Collectors head to the slopes for annual ski poster sale

The January 11 auction original winter sports posters, presented in partnership with specialists Tomkinson Churcher, features over 80 lots promoting Alpine hotspots such as Davos, Zermatt, St Moritz, Chamonix and Val d'Isere.

Top of the tree for collectors are the original Art Deco posters promoting Switzerland’s most exclusive resorts. They celebrate a golden age of travel when the first ski resorts commissioned some of the finest designers and artists of the day to create stylish posters urging holidaymakers to visit.

Estimated at £15,000-20,000 is a classic design by Swiss graphic artist Alex Walter Diggelmann (1902-87) depicting a party on a gondola lift in Gstaad – a new addition to the landscape on the Berner Oberland pass when the poster was printed in 1938. The first ski school in Gstaad opened in 1923 with the first ski lifts following in 1934-44.

Equally celebrated are the designs created by French illustrator Roger Broders (1883-1953) for the slopes of the Alps. Distinctive for their simple lines and bold, flat areas of colour, many were commissioned by the Paris Lyon Mediterranée (PLM) railway in the wake of the first ever Winter Olympics in Chamonix in 1924.

There are six of them in the sale including the 1929 Winter Sports in the French Alps depicting stylised figures in colourful attire disembarking from a rail carriage at the Col de Voza on the Mont Blanc massif. Graded A and now backed on linen and framed. It is expected to sell for £6000-8000.

The same guide is given to St Pierre de Chartreuse, a 1930 poster showing a crowd watching a bobsleigh run while Chamonix, Mount Blanc from the same year depicting an ice hockey game is expected to bring £4000-6000.

The poster Sports d’Hiver dans les Vosges was created in 1929 for the Chemins de Fer de L’Est by Théodore Pfiefer (1896-1973), the French artist better known as Theo Doro. This dramatic image of a downhill skier silhouetted against the sunlight as he speeds across the Vosges mountain range is probably his best known work. This fine example is guided at £3000-5000. 

A rare British poster estimated at £500-700 invites the reader to Join the Oxford University Ski Club for the annual trip to Klosters in 1934-35. The design of this tri-colour image is credited to James Riddell (1909-2000) who was both a prolific columnist and cartoonist and a British champion in early days of skiing as a competitive sport. 

Posters from the post-war years tend to be more affordable but are equally colourful, striking and redolent of the eras for which they were made.  The sale includes several posters from the series advertising the beauty of the Swiss winter season created with photographs by Giegel c.1960. The image of skiers catching the rays on deckchairs on the slopes at Villars-sur-Ollo is guided at £300-500.

Gstaad by Alex Walter Diggelmann, estimate £15,000-20,000 at Lyon & Turnbull.

Swiss winter season poster by Giegel estimate £300-500 at Lyon & Turnbull.

British poster by James Riddell for the Oxford University Ski Club, estimate £500-700 at Lyon & Turnbull.

Sports d’Hiver dans les Vosges by Théodore Pfiefer, estimate £3000-5000 at Lyon & Turnbull. 

Chamonix, Mount Blanc by Roger Broders, estimate £4000-6000 at Lyon & Turnbull.