauffer in 1916. Its geometric but dynamic abstraction of a flock of birds shows the influence of Vorticism, a movement with which Kauffer was closely associated.","physicalDescription":"Colour lithograph poster advertising the re-launching of <i>The Daily Herald</i>, the Labour Party newspaper on 31 March 1919. The design has a yellow background with a geometric flock of birds (derived from a Japanese print) whose rendering reflect the strong influence of the English Vorticist style of the period. At the bottom of the poster is printed '<i>Soaring to Success! Daily Herald-The Early Bird</i>', and the printer's monogram (TBL) is stamped in the bottom right corner.","artistMakerPerson":[{"name":{"text":"Kauffer, Edward McKnight","id":"A4244"},"association":{"text":"designer","id":"AAT25190"},"note":""}],"artistMakerOrganisations":[{"name":{"text":"T. B. Lawrence Ltd.","id":"AUTH373070"},"association":{"text":"printers","id":"AAT25732"},"note":""}],"artistMakerPeople":[],"materials":[],"techniques":[{"text":"colour lithography","id":"AAT190525"}],"materialsAndTechniques":"Colour lithograph","categories":[{"text":"Advertising","id":"THES49001"},{"text":"Periodicals","id":"THES48913"},{"text":"Politics","id":"THES48908"},{"text":"Posters","id":"THES252963"}],"styles":[],"collectionCode":{"text":"PDP","id":"THES48595"},"images":["2018LC6560"],"imageResolution":"high","galleryLocations":[{"current":{"text":"514","id":"THES49549"},"free":"","case":"EXP","shelf":"","box":""}],"partTypes":[[{"text":"poster","id":""}]],"contentWarnings":[{"apprise":"No","note":""}],"placesOfOrigin":[{"place":{"text":"Britain","id":"x32019"},"association":{"text":"made","id":"x28654"},"note":""}],"productionDates":[{"date":{"text":"1918-1919","earliest":"1918-01-01","latest":"1919-12-31"},"association":{"text":"made","id":"x28654"},"note":""},{"date":{"text":"early 1919","earliest":"1919-01-01","latest":"1919-03-31"},"association":{"text":"issued","id":"x45592"},"note":""}],"associatedObjects":[],"creditLine":"Given by Ogilvy Benson & Mather Ltd","dimensions":[{"dimension":"Height","value":"297.7","unit":"cm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"part":"","note":""},{"dimension":"Width","value":"152.2","unit":"cm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"part":"","note":""},{"dimension":"Height","value":"310","unit":"cm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"part":"framed","note":""},{"dimension":"Height","value":"165.5","unit":"cm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"part":"framed","note":""},{"dimension":"Depth","value":"5","unit":"cm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"part":"framed","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":[],"objectHistory":"","historicalContext":"","briefDescription":"'Soaring to Success! - The Early Bird'. Colour lithograph poster advertising the re-launching of The Daily Herald, the Labour Party newspaper on 31 March 1919. Designed by Edward McKnight Kauffer, England, 1918-19.","bibliographicReferences":[{"reference":{"text":"Baker, Malcolm, and Brenda Richardson (eds.), <i>A Grand Design: The Art of the Victoria and Albert Museum</i>, London: V&A Publications, 1999.","id":"AUTH348910"},"details":"","free":""},{"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":"<i>The Poster King. E. McKnight Kauffer</i> London: Estorick Collection of modern italian art, 2011. "},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"The following information is from 'E. McKnight Kauffer : a designer and his public', by Mark Howarth-Booth (1979), revised and updated by V&amp;A Publications in 2005:\n\nBorn Edward McKnight in Great Falls, Montana, the artist adopted the name McKnight in gratitude to an American mentor who paid for the young man to travel to Paris to study painting. By 1914 he was in London and by 1915 he already had a commission for a poster from the London Underground. The origin of the designer's signature poster image, Soaring to Success!, was a 1916 print called Flight, a geometric flock of birds (derived from a Japanese print) whose rendering reflected the strong influence of the English Vorticist style of the period. First published in the English periodical Colour in 1917, the image was used in 1919 as an advertising poster to promote the Labour Party newspaper, the Daily Herald. According to family tradition the poster aroused Winston Churchill's attention, who sent for Kauffer with a view to commissioning a new flag for the Royal Air Force. Churchill's enthusiasm waned, however, when he learned that Kauffer was an American.