AntikBar is the London gallery and auction house specialising in original vintage posters covering a wide variety of subjects - travel, advertising, sport, cinema, war, propaganda - from around the world. Our stock is available to view at our gallery and on our website. 

Services: We offer collection advice and consultancy services and can source posters for collectors, individual clients, interior designers, museums and other institutions. Worldwide delivery. We also offer professional linen backing and poster restoration services with our partners in California. 

Events: We host regular original vintage poster auctions, exhibitions and talks at our gallery and participate in other events during the year. We are also available to give educational art history talks and organise special exhibitions. 

AntikBar Auctions: We hold regular live online original vintage poster auctions on various platforms, with the auction previews held at our gallery. We are planning to hold 5 auctions in 2024. We also hold timed ephemera auctions. Click here for more information. The dates and details for each auction will be confirmed nearer the time. 

Register to bid in advance for our online auctions via: 
- AntikbarAuctions.com or via: 
- Live Auctioneers new.liveauctioneers.com/auctioneer/3087/antikbar
- The Saleroom www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/antikbar 
- Invaluable www.invaluable.com/auction-house/antikbar-original-vintage-posters  
- BidSpirit at uk.bidspirit.com/ui/houses/antikbar  
- Drouot at drouot.com/en/auctioneer/2829/antikbar  

Antikbar Books: Our collection of antique and vintage book design and related ephemera covering the major art movements primarily from the 1920s-1930s, including Constructivism, Art Deco and Modernism, is available on our books website at www.AntikbarBooks.co.uk.

Gallery address: 404 King's Road, Chelsea, London SW10 0LJ. Opening hours: Monday-Friday 10am-6pm; Saturday 11am-5pm (by appointment only on Sundays and bank holidays*). Open online 24/7 with worldwide delivery. 
*Click here for more information, including directions and any upcoming holiday closure dates. 

AntikBar is a Member of The Association of Art & Antiques Dealers (LAPADA), Antiquarian Booksellers' Association (ABA) and International Vintage Poster Dealers' Association (IVPDA). Finalist in the Independent Retailer of the Year category of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Business Awards. Member of the King's Road Business Forum. Founding Member of the King's Road Curve neighbourhood business group.

  
Kirill Kalinin, Founder of AntikBar: "My interest in original vintage poster art and graphic design started in 1993 when I saw an exhibition poster for The Great Utopia: The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde 1915-1932 at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. The boldness and sheer visual impact of the image, the composition and bold, bright colours made a lasting impression on me and I decided to look into acquiring some works from that period. After several years of collecting (during my career in finance), I founded AntikBar as an online gallery in 2010. Due to increasing demand from clients wishing to view our posters between fairs, we opened our gallery on the King's Road in 2016. We then opened our books website, focusing on graphic design and related ephemera, in 2018." Kirill served as President of the International Vintage Poster Dealers' Association (IVPDA) from 2018-2023. In 2019 he launched the first IVPDA publication, Vintage Poster, available to read online at www.issuu.com. 

Posters are a true form of art with a purpose as they were designed to deliver a particular message through striking designs. These original vintage posters were created to grab the attention of passers-by, presenting artists with the challenge of condensing the message or a concept into a precise, short visual and written form in a single artwork. They are important items of social history that capture the essence of the time they were printed. As antique and vintage items, they are also eco-friendly. Original vintage posters are recognised as a sound art investment that can be enjoyed every day.

Posters were elevated to an art form by French artists at the end of the 19th century. Struggling to make living, they supplemented their income by designing posters. The standards set by the French poster designers raised the bar for other countries and led to a wider acceptance of this media by the art community. Being very topical, posters absorbed and reflected the prevailing and changing art styles and fashions at a rapid pace and became part of the avant-garde art movement.

(Read also the features on AntikBar and collecting posters by Homes & Antiques in their Summer 2017 and Christmas 2016 issues and by Antique Collecting and Invaluable; a 2017 article on travel posters in Period Living; the Financial Times, The Times and Luxury Living Magazine round-up in January 2015; an FT feature on their How to Spend It Art page; and the Art, Antiques and Luxury Design blog — all listed on our News & Events pages with other poster-related information, including links to our Special Information pages on skiing, London Underground, constructivism etc. and Tips on Looking After original vintage posters.)

Practically all of the posters found on our website are lithographs. This is a method of printing that involves carving each colour of the image onto a piece of stone. The poster sheet is then imprinted consecutively with a stone slab for each colour, creating a stunning and rich image. With the exception of silk printing, I believe that other printing techniques do not deliver the same impact of colour as lithography.

We are available to give collection advice and have produced a short Introduction to Collecting Posters booklet, which is available at our gallery and online. We have also set up a YouTube channel with Tips on Packing Posters. Please contact us if you would like any more information. Links to join our mailing list and to follow us on social media for more news, features and other updates are given below:

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