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Every skier has a junk drawer full of souvenirs. Here’s how to rank them.

Attend any Olympic event, and you’ll encounter the “pin people”: sellers and buyers of souvenir pins, circulating in the crowds and eager to trade. They wear hats and vests festooned with cloisonné tchotchkes, a story attached to each one.

Photo above: Richard Allen’s hatful of history, sporting-event-related pins dating back to the 1936 FIS championship in Innsbruck, Austria. All photos by Seth Masia.

Richard Allen
Richard Allen, with a pair of Doug Pfeiffer's prototype skis. 

ISHA board member Richard Allen, owner of Vintage Ski World in Carbondale, Colorado, is more than a pin collector. He’s a pin dealer, buying and selling hundreds of them each year and often ordering reproductions of popular pins in gross lots. His personal collection resides on a dozen hats, each weighing up to two pounds (roughly a kilogram) thanks to its colorful cargo. Hanging on the walls in the store are pin collections assembled by others.

One day in September, Allen and I sorted through some of the stock. We established several categories of pins, in a rough hierarchy:

Top of the game are the rare pins awarded for success in elite racing, such as Sun Valley’s Diamond Sun pins or the Kandahar Diamond K pins.

NSP registration pin
NSP registration pin

Second rank goes to certification pins, earned by passing formal tests of skiing expertise. Familiar examples are those from national ski instructor organizations—PSIA, CSIA, ESF, ISIA and so on. Ski patrol certification pins count, too. When a pin is engraved with the recipient’s name, the authenticity value goes up.

Then come citizen-racing performance pins in platinum, gold, silver and bronze from NASTAR and similar race circuits. French skiers place great store in their Chamois, Flèche (arrow) and Fusée (rocket) pins, awarded in four levels for handicap racing in slalom, GS and super G, respectively. Many ski schools encourage students to earn skill-level pins; for instance, at Colorado’s Beaver Creek you used to be able to earn the Talons pin by skiing 13 Grouse Mountain bump runs with an instructor (today it’s a one-day annual event). Many ski clubs used to award pins for passing specific skill tests—I would value highly such pins that were given in the 1920s and ’30s to members of the Ski Club of Great Britain. Another category of accomplishment pins is given by heliski guides to their guests for completing 50,000 or 100,000 or 150,000 vertical feet.

Finally, some military organizations awarded pins for skiing skills, comparable to marksmanship badges. I recently bought a pair of ’40s-era Swedish army expert-skier pins in gold and bronze.

That brings us to military pins and patches in general. American skiers are familiar with pins honoring the 10th Mountain Division. Some of these are reproductions of the pins worn by 10th Mountain troopers while in service. Some pins represent specific honors; for instance, a pin with crossed silver skis and “U.S.” in gold at the center is, according to the late Bob Parker, a combat infantry badge. It should be worn only by Americans who served in uniform in a combat zone.

Aspen Winternational press pin
Aspen World Cup press pin.

Next in the pin hierarchy are those issued for specific events. Top rank goes to pins recognizing officials at high-profile happenings. One of my ambitions is to collect press pins from Olympic and World Championship venues—rare items, indeed. In addition to competition, pins can commemorate the anniversary of a resort or organization. Special pins made in 1986, for instance, honored the 50th anniversaries of Sun Valley and SKI Magazine, both celebrated in a single week-long party. If you attended a party or event honoring a retired ski racer, you might have come away with a commemorative pin.

Bogner's Bavarian Alpine Club pin
Bavarian Alpine Club pin, owned by Willy Bogner Sr.

Often when you join or donate money to an organization, you get a membership pin. These include ski clubs, ski teams and national nonprofits (ISHA has printed stickers but not yet pins).

Most common are the promotional pins. You wear these to show that you’ve skied at this resort and that one, that you like this brand of skis or boots. But some are rare treasures: In 1941, the Dick Durrance Ski School at Alta gave pins to students. In the 1950s, Stein Eriksen’s various ski schools did the same.

Off to the side are pins that appeal for their entertainment value. These range from Snoopy carrying skis to the insider “powder pig” pin, which depicts a tricolor hog superimposed on skis, lampooning the French cockerel logo long associated with Rossignol.

Wolf Creek pin
Stained-glass Wolf Creek pin, with a Houston Space Flight Center Ski Club pin.

How much to pay for a pin? Anywhere from a buck to several hundred dollars; the average pin goes for somewhere between $5 and $10. Price depends on rarity, age, size and design. A hard-enamel cloisonné pin is worth more than a plastic pin, for instance, and a 1950s-era patch of fine multicolored embroidery on thin, soft cloth is worth more than a ’70s-era patch that’s mechanically stitched on thick felt. A 1947 Aspen pin designed by famed Bauhaus artist Herbert Bayer ought to be worth more than a 1995 Aspen pin. A 1950 FIS patch once owned by an Olympic champion might be worth $150; meanwhile, a 1936 FIS Innsbruck Weltkämpfe pin might sell for a lot more to someone who understands the historical significance of that counter-Olympic and anti-Nazi world championship event. 

Seth Masia is president of ISHA.

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Music has long been a part of skiing (see Charlie Sanders’ history at skiinghistory.org/online-magazine/ski-music). The classic ambience of a ski lodge scene is epitomized by a roaring fire, hot drinks, big smiles and someone strumming a guitar. In the early days of ski songs in the U.S., a well-known tune got new schuss-related lyrics, engendering a skiing ballad. The 1919 book Winter Sports Verse included entries such as “The Song of the Ski” and “The Ski Shanty.”