\r\nAlthough the original design seems an inspired symbol of modernity, aspiration, and the union of industrial power with natural grace - thus typifying the ideals of a new, radical newspaper - it was conceived independently of client or product. The poster was bought for the Daily Herald campaign by Francis Meynell (proprietor of Nonesuch Press, for which Kauffer illustrated books), who designed and wrote the caption. Meynell considered the design \"a symbol, in those days of hope, of the unity of useful invention and natural things.\" Soon to become a leader of the new profession of graphic design, Kauffer quickly gained international recognition. Subsequently, the design became emblematic of Kauffer and influenced many young designers. He presented the upper third of the poster (the \"Flight\" image) to The Museum of Modern Art, New York, which honoured him with a retrospective exhibition in 1937. This same motif was used as the catalogue cover of the V&A's 1955 Kauffer memorial exhibition, opened by his intimate friend and fellow Anglo-American, the poet T. S. Eliot.\r\nAlthough Kauffer (like Francis Meynell) was a member of the V&A's Advisory Council, this poster, which represents an unusually ambitious use of modernist design in British advertising, is one of many important twentieth-century objects acquired only retrospectively, in the 1970s. The V&A had collected Kauffer's work from 1916 onward through regular gifts from the Underground Electric Railways Co. of London (predecessor of London Transport), and Museum curators had every opportunity to acquire the poster from Kauffer in his lifetime. But it was only when V&A staff were invited to examine a cache of old posters in a basement in London's Kingsway - from campaigns undertaken by S. H. Benson Ltd., which had handled the Daily Herald campaign of 1919 - that Soaring to Success! finally entered the Museum collections. The company's successors gave the entire poster archive to the V&A, including the very rare complete version of this poster.\r\n\r\n"},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"The following excerpt was written by Kauffer for the foreword of his 1937 MOMA exhibition catalogue titled 'Posters by E. Mcknight Kauffer':\r\n\r\n'In 1919 I produced the first and only Cubist poster design in England—a\r\nflight of birds (see No. 2), which was sold to an advertising agent for fifty\r\ndollars. It eventually appeared without my lay-out or lettering and for the\r\nLabour Paper, the Daily Herald. This design was so much noticed that Mr.\r\nWinston Churchill, then at the War Office, asked to see me with the idea of\r\ndesigning a new flag for the Royal Air Force. Mr. Churchill's appreciation of\r\nthis \"modernistic\" design was flattering, but nothing further happened. I think\r\nat this moment a new direction in poster designing was created, but I realized\r\nthat more persuasive methods would have to be employed. Rightly or wrongly,\r\nthe progress of poster designing as done by myself has been slowly won, mostly\r\nby discussion, argument and a good deal of fighting. But English clients, once\r\nthey are convinced, are prepared to go full steam ahead.'\r\n"}],"production":"","productionType":{"text":"","id":""},"contentDescription":"","contentPlaces":[],"associatedPlaces":[],"contentPerson":[],"associatedPerson":[],"contentOrganisations":[],"associatedOrganisations":[],"contentPeople":[],"associatedPeople":[],"contentEvents":[],"associatedEvents":[],"contentOthers":[{"text":"birds","id":"x35043"}],"contentConcepts":[],"contentLiteraryRefs":["The Daily Herald (newspaper)"],"galleryLabels":[],"partNumbers":["E.35-1973"],"accessionNumberNum":"35","accessionNumberPrefix":"E","accessionYear":1973,"otherNumbers":[{"type":{"text":"V&A microfiche","id":"THES50288"},"number":"21/A12"}],"copyNumber":"","aspects":["WHOLE"],"assets":[],"recordModificationDate":"2025-10-01","recordCreationDate":"2003-11-05","availableToBook":false}}