Warwick William Lendon SGA (b.1883)

This little piece of postal service history is an original 1930s Greetings Telegram design by graphic artist Warwick William Lendon SGA (b.1883). Illustrated greetings telegrams were first introduced in 1935 by the British postal service as a way to encourage telegram use for communications other than bad news. The Greetings Telegram was a great way for artists to increase their profile and reach an incredibly broad audience; designers included eminent names such as Edward Ardizzone, Rex Whistler and John Strickland Goodall.

One of a small group by the artist that we have for sale. Lendon contributed illustrations to Punch, The Sketch and The Tatler, and exhibited from 1918 to 1921 at the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, the Society of Graphic Art, and the New English Art Club. He was elected a member of the Society of Graphic Art in 1925.