[Chromolithograph broadside]: Breaking the Record

Nottingham: R.W. Perkins "City" Printing Office, 1898.

Price: $4,500.00

Unbound. Large chromolithograph. Satiric broadside calendar issued as an advertisement for an English printing company. Measuring 17.75" x 21.5" (45 x 55cm.) Large illustration with publisher's information and two affixed calendar leaves on gold metal leaf paper (each representing six months of the year). One small scrape in one margin, very near fine. An advertisement for a Nottingham printing company with a blatantly racist illustration of colorfully garbed black bicyclists bearing down on the finish line of a race, with chaos ensuing as they grab for the prizes that are perched upon a tattered and patched tablecloth on a wooden table: a trophy, a clock, a box of cigars, and some caged chickens, with resultant shoes, hats, nails, bricks, and various flotsam and jetsam flying, and as the crowd and judges look on aghast. Presumably this was intended for an American market, as it seems unlikely it would have resonated with an English provincial market of the times. Anecdotally we have been led to believe that the printer Perkins contemplated a move to America, and this image might have been intended as an ingratiating advertisement for his new potential customers. In what can be considered by various lights as either irony or karmic retribution, or both, we understand anecdotally his press and type were reportedly lost in the Atlantic crossing, thwarting his intentions, but we have been unable to confirm this comforting tale. *OCLC* locates no copies. Rare and possibly unique.

Item #394466

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Item #394466 [Chromolithograph broadside]: Breaking the Record