The recent revival of the vinyl-record industry supports interest in collecting phonograph records of the ski-music tradition. Long-playing (LP), 33 RPM vinyl records were introduced in 1948 and had a three-decade run roughly coincident with the boom years of skiing. Skiing may first have appeared on a North American phonograph in the soundtrack for the movie musical Sun Valley Serenade, recorded in 1941 and released by RCA on 78 RPM shellac records. Skiing is mentioned only in the title track, with references to the snowplow turn and “taking spills on the hill.” That tune never did catch on with the skiing crowd, but the film’s musical highlight, “Chattanooga Choo Choo,” was a wartime mega-hit, and the collection was re-released on LP vinyl in 1954.

In April 1942, Decca Records produced the 78 RPM album Ski Time Jingles by Charlie Zumstein’s Eastern Slope Inn Orchestra, a polka band at Cranmore Mountain Resort in North Conway, New Hampshire. Most of the music was instrumental, but “The Song of the Ski” was an earnest attempt to capture the grace and ambience of skiing, albeit in a tinny voice set to a polka beat.

Jo Stafford, a pop singer and actress, recorded an album in 1956 called Ski Trails. While it features a photograph of a skier on the front, the album itself is a collection of winter-themed covers made popular by others, none of which mention skiing. Nonetheless, skiing was a big enough marketing draw to make it into the album’s title and photo.

Bob Gibson album
Bob Gibson, 1959

The first true skiing-song album came out in 1959 from the folk-revival star Bob Gibson, who made 23 albums in his career. Ski Songs, his seventh one, was produced while he was living in Aspen. True to the origins of the genre, these songs had new lyrics set to old folk tunes. Late in his career, Gibson expressed surprise that Ski Songs was his best-selling album. One number, “Super Skier,” was set to the 19th-century ballad “The Ship That Never Returned” (which in 1924 had become “The Wreck of the Old 97” and, in 1949, “Charlie on the MTA”). “Super Skier” was later recorded by the Chad Mitchell Trio, among others.

In the early 1960s, Alta ski patroller and chef Ray Conrad entertained guests at local lodges with songs of the skiing life in Little Cottonwood Canyon. He jammed weekly with a group of friends at a Unitarian church near the University of Utah. That group included Rosalie Sorrels, a talented folk singer who already had a couple of albums to her credit. Sorrels was so impressed with Conrad that she convinced Ken Goldstein, the field collector for Prestige Records, to record him. Goldstein set up his equipment on a pew to leverage the acoustics of the church, and Sorrels provided accompanying vocals on a few tracks.

Ray Conrad album
Ray Conrad, 1961

The session produced an album, The Cotton-Pickin’ Lift Tower and Other Skiing Songs, now a cult classic. The songs were hilarious ballads that Conrad wrote, set to traditional folk melodies. He made fun of the good-natured rivalry between the patrol and the ski school, of stretch-pants accidents, mineshaft plunges and, of course, powder-skiing perils. The finale, “The Skier’s Daydream,” brought a gravitas not common to the genre.

The album came with an insert containing the lyrics, plus Conrad’s Glossary of Skiing Terminology, which (for instance) defined ski instructor as “a semi-skilled laborer who instructs beginners in how to pay him for ski lessons” and toboggan as “a device used by ski patrolmen for balance while schussing.” (As an aside, Conrad jumped a cornice on Peruvian Ridge for the photographer George Schwarz, making the January 1967 cover of Skiing Magazine, and also appeared in a ski film. Many credit him with the first ski descent of the face of Mt. Superior, now considered a Utah backcountry classic.)

In later years Conrad recorded a cassette tape with the same name as the original album, under his own label; it had a slightly different song set, though, including a track about NASTAR. He also became known for his cowboy poetry and prose. The 2009 recordings have become available online—search for them on YouTube. Conrad passed away in January 2023.

Oscar Brand album
Oscar Brand, 1963

In 1963, Oscar Brand released his album A Snow Job for Skiers on the Electra label. Brand was already well-established for his ribald folk music on a wide range of subjects. Among his more than 100 albums, this was his sole venture into skiing. It featured 10 songs by Brand, plus three covers of Ray Conrad songs.

Jumping on every bandwagon going in 1963, Warner Brothers Records produced a “ski” album that tried to capitalize on the surf music craze. Ski Surfin’ (yes, seriously) came from a group of California studio musicians called the Avalanches (not to be confused with the Australian band of the same name). It was the group’s one and only album (at least under the Avalanches name). On it were three ski-titled songs, all surf-rock instrumentals. The rest were covers of familiar classics, including one by Irving Berlin.

The band included two musicians who would go on to fame: David Gates, as a member of the soft-rock band Bread (remember “Baby I’m-A Want You”?), and Billy Strange, who was behind Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots are Made for Walkin.” Strange also played backup guitar on numerous Beach Boys hits, as well as for James Bond movie title tracks and the theme songs for the TV shows The Munsters and Batman.

In 1964, Fine Arts Records, a small company in Colorado, produced In Ski Country, by the Hustlers. There have been several bands with that name, but this one was a folk quartet originally out of the University of Colorado. The album includes several covers, including “Super Skier.” Its contribution was to continue the style of the heartfelt ski song started by Conrad’s “Skier’s Daydream,” with half a dozen new songs focused on the beauty of skiing.

Dick Barrymore sound track album
Dick Barrymore soundtrack, 1969

In 1969, Dick Barrymore’s film The Last of the Ski Bums was released, along with a soundtrack album by the same band that provided the music for The Endless Summer surf film. As with Ski Surfin’ six years earlier, the music was all instrumental, but as the film demonstrated, it was certainly music that could be skied to.

