1916 Russian World War I Loan Poster
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GUEST:
My husband bought it probably 20 years ago from a dealer in Atlanta. I cannot exactly remember how much he paid for it. I'm guessing maybe a couple of hundred dollars. It was not much. When he brought it home, he said it was a poster from World War I, from, to sell war bonds to raise money for the war. And then, long time after we had the poster, we had a book that had, said it was a chromolithograph from 1916, and the artist is unknown. But we, it's been hanging in our home for a long time.
APPRAISER:
The two-headed eagle has been a symbol of Russia since 1497, when Tsar Ivan III made it the official national symbol. And it's important to notice that in one talon, the eagle, double eagle, is grasping the orb, and in the other, it's grabbing the scepter, which are two renowned symbols of power. And the other thing is that there are three crowns. Each eagle has a crown on its head, and there's a floating crown in the middle, which is a symbol of unity. And the eagles each, one is facing east, one is facing west. So, as a Russian symbol, it was a very powerful graphic tool that united all of Russia. You also have in the middle St. George slaying the dragon, which was also part of the, sort of the Russian visual mythology. And yes, this is a poster for the First World War, and they needed to raise money to fight the war. And so it says, "War loan, five-and-a-half percent." And in the print beneath, it reads in Russian, "For the strength to hasten victory against our enemies." Under one of the eagle's wings is a trophy of arms, which is sort of an age-old symbol of defeating enemies in battle. And under the other wing, we have a heavy-caliber World War I field gun. The thing about Russian World War I posters is that Russia was not a very rich country, and these posters were printed on incredibly flimsy paper, almost like newsprint. So, many of them have begun to crumble, almost return to dust in your hands if you've picked them up. And I've handled enough of them to know that they're very, very fragile. And yet yours is in as close to immaculate condition as one could hope from a poster that's 103 years old. The other fascinating thing about this, historically, this is from 1916.
GUEST:
Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
One year later, in 1917, was a historic year in Russia of unimaginable proportions. There was not one, there were two revolutions, and in the second revolution, the Bolsheviks toppled the provisional government and set up what would ultimately become, in 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the USSR, and the onset of their communist regime. Now, when the communist regime came into power, they banned all tsarist material. The double eagle was no longer the symbol of Russia and was not the symbol of Russia until after the Wall came down.
GUEST:
Right, right.
APPRAISER:
And Gorbachev and Reagan came to some détente.
GUEST:
Right.
APPRAISER:
It does mention that it was printed in Petrograd, which then became Leningrad. It's a very prolific designer, a designer who designed so many different artworks all over the world, a fellow by the name of anonymous.
GUEST:
(laughing)
APPRAISER:
And the amount of work that he created was incredible. We don't know who designed this poster. I consulted with some of my Russian-speaking colleagues. It does say that it was printed chromolithographically. Technically, however, it is only a lithograph.
GUEST:
Oh, okay.
APPRAISER:
It's a small detail. I don't know if it's a difference in translation. The other posters tend to sell for $800, tend to sell for $500, sort of in that range. I've never seen this image before.
GUEST:
Oh!
APPRAISER:
A fair auction estimate for this would be between $1,500 and $2,000.
GUEST:
Oh! Oh.
APPRAISER:
But on a good day, it could certainly sell for more, say, between $2,000 and $3,000.
GUEST:
Wow, wow, that's wonderful.
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