Everyday Blog

The first bicycles appeared sometime around the mid-1800’s. They were very clumsy at first, often featured an oversized front wheel and did not have luxuries like pneumatic tires.

Toward the end of the century, the bicycles were beginning to look more like the ones we are used to, and by now there was a mass market for them.

Many bicycle manufacturers were competing for sales, and they used all kinds of colorful posters to advertise their products. These posters are nowadays known as “vintage bicycle posters”. Then as now, associating some attractive young woman with the product was one effective sales tactic, and this was used often.

Accordingly, many vintage bicycle posters feature more or less scantily clad females riding on bicycles (sometimes even standing on the bicycle, or riding a bicycle flying through the air).

Another popular theme which seems to appear mostly at later dates, around the 1920’s or so, is the muscular male bike rider. He may for instance be shown in a bicycle race, drawn in a manner suggesting high speed.

Some vintage bicycle posters are designed by well-known artists. For instance, the famed Alfons Mucha has done at least one such vintage poster that I’ve seen. It features a nubile young woman with her bicycle, done in the Art Noveau style which has become almost synonymous with this artist. (By the way, Mucha didn’t like being associated with the Art Noveau style but insisted that he was doing genuine Czech art, independent of any “style”.)

Original specimens of vintage bicycle posters are rare nowadays; they were not intended as art objects and usually got discarded soon. Those surviving examples now sought after by collectors and command high prices.

However, you can buy a reprinted copy at very affordable prices through one of those websites specializing in selling posters of all kinds, simply go to one of those and look around.