In 1970 the National Ski Patrol released a ski album, Takin’ a Ride with the Wind, by Six Family Mountain. Proceeds went to the National Ski Patrol. The whole thing was the brainchild of Ed Labunski, a talented musician who wrote all the songs on the album. However, he will always be known for his main career as an advertising jingle writer in the ’60s and ’70s—remember This Bud’s for You?

By the 1980s, the LP record gave way to the more portable cassette tape and later to the digital-format CD and MP3. Digital recordings seem less romantic than vinyl, but they’re easy to find online and can be collected, dust free, on a computer. 

Rick Spedden grew up skiing with the Wild Old Bunch of Alta, Utah, which first got together in the late 1960s. He and his wife, Janet, are regulars in the early-morning lift lines on powder days.

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The highest price paid for a vintage find: $17,500.

Manhattan’s Swann Galleries offered a mix of classic and unusual American posters at its February 2022 vintage sale, along with a handful of blue-chip European ski posters that commanded high prices. The 45 posters, from countries as diverse as France, Austria, Switzerland, Poland, the former Czechoslovakia and the United States, were the amalgam of artistic rarities, masterpieces and oddities that collectors have come to expect from this well-regarded auction house.

 

Squaw Valley was as yet little-
known, so this 1959 poster pin-
pointed it on a map.

 

Among the American pieces was artist Jack Galliano’s “VIII Olympic Winter Games/Squaw Valley, Feb 18–28, 1960.” This was the second of two official posters designed for the Squaw Valley Winter Games (the first one had been issued before the exact dates of the Games were determined). It was printed in late 1959, and a map of the U.S. on the flag shows the location of Squaw Valley. With an estimated worth of between $1,200 and $1,800, the poster sold for $812 (including the buyer’s premium, which is 25 percent of the hammer price).

A “Ski Alta” poster from about 1941 depicted the Alta Lodge, with a block of advertising text promoting the Alf Engen Ski School and the resort’s location “Just above Salt Lake City.” “I stayed here when I was younger,” recalls Nicholas Lowry, president of Swann, head of the gallery’s poster division and an appraiser on PBS’s Antiques Roadshow. “We’ve had this poster several times before. It’s not incredibly rare, but it’s rare enough. If you look closely, you can see that there’s a pasted tip-on that says ‘Alf Engen,’ who took

over the ski school in 1949. We did some research and found that his name was covering ‘Durrance,’ as in Dick Durrance, who led Alta’s ski school from 1940–1942. It was clearly cheaper to paste Engen’s name over Durrance’s and keep using this original poster.” The poster sold for $3,250, higher than its $3,000 estimate.

 

Sascha Maurer poster dates
between 1954 and 1960.

 

Two ski posters in the auction were created by the German-born designer Sascha Maurer, best known for his work for the New Haven Railroad, New England ski resorts and ski manufacturers. They included Maurer’s “Ski Stowe Vermont/ Ski Capital of the East,” late 1950s. “Maurer designed the Stowe logo, the swoosh ‘S,’” says Lowry. “This is wonderful, but I don’t believe this was its first appearance of the logo.” The poster was estimated between $1,500 and $2,000, and realized $1,188.

The second Maurer poster advertised Flexible Flyer skis (top of page) and had been overprinted for The Manor House in Kearsarge, New Hampshire. Estimated between $2,000 and $3,000, it sold for $1,690. “They printed a lot of posters in this fashion, leaving a blank space on the lower part of the poster for the name of the distributor or hotel,” Lowry says. “Just look at this happy couple, jumping together, their form is great. It’s so joyful—it’s one of his best posters. In fact, it’s a perfect ski poster.”

Another New England ski classic, “New Hampshire,” depicted an iconic image: a faceless skier and an enormous snowflake floating over a map of the state. It was the 1935 creation of Edgar Hayes “Ted” Hunter Jr., who skied in the 1936 Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and trained as an architect—at Dartmouth College and later at Harvard University—under Bauhaus master Walter Gropius. Hunter went on to become a notable designer of midcentury modern houses. Estimated between $600 and $900, the poster sold for $688.

 

Thayer poster dates to c. 1955.

 

An artist named D. Thayer was the creator of “Sugarloaf,” a circa-1955 poster for Maine’s largest ski mountain. The resort opened in 1953, and Lowry says that “I researched when the third chairlift went in, which is how I dated this poster. The artist gave us some telltale hints. When they draw something so specific as each chairlift, you know they’re working from either a photograph or real life. I’ve also never seen this poster before.” The sale price of $875 was below the top $1,000 estimate.

Sun Valley images are typically big sellers at Swann’s auctions. This sale included “Sun Valley/Round House on Baldy Mountain,” arguably the most famous of the bunch. The 1940 creation by Dwight Clark Shepler had a blank space at the bottom for a railroad company to leave its imprint. The $2,860 final price was just shy of the $3,000 top estimate.

 

1970 poster may show
influence of Downhill Racer.

 

“Ski World-Wide/Pan Am” dates from 1970 and shows a downhiller in full racing form. It can’t be a coincidence that the racer looks like Robert Redford, whose film Downhill Racer had premiered the year before. “I like the fact that it’s done in a cinematic way, with the repeating images of his poles and legs, so that it appears that he’s in motion and going very fast,” Lowry says.

 

Day-glow colors were typical
for 1969.

 

Bidders liked it, too, driving the price way above the $1,200 top estimate to sell for $2,600. Speaking of ski films, a poster for Dick Barrymore’s The Last of the Ski Bums from 1969, with its Day-Glo colors characteristic of the era, jumped its top estimate of $600 and sold for $812.

