"Flushing by day. Hook by night"

That statement appears, in bold print, on a vintage British poster which is for sale soon ( and it could still appear now, methinks).

What does it mean?

" Flushing" & "Hook" are two villages or towns in the U.K, I think. What does it mean exactly??? Don't know.

Looks like there was a Hook Continental and a Flushing Continental Pullman boat train services out of London. So I would have to guess that one left in the day and the other left in the night ?

Flushing is the English name for Vlissingen, a ferry port in Holland.

Hook or 'the Hook' is short for the Hook of Holland [Dutch Hoek van Holland 'the corner of Holland'] which is an enormous ferry port near Rotterdam.

The poster was advertising a shipping company's service to the Netherlands.Passengers could take day ferries to Flushing and night ferries to Hook.The slogan was therefore 'Flushing by day. Hook by night'

The ferries would leave from the English port of Harwich ['haridge']. The railway company used to have a poster, for its ferry service, reading 'Harwich for the continent' to which the graffito 'and Paris for the incontinent' was commonly added

If they would put an image of the poster up, I could make a copy for DorianGreyed's Gifts.

Is this it, Fred?

[Pause while I extricate the auction catalogue from under Irish wolfhound puppy on sofa ]

Yes, it's the very one, lot 65 in Christies sale 5874 'Travel and Vintage Posters' of September 9th, this week, at Christies, South Kensington branch [estimate £700 to $900/ $1100 to $1400, condition B+. Not too late to bid by fax or e-mail, or ask me to bid for you, as I'll be there ] It's also pictured in Christies online catalogue, where you can view the picture of the poster without the accompanying notes. Christies say 'Artist unknown, printed by Haycock Press London'.

I can let you have a copy for a great deal less. Just show it in low light behind foggy glass.

quote:

Originally posted by DorianGreyed:
I can let you have a copy for a great deal less. Just show it in low light behind foggy glass.

It's a deal.

Done. It's in the New This Week section. (Use the link at the top of AP. It's cheaper. CafePress has fooled around with the prices, but if the link above is used, the old prices show up. If the link isn't there, refresh your screen.)

This link should work. If you lose it, then use the DorianGreyed's Gifts link on AP. DO NOT go to CafePress and go through the marketplace. Higher prices, but lower profit to the shop owner.

http://cafepress.com/doriansgifts

The poster fetched £850 hammer [£1094.37 after 25% buyer's commission and 15% VAT on the commission, say $1,800]. I bid it to £800 hammer before I remembered the Dorian Greyed offer and stopped That's a fairly modest price for a poster of this type. Can't have been any Dutch bidders or intrigued Americans.

Americans were out in force online.Strangest was a bidding war between an Australian and a bidder in Wisconsin fighting over a poster for a hotel in North Staffordshire (a peculiarly unromantic area of the Midlands).Predictably, given the current economic climate,and the nostalgia factor, American bidders chased the 'motivational' posters, dating from the late 1920s, which used to be displayed in American factories, bearing slogans like 'strive for your goal' over a picture of a footballer scoring a touchdown.These went for £4,000 and more hammer each ( about $6,400 +)

Top lot was an art deco railway poster at £20K hammer.

Fred, you can have a framed panel print of that poster poster (OK, a copy of that poster) for
not $59.99
not $49.99
not $39.99
but $38.99! (plus S&H)

Other Art Deco and Depression images available, on dozens of products

What, and no commission? I'm so old that I can remember when auction houses only charged the seller a modest commission, as estate agents (realtors) still do. The big auction houses not only now charge the buyer, at ever increasing rates (years ago it was 8%), but still charge the seller. So a lot that sells for £10,000 in the room costs the buyer 128.75 % of that but also costs the seller a similar sum deducted from the price bid in the room ('hammer price').

Another of my favorites