Richardson Studio Australian movie posters
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Richardson Studio AUSTRALIAN daybills are among the most highly sought daybills and one of the few movie posters that are collected as much for their art as for the movie they advertised.
The daybills designed by Richardson Studio provided a consistency of style and fine use of both the earlier stone litho and later hand-litho printing processes. A Richardson Studio daybill is usually recognisable by striking contrast, deep and rich colours. The stylised 2 colour font used for a movies title was also very unique and very different to the commonly used block one colour style font.
John Richardson started Richardson Studio and provided art primarily for Paramount releases from the 1920s to 1960s. Even when art was not created by Richardson himself, the daybills design provided a consistency of style and fine use of both the earlier stone litho and later hand-litho printing processes.
From the 1940s to 1960s most Australian movie posters were produced with far more human involvement/assistance than other techniques therefore daybills from this era are often referred to as “hand litho”. This unique process is recognisable by its rich texture of colour and subtle tones.
“Hand lithos” were made using flexible zinc plates that were rolled around a large printing drum. The term ‘hand litho’ comes from the fact that the inks were applied to the plate by hand by the printers/artists who worked from tracing drafts they either executed themselves from reference material supplied by the distributors, or where the distributors contracted art studios (like Richardson for example) to execute the artwork.
Some collectors classify them as the same. Also for some reason some dealers think that listing the poster as ’stone’ litho raises the value.
It’s fairly easy to tell the difference between them - simply put a hand litho next to a stone litho daybill and the differences are obvious. Stone lithos have a finer grain to the inking, a greater subtlety to the shading and colors, a finer line to the black plate art, and so on.
A hand-litho actually requires a degree more skill than stone-litho.
On most of my ebay listings I refer to the artwork and the colours on an Australian “hand litho” movie poster as “off the planet” and “leaves all other versions for dead”. See for yourself with “The Blue Dahlia” a great example of a Richardson Studio daybill. To view Richardson Studio daybills visit www.aussieposters.com
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