One of the most unusual offerings at the sale, “Ski the Black Hills/South Dakota,” was created by an unknown designer from the late 1960s. Lowry guessed that the mountain depicted was Terry Peak, given its claim as the “Highest Ski Area East of the Rockies.” Mount Rushmore, also depicted, actually lies 36 miles to the south of Terry, as the crow flies. “It’s psychedelic in style, with that typography, the colors and even the skier’s sweater,” says Lowry. “It’s very groovy and the most unusual ski poster in the sale.” When it sold for $292, well below its low estimate of $400, it also proved a bargain.

 

Around 1910, Karl Kunz image
sold Bilgeri bindings.

 

When the auction turned to European ski posters, many far older than their American counterparts, the bidding was more fevered, often with higher prices as a result.

One of the great classics, “À Chamonix–Mont Blanc,” with a high-flying ski jumper, was one of five official posters for the 1924 Olympics in Chamonix published by the PLM Railway. Note that the event was designated an Olympics only after the fact. All of them were issued with text variants, sometimes promoting the Games and later on winter activities in the area itself. This version is dated 1927, repurposed to advertise Chamonix’s winter sports facilities. With an estimate of $3,000 to $4,000, it sold for $3,750.

“Bilgeri-Ski Ausrüstung” is an iconic image of ski poles, leather baskets and wooden skis with the then-new Bilgeri bindings. It readily appeals to collectors who seek posters of vintage ski equipment. The fact that artist Carl Kunz posed the gear against the Matterhorn doesn’t hurt, either. Even more striking about this image is the purple sky, with a

 

In 1931, Andre Lecomte showed
the Eiger and Jungfrau.

 

purplish cast on the snow. “I said, ‘Purple snow? Purple sky?’ when I first saw this poster years ago,” Lowry remembers, “but an artist friend has assured me that purple is the color that she and many others see at certain times of day in the Alps.”

One of the most astonishing images at the auction was a poster for Swiss ski resort Mürren from 1931, showing a skier plunging headlong down a piste with what appears to be the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau rearing up behind him. This eerie, dreamlike image by artist André Lecomte is “like an airbrush masterpiece—you’ve got the blur of the sky, the Alpine purple again between two flags and the mountains in the background,” Lowry says. “The text is also masterfully done.” Bidders appeared equally intrigued, and the $6,000 high estimate was easily surpassed, with the final sale price at $10,000.

 

Andreas Pedrett colorized this
photo in 1943.

 

“Klosters,” by photographer Andreas Pedrett, is “less of an accomplished photomontage and looks more like a colorized photograph,” says Lowry. The poster sold for $4,000, more than three times its top estimate. “It’s very unusual, and what she’s wearing is phenomenal ski fashion,” Lowry adds.

Another photomontage was Emil Schulthess’ 1937 poster for Pontresina. A black-and-white photographic background of skiers heading down the treeless pistes of Diavolezza is superimposed with a free-floating pair of glacier glasses and the reflections of a woman’s face. “I love it just because you get these reflections on glasses, which is odd because the glasses aren’t on somebody’s face,” Lowry observes. “These mysterious floating glasses reflect the image of a happy, smiling skier. It’s unbridled joy and happiness, and we all know that feeling on the mountain.”

 

Star of the auction, Martin
Pekert's sensual skier.

 

The clear star of the auction: Martin Peikert’s deeply sensual poster for Champéry. This surreal fantasy from 1955 depicts a giant sleeping female skier, her curvaceous shape matching the bumps of the piste, as a tram whizzes overhead and diminutive skiers schuss beside her.

“Peikert has developed a cult following among collectors,” Lowry says. “Even his less good images sell for more than people expect. This happens to be one of his best images, the anthropomorphization of the mountain. The colors are great, the conceit is good, and the execution is fantastic. We expect it to go high for all those reasons,” he adds. Indeed it did, flying past its $10,000 top estimate and selling for $17,500.

Swann’s next auction of vintage ski posters will take place in February 2023. Visit swanngalleries.com

 

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Timestamp
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Author Text
By Everett Potter

The highest price paid for a vintage find: $17,500.

Manhattan’s Swann Galleries offered a mix of classic and unusual American posters at its February 2022 vintage sale, along with a handful of blue-chip European ski posters that commanded high prices. The 45 posters, from countries as diverse as France, Austria, Switzerland, Poland, the former Czechoslovakia and the United States, were the amalgam of artistic rarities, masterpieces and oddities that collectors have come to expect from this well-regarded auction house.


Squaw Valley was as yet little-
known, so this 1959 poster pin-
pointed it on a map.

Among the American pieces was artist Jack Galliano’s “VIII Olympic Winter Games/Squaw Valley, Feb 18–28, 1960.” This was the second of two official posters designed for the Squaw Valley Winter Games (the first one had been issued before the exact dates of the Games were determined). It was printed in late 1959, and a map of the U.S. on the flag shows the location of Squaw Valley. With an estimated worth of between $1,200 and $1,800, the poster sold for $812 (including the buyer’s premium, which is 25 percent of the hammer price).

A “Ski Alta” poster from about 1941 depicted the Alta Lodge, with a block of advertising text promoting the Alf Engen Ski School and the resort’s location “Just above Salt Lake City.” “I stayed here when I was younger,” recalls Nicholas Lowry, president of Swann, head of the gallery’s poster division and an appraiser on PBS’s Antiques Roadshow. “We’ve had this poster several times before. It’s not incredibly rare, but it’s rare enough. If you look closely, you can see that there’s a pasted tip-on that says ‘Alf Engen,’ who took

over the ski school in 1949. We did some research and found that his name was covering ‘Durrance,’ as in Dick Durrance, who led Alta’s ski school from 1940–1942. It was clearly cheaper to paste Engen’s name over Durrance’s and keep using this original poster.” The poster sold for $3,250, higher than its $3,000 estimate.


