AN EMPORIUM OF SHRIMPS A RESERVOIR OF BEER

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Handset letterpress poster. Limited Edition of 75 copies only, printed by Justin Knopp of Typoretum. Sheet size: 16' x 12" including margins. This splendidly redolent poster reflec ts the words of Frederick Whymper in his 1877 publication, The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril & Heroism: 'Since the age when Queen Mary pictured to herself Greenwich as a place of pious repose where the sailor might end his days in the fear of God, it has become the favourite haunt of the pleasure-loving cockney "an emporium of shrimps, a reservoir of beer". Those quaint figures, the "geese" and "blue-bottles" of local slang, lounging about under the trees of the park, and loitering through the streets in the dress of another age, have been regarded by the holiday-maker from the metropolis as parts of the amusements of the place. They have been paid for yarns in drink and stray shillings, and have found the doctrine that sailors lived only for grog and tobacco accepted by their admirers as one of the glories of the British navy'. Show more