Roll up, history, art and transport connoisseurs of London!
Some of London Underground’s first-ever graphic art posters from the 1920s and 1930s have gone on display at the London Transport Museum.
The distinctive posters were created at the peak of the Art Deco movement, and were displayed proudly at Tube stations to encourage passengers to try a new way to travel through the capital.
Some of London’s most famous landmarks can be spotted in the artworks, alongside luxurious scenes of old-world glamour that many associate with the era.
The posters are being exhibited in the London Transport Museum, which is based in Covent Garden, who said the pieces are key to London Transport's visual identity, which is recognised around the world.
The exhibition is aptly titled: “The Art Deco: The Golden Age of Poster Design”, and showcases over 100 posters which popped up across London during this chapter.
Around a third of these vintage artworks have never been seen by the public before, according to the museum.
The posters were the London Underground’s main form of publicity at the time and aimed to make passengers associate this new form of transport with the finer things in life – culture, art, food and leisure.
Georgia Morley, the curator of the exhibition, told BBC London: "It really showed how modern London transport was, how progressive they were.”
Ms Morley added that the posters still have a "glamorous and opulent feel", despite being almost a century old.
"A lot of the things these posters are advertising we still want to do in London today - going to the theatre, shopping, going to the zoo, or the riverside - they're still really exciting," she said.
Posters for the London Underground had been in production since the 1900s, but Ms Morley explained that the Art Deco pieces are the most exciting.
"Art Deco was really effective in transport posters because it had bold lines, simple geometry, and really bright colours, and when you're travelling on the Tube, you need to understand the message and the imagery immediately."
The posters were the first piece of graphic art commissioned by former London Transport chief executive Frank Pick, when he was put in charge of advertising in 1908.
The museum's head curator, Matt Brosnan, said the London Underground needed more people to start using the service and buying tickets.
Mr Brosnan explained: "He (Frank Pick) saw the opportunity for commissioning pictorial posters for the first time, which was quite a new thing at that point in history.
"That became a really useful and dominant marketing tool that the Underground used for decades afterwards, and it was also part of a much wider art and design aspect of the Underground's identity."
The exhibition will mark 100 years since the 1925 International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris, which many credit for leading the charge on popularising Art Deco.
Dr Emma Bastin, 20th-century historian, has described the Art Deco style posters as "enduring".
She said: "The art is 100 years old now, but it still feels modern... they have an aspirational feel to them, so we can relate to these artworks, we can dream that we want to be in some of them.
"I think a lot of it's down to the dreamlike vision these posters show and the art shows.
"It allows you to imagine yourself in another world, and they still look like they could have been produced today, so that's why people still love to put them on their walls."