Sascha Maurer poster dates
between 1954 and 1960.

Two ski posters in the auction were created by the German-born designer Sascha Maurer, best known for his work for the New Haven Railroad, New England ski resorts and ski manufacturers. They included Maurer’s “Ski Stowe Vermont/ Ski Capital of the East,” late 1950s. “Maurer designed the Stowe logo, the swoosh ‘S,’” says Lowry. “This is wonderful, but I don’t believe this was its first appearance of the logo.” The poster was estimated between $1,500 and $2,000, and realized $1,188.

The second Maurer poster advertised Flexible Flyer skis (top of page) and had been overprinted for The Manor House in Kearsarge, New Hampshire. Estimated between $2,000 and $3,000, it sold for $1,690. “They printed a lot of posters in this fashion, leaving a blank space on the lower part of the poster for the name of the distributor or hotel,” Lowry says. “Just look at this happy couple, jumping together, their form is great. It’s so joyful—it’s one of his best posters. In fact, it’s a perfect ski poster.”

Another New England ski classic, “New Hampshire,” depicted an iconic image: a faceless skier and an enormous snowflake floating over a map of the state. It was the 1935 creation of Edgar Hayes “Ted” Hunter Jr., who skied in the 1936 Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and trained as an architect—at Dartmouth College and later at Harvard University—under Bauhaus master Walter Gropius. Hunter went on to become a notable designer of midcentury modern houses. Estimated between $600 and $900, the poster sold for $688.


Thayer poster dates to c. 1955.

An artist named D. Thayer was the creator of “Sugarloaf,” a circa-1955 poster for Maine’s largest ski mountain. The resort opened in 1953, and Lowry says that “I researched when the third chairlift went in, which is how I dated this poster. The artist gave us some telltale hints. When they draw something so specific as each chairlift, you know they’re working from either a photograph or real life. I’ve also never seen this poster before.” The sale price of $875 was below the top $1,000 estimate.

Sun Valley images are typically big sellers at Swann’s auctions. This sale included “Sun Valley/Round House on Baldy Mountain,” arguably the most famous of the bunch. The 1940 creation by Dwight Clark Shepler had a blank space at the bottom for a railroad company to leave its imprint. The $2,860 final price was just shy of the $3,000 top estimate.


1970 poster may show
influence of Downhill Racer.

“Ski World-Wide/Pan Am” dates from 1970 and shows a downhiller in full racing form. It can’t be a coincidence that the racer looks like Robert Redford, whose film Downhill Racer had premiered the year before. “I like the fact that it’s done in a cinematic way, with the repeating images of his poles and legs, so that it appears that he’s in motion and going very fast,” Lowry says.


Day-glow colors were typical
for 1969.

Bidders liked it, too, driving the price way above the $1,200 top estimate to sell for $2,600. Speaking of ski films, a poster for Dick Barrymore’s The Last of the Ski Bums from 1969, with its Day-Glo colors characteristic of the era, jumped its top estimate of $600 and sold for $812.

One of the most unusual offerings at the sale, “Ski the Black Hills/South Dakota,” was created by an unknown designer from the late 1960s. Lowry guessed that the mountain depicted was Terry Peak, given its claim as the “Highest Ski Area East of the Rockies.” Mount Rushmore, also depicted, actually lies 36 miles to the south of Terry, as the crow flies. “It’s psychedelic in style, with that typography, the colors and even the skier’s sweater,” says Lowry. “It’s very groovy and the most unusual ski poster in the sale.” When it sold for $292, well below its low estimate of $400, it also proved a bargain.


Around 1910, Karl Kunz image
sold Bilgeri bindings.

When the auction turned to European ski posters, many far older than their American counterparts, the bidding was more fevered, often with higher prices as a result.

One of the great classics, “À Chamonix–Mont Blanc,” with a high-flying ski jumper, was one of five official posters for the 1924 Olympics in Chamonix published by the PLM Railway. Note that the event was designated an Olympics only after the fact. All of them were issued with text variants, sometimes promoting the Games and later on winter activities in the area itself. This version is dated 1927, repurposed to advertise Chamonix’s winter sports facilities. With an estimate of $3,000 to $4,000, it sold for $3,750.

“Bilgeri-Ski Ausrüstung” is an iconic image of ski poles, leather baskets and wooden skis with the then-new Bilgeri bindings. It readily appeals to collectors who seek posters of vintage ski equipment. The fact that artist Carl Kunz posed the gear against the Matterhorn doesn’t hurt, either. Even more striking about this image is the purple sky, with a


In 1931, Andre Lecomte showed
the Eiger and Jungfrau.

purplish cast on the snow. “I said, ‘Purple snow? Purple sky?’ when I first saw this poster years ago,” Lowry remembers, “but an artist friend has assured me that purple is the color that she and many others see at certain times of day in the Alps.”

One of the most astonishing images at the auction was a poster for Swiss ski resort Mürren from 1931, showing a skier plunging headlong down a piste with what appears to be the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau rearing up behind him. This eerie, dreamlike image by artist André Lecomte is “like an airbrush masterpiece—you’ve got the blur of the sky, the Alpine purple again between two flags and the mountains in the background,” Lowry says. “The text is also masterfully done.” Bidders appeared equally intrigued, and the $6,000 high estimate was easily surpassed, with the final sale price at $10,000.


