Ordered a new car six years ago, and it's just arrived. Not quite the model I specified ...

(click image to enlarge)

Ordered a new car six years ago, and it's just arrived. Not quite the model I specified ...

Rowland Emett (1906-1990)

Price

£3,250

Signed

Signed and inscribed with title

Medium

Ink with bodycolour

Dimensions

11 x 12 ¾ inches

Illustrated

Punch, 25 October 1950, Page 396;
Rowland Emett, The Forgotten Tramcar (and other drawings), London: Faber & Faber, 1952;
The Best Cartoons from Punch, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1952, [unpaginated];
Alarms & Excursions and other Transports transfixed by Emett, London: John Murray, 1977

Exhibited

'Marvellous Machines: The Wonderful World of Rowland Emett', Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, May-September 2014;
'A Century of British Art: 1945-2010', Chris Beetles Gallery, London, October-November 2021, No 250

Ordered a new car six years ago, and it's just arrived. Not quite the model I specified ...
Though forerunners of the forklift truck were developed in the United States before the First World War, forklift trucks were only used regularly within British industry following the Second World War. Coventry Climax produced the first British forklift truck in 1946, four years before the publication of the present cartoon, which contrasts a truck's modernity with the old-fashioned lifestyle of its owner. Such elements of health and safety as overhead guards and backrests were only introduced during the 1950s.

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