One year after selling a vintage Winter Carnival poster for a record price of $6,900, Nicholas Lowry, director of the New York City auction house Swann Galleries, said this year he is selling what experts may judge to be an even rarer poster.
Swann Galleries has acquired an original Carnival poster from the Winter Carnival Silver Jubilee in 1935, making it one of the earliest Dartmouth posters to even appear on the market, according to Lowry.
"It's the kind of thing that gets this auctioneer very excited," he said.
The first Carnival poster was designed in 1911 even before the College had settled on calling the weekend Winter Carnival but no posters were designed again until 1935, according to Jay Satterfield, curator of the Carnival poster exhibit currently on display in Baker-Berry Library.
Of the 417 posters that Swann Galleries will put up for auction this winter, 18 are vintage Dartmouth Winter Carnival posters, Lowry said.
The auction house created the market for Winter Carnival posters, and has been selling them for approximately seven years, he said.
Dartmouth alumni are most likely to buy expensive pieces of college history, but the posters certainly have broader appeal, Lowry said.
"Because these posters are part of the history of skiing in general, because the imagery that they have is so accessible to everyone, my guess is that it's not just Dartmouth people [bidding on the posters]," he said.
Ken Gorlin, the owner of Hanover's International DVD and Poster store, said the posters' appeal stems from more than just college nostalgia.
"They're creative and they're beautiful," Gorlin said.
International DVD and Poster has been selling original Winter Carnival posters from the 1970s and later for the past year, Gorlin said.
These vintage posters still only account for about one-tenth of 1 percent of the store's total business, but Gorlin said he hopes that the sales will expand to make up for lagging DVD sales.
The 2011 Winter Carnival poster, designed by Teagan Daly '13, continues past traditions.
The poster, rendered in colored pencil and watercolor, depicts an "epic, exuberant, celebratory ski jump," where the skier forms the "e" of the phrase "Carnival of the Century," Daly said.
Though she had the idea to do a poster last year, Daly said she could not find the time to submit one to the contest until now.
Daly said she was especially motivated to design a poster for the 100th anniversary of the Carnival tradition.
"This year is a pretty special and commemorative year for the tradition in general," Daly said. "It's a pretty cool tradition, and it's a big honor to be a part of it."
Daly created commissioned art work in high school, and is an engineering major modified with studio art at the College. This is the first art contest she has entered at Dartmouth, she said.
Dartmouth students have not always designed the posters, according to Satterfield.
Up until the 1950s, the design contest was open to the public, and the winning designs generally came from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.
Many of these original posters were visually stunning, but focused more on winter and skiing in general rather than specific Dartmouth themes, Satterfield said.
In the 1960s, the posters lost the "design kick" of the professional posters, but benefited from a much more "local feel," Satterfield said. Many of the posters contained pop culture references or emphasized "Dartmouth's male-ness," he said.
"You get these very Dartmouth-y' themes that come out," he said. "A lot of Dr. Seuss."
The College keeps copies of all Carnival posters in climate-controlled storage in Rauner Library, and recently published a book containing images of all the posters, Satterfield said.
Posters from more recent Carnivals were available for sale on at the Collis Center on Thursday afternoon. In past years, the poster sale was held in Tindle Lounge, which was renamed the Paganucci Lounge in 2010.