Andreas Pedrett colorized this
photo in 1943.

“Klosters,” by photographer Andreas Pedrett, is “less of an accomplished photomontage and looks more like a colorized photograph,” says Lowry. The poster sold for $4,000, more than three times its top estimate. “It’s very unusual, and what she’s wearing is phenomenal ski fashion,” Lowry adds.

Another photomontage was Emil Schulthess’ 1937 poster for Pontresina. A black-and-white photographic background of skiers heading down the treeless pistes of Diavolezza is superimposed with a free-floating pair of glacier glasses and the reflections of a woman’s face. “I love it just because you get these reflections on glasses, which is odd because the glasses aren’t on somebody’s face,” Lowry observes. “These mysterious floating glasses reflect the image of a happy, smiling skier. It’s unbridled joy and happiness, and we all know that feeling on the mountain.”


Star of the auction, Martin
Pekert's sensual skier.

The clear star of the auction: Martin Peikert’s deeply sensual poster for Champéry. This surreal fantasy from 1955 depicts a giant sleeping female skier, her curvaceous shape matching the bumps of the piste, as a tram whizzes overhead and diminutive skiers schuss beside her.

“Peikert has developed a cult following among collectors,” Lowry says. “Even his less good images sell for more than people expect. This happens to be one of his best images, the anthropomorphization of the mountain. The colors are great, the conceit is good, and the execution is fantastic. We expect it to go high for all those reasons,” he adds. Indeed it did, flying past its $10,000 top estimate and selling for $17,500.

Swann’s next auction of vintage ski posters will take place in February 2023. Visit swanngalleries.com

 

 

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By Everett Potter

For the first time, Swann’s annual vintage ski poster auction featured only remote bidding. No matter. Prices and spirits were high. 

Above: “Zermatt,” by Swiss artist Emil Cardinaux, led off the 2021 Swann auction. The rare 1908 poster combines the majestic Matterhorn and the Art Nouveau style of its times. All images courtesy Swann Galleries.

 

With the 1920 “Palace Hotel,” Cardinaux
focused on telling a narrative about the
Palace’s bored patrons, rather than
depicting the hotel itself—an innovative,
narrative approach to promotional travel
posters.

 

Early Swiss masterpieces and classic American and Canadian designs were standouts at the annual sale of vintage ski and winter posters at Swann Auction Galleries in New York City in February. It was a live auction, though accommodations were made due to the ongoing pandemic. Bidders made their offers via web or phone.

Precautions aside, the bidding for the 49 lots on offer was as lively as usual, and led by Nicholas Lowry, president, principal auctioneer, and director of the poster department at Swann. Lowry is a familiar figure from PBS’s Antiques Roadshow, where his role as a poster expert is buttressed by his trademark three-piece checked suits, carnival barker mustache and baritone. Particularly passionate about ski posters, he has an uncanny recollection of an individual poster’s history at auction.

Directed by Lowry, it was Swann Galleries, along with Christie’s East in London, that primarily drove the resurgence in the popularity of vintage ski and travel posters in the early 2000s. The best posters combine sports, fashion, exotic destinations and compelling graphics, a powerful combination. Art insiders note that the Boomer generation, in particular, has an affinity for vintage ski posters, reflected in appreciating sale prices.

“Zermatt Matterhorn 4505m Schweiz,” a 1908 poster by the great Swiss artist Emil Cardinaux, kicked off the auction. Described by Lowry as “an extraordinary image,” the poster is a dramatic depiction of the Matterhorn at dawn, shining bright over the still slumbering ski resort below. Of the many Matterhorn posters, this Art Nouveau image may well be the most iconic and consequently, the most in demand by collectors. Lowry noted that this poster adapts the style of the German Sachsplakat (Object Poster) from before the First World War, and presages the Swiss Realism of the early 1920s, a game changer for poster design.

“It’s a rare poster,” Lowry added, “but still, we have had it four times since 2014. It’s also really early, from 1908, and it’s a travel brochure really, selling the Matterhorn.” With a price estimated at $7,000 to $10,000, it sold for $13,750 (including the buyer’s premium, which is 25% of the hammer price).

 

Looking to escape city soot and smog?
This circa-1935 poster suggests
Adelboden.

 

A classic of the ski-hotel genre followed, also by Emil Cardinaux, with the “Palace Hotel, St. Moritz.” This 1920 poster depicts an ice skater on frozen Lake St. Moritz and a few bystanders on the sidelines. There’s no image of Badrutt’s Palace Hotel itself, just a few examples of the beau monde in striking 1920’s fashions who are guests of this five-star property.

“This is very painterly and it depicts the idle rich bored out of their minds,” Lowry observed. “It’s grade A ennui. None of the main subjects are paying attention to the winter sport happening around them. There’s storytelling going on there and a lot of subliminal messaging,” he noted about the poster, which sold for $9,375, just shy of its estimate of $10,000.

Lowry singled out a rarity by the great Swiss graphic artist Martin Peikert. Titled “Sonniges Adelboden,” or Sunny Adelboden, it shows a brilliant view of the snowcovered Alps as if in a dreamy cloud, emerging from a grim background of factories, apartments and smokestacks, perhaps in Berlin or Hamburg, where this poster would have been seen at a tram stop. Estimated at $500 to $750, it went for $875. “It’s a very posterly poster,” said Lowry. “You’ve got the smog in the crowded city, smokestacks belching smoke, but it clears onto this glorious alpine vista.”

 

1932 Art Deco poster hits all the high
points: fashion, skiing, a fancy hotel.

 

Sometimes, it’s not the resort that makes a poster desirable but the image itself. That was the case with lot 177, an Art Deco poster from 1932 by Mariette Chauffard-Hugues. Entitled “Le Markstein,” it was for a small family resort in the Vosges Mountains of France. With an estimate of $1,000 to $1,500, it sold for $1,063. Lowry described this image as “everything you could want in a ski poster. You’ve got fashion, a sexy lady, skis and a ski hotel in the background. It’s been 11 years since we’ve had it at auction. It checks all the boxes of what a ski poster should be.”

 

Artist Peter Ewart sells the rush of the sport.

 

North American posters also made a strong showing at the sale. A 1950’s poster by Canadian artist Peter Ewart drew praise from Lowry, who declared “This is so rare. He did a lot of ski posters and we’ve had a bunch of his other works. But it’s been 17 years since we had this one, an entire generation if you think about it. This is all about the action, all about the sport.” “Canadian Rockies,” for Banff-Lake Louise, went for $4,250, above its $3,000 estimate.

Image and artist, of course, are paramount in estimating the value—or desirability—of a poster. But the historical context of the piece also comes into play. “Sun Valley, Idaho” by Augustus Moser, a circa 1936 poster with the emblem of the Union Pacific Railroad on it, was estimated at $6,000 to $9,000 and sold for $8,125. “One reason it had such a high estimate is that it’s a great image,” Lowry said. “It also is a very early piece in the history of Sun Valley, published the winter that it opened.”

 

Published in 1936, the year the resort
opened, this poster commanded one
of the day's top prices.

 

Moser was an interesting choice for marketing an American resort, Lowry noted. A native of Salzburg, Austria, he may never have laid eyes on Sun Valley. Resort founder, and Union Pacific Railroad Chairman, Averell Harriman liked to hire Austrians, from Count Felix Schaffgotsch, who scouted the resort’s location, to Sun Valley’s original six ski instructors.

 

A cinematic image in 1938.

 

A classic of the ski manufacturers line of ski posters was one for “Northland Skis/ Internationally Famous” by an artist known only as Krämer, circa 1938. Estimated at $800 to $1,200, it sold for $1,875. A strong image of a smiling man standing on a pair of wooden Northland skis, it is “not valuable, not famous and from a graphic point of view, is oddly un-copied,” Lowry noted. “Yet it has a remarkable cinematic viewpoint, with the viewer looking up and catching the Northland imprint under the tip of each ski, as well as depicting the skier.”

Then there’s Lou Hechenberger’s famous “New Hampshire” poster, showing a skier in a peaked visor cap skiing at an angle. Anyone who knows New Hampshire skiing will recognize the half-moon dip behind him as the lip of Tuckerman Ravine on Mt. Washington, which also explains the sun visor. (Tuckerman in springtime is notorious for its glaring sun.) Rendered in blocks of color with no facial detail, it’s a powerful image and sold for $3,500, above its $3,000 top estimate.

Lowry’s personal favorite in the sale was Sascha Maurer’s “Ski at Lake Placid” from 1938. Maurer was a German-born artist best known for his work for the New Haven Railroad, New England ski resorts and ski manufacturers. In fact, there were three other Maurer posters in this sale, one for Stowe and two for the New Haven Railroad, including a 1937 classic of woman in a striped gaiter.

 

This 1938 poster used design elements
in place of type.

 

Those stripes echo the ski tracks behind her, foreshadowing this Lake Placid design of three skiers descending a steep slope and improbably spelling out the word “ski” with their tracks. It is what Lowry referred to as “the well source of so many other great images about skiing. As far as I know, this was the first time something so simple and so obvious was done, of using design elements and spelling in the snow. It’s simple, pure genius and dynamic. This is hyper well-designed. It’s the Citizen Kane of ski posters, doing first what later became commonplace.” It sold for $4,750, well above its high estimate of $3,500.

 

Ascot stripes echo the railroad tracks.

 

Lowry also made a point of calling out “Ski Big Bromley/3 Lifts/ Manchester, Vermont,” circa 1939, by an unknown artist. “It’s a tiny piece, a counter card with a cardboard stand on the back that would have been used in a travel agency,” he said of this mini-poster, which sold for $438, just above its $400 low estimate. “I like it because in 1939 using photomontage, which was very much a European style, was a very progressive way to advertise an American resort.”

Besides, “I’m especially fond of this,” he added, “because I used to ski there as a kid.” 

Everett Potter, a travel columnist for Forbes and the editor of Everett Potter’s Travel Report, is a long- time contributor to Skiing History, and a collector of vintage ski posters. Visit swanngalleries.com for information on upcoming auctions.

 

 

 

Zermatt
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By Everett Potter

At the annual Swann Galleries auction, collectors snapped up vintage ski posters of both classic and unique design.

The annual sale of vintage ski and winter posters at Swann Auction Galleries in New York City on February 13, 2020 featured 30 posters, including a handful of American classics, a celebrated Swiss ski poster, and some striking examples of midcentury graphic design.

One exceptional example of graphic design on offer was Johan Bull’s window card For Norges Deltagelse | De Olympiske Ski from 1932 (shown above). Measuring just 22 x 14 inches, this was a promotion piece for the Norwegian American Olympic Committee seeking contributions to help send Norwegian athletes to Lake Placid in 1932.

“It’s one of the really unusual pieces we have,” said Nicholas Lowry, president of Swann Auction Galleries, head of the gallery’s poster division and a familiar appraiser on PBS’ Antiques Roadshow. “It mentions the 1924 games in Chamonix and the 1928 games in St. Moritz. The team was preparing for the 1932 games in Lake Placid and that’s followed by a question mark. It’s super simple. “

This powerful and effective image depicts a lone, faceless ski jumper, and the artist reduced his palette to black, orange and white on beige paper stock. Bull, who was born in Oslo, moved to America in 1925 and began contributing cartoons to The New Yorker. The poster soared past its $1,000 top estimate and sold for $1,690 (including the buyer’s premium, which is 25 percent of the hammer price).

A classic poster on view at Swann work was by the Swiss artist Alex Walter Diggelmann. His Andermatt / Gotthard from 1931 has a simple yet compelling design. It makes plain that this resort at the Gotthard Pass is covered in exceptionally deep snowfall — enough, in fact, to almost hide the road sign. A skier’s tracks go past the sign to drive the point home. Estimated between $1,500 to $2,000, it sold for $1,820.

Another brilliant bit of design was featured in artist José Morell’s España, a 1948 poster celebrating the joys of skiing in the Pyrenees. Published by the Madrid Tourist Office, the estimate was $1,000 to $1,500 and it realized a final price of $1,375.

“We first sold this poster many years ago,” said Lowry. “Talk about suggestive. All you see are the skis, the shadow of the skier and the group of other skiers watching intently. You get the idea that he’s clearly moving fast.”

Knut Yran’s famous image, Norway / The Cradle of Ski-ing, from 1955, sold for $1,430, just shy of its top estimate. It depicts a child in a cradle on the slopes, clasping a pair of ski poles. A pair of skis is sticking upright from the crib, ready for action, with the mountains behind the child. This particular variation has the added text, “Enjoy Your Trip, Go by Ship/ Norwegian American Line,” though Lowry added that “we’ve seen it overprinted with the Pan Am logo before.”

Edwin Hermann Richard Henel was a designer of early German ski posters at the turn of the century but the poster on sale at Swann was done in 1950, just three years before he died. In Garmisch-Partenkirchen / VI. Internationale Wintersportwoche the international winter sports week is suggested by two ski poles, a goalie’s stick, and a photomontage of skating pairs set against a mountain backdrop. This was the first time that the poster has appeared at Swann. The poster was printed just five years after World War II had ended, a time when the ski town was better known as an R&R getaway for the occupation forces of American G.I.s, many of whom learned to ski at this resort. It went for $1,063, a bit lower than its top estimate.

The exuberant female skier in the legendary designer Herbert Leupin’s Switzerland from 1939 is wearing a blouse illustrating the various Swiss winter pastimes, from skiing to ice hockey to skijoring. It sold for $500, less than its $700 low bid.

“That shirt is like a poster in itself,” said Lowry. “It’s priced lower because someone trimmed off the title. But it’s a great image. If someone came to me with a bolt of cloth with that design on it, I’d buy it in a heartbeat.”

A classic Olympic poster was Jack Galliano’s VIII Olympic Winter Games / Squaw Valley, Feb 18—28, 1960, the second of two official posters designed for the Squaw Valley Winter Olympic Games. The first poster was issued before the exact dates of the games were determined. This second poster appeared late in 1959 with the purpose of showing the location of Squaw Valley in relation to a map of the United States and giving the date of the Games. It was eventually printed in five different languages. Estimated between $1,200 and $1,800, it sold for $1,750.

There were three ski posters by the German-born designer Sascha Maurer, best known for his work for New England ski resorts and ski manufacturers.

“I hate to use the words ‘quite common’ with these Maurer posters because it makes them sound cheap,” said Lowry. “They are not rare, but they are among the best American ski posters.”

Maurer’s Ski Stowe Vermont / Ski Capital of the East exceeded its $1,800 top estimate to sell for $2,125. “Maurer designed the Stowe logo, the ‘swoosh’” said Lowry.

Maurer’s Flexible Flyer Splitkein / Smuggler’s Notch was also issued in 1935. It depicts a woman in a single chair on the lift, waving to two skiers below, who have left fresh tracks in the snow. The poster hit its top estimate of $3,000.

“This one appears with different overprintings as well,” said Lowry. “Some of the variations were used by small ski areas, small sporting goods stores and in some cases, even restaurants and hotels.”

An artist named W. Rivers was responsible for the strong silkscreen of Yosemite Ski School, an undated image which sold for $1,750, just shy of its top estimate. Designed for the Badger Pass Ski Area, which opened in 1928, it’s very simple with two colors, red and blue and the white of the paper.

A poster by the famed Dwight Clark Shepler, Sun Valley / Union Pacific, was estimated to sell between $8,000 and $12,000 and finished at $10,625. “Shepler designed some of the Dartmouth Winter Carnival posters and others for Sun Valley,” said Lowry. “It’s a wonderful image, graphic and painterly at the same time.”

While the American posters tended to do very well, the erstwhile star of the auction was Winter in Der Schweiz, a masterpiece by the celebrated Swiss graphic artist Emil Cardinaux from 1921. This was the German version of a poster best known in its French version as Sports d’Hiver. The location is not specified but given the mountains, the lake, the high society fashions and the date, it is almost certainly St. Moritz. A work that verges on painterly, this masterful poster was estimated to sell between $12,000 and $18,000 but it failed to meet its reserve price and went unsold. Such is the way of the auction world. For information on upcoming auctions, go to swanngalleries.com. 

A frequent contributor to Skiing History, Everett Potter launched Everett Potter’s Travel Report in 2005. It has become one of the most widely read and respected digital sites in the industry. Explore the site at everettpotter.com. All images courtesy Swann Auction Galleries.

 

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