On-board luncheon menu card on the Orient Line S.S. Oronsay, 'Other Travellers: Robinson Crusoe', Monday 26 October 1953; Lynton Lamb.

Printed luncheon menu for a fancy dress ball on the Orient line S.S. 'Oronsay', dated Monday, 26th October, 1953. The card is folded once vertically. On the front is a printed image, from an illustration signed Lynton Lamb, depicting Robinson Crusoe with white beard and dressed in brown, with sandals. He leans on a rifle and has a green parrot on his shoulders. Behind him is the sea in blue and green and blue sky. The original illustration included a title hand-written by the artist, and appears printed below the image.

The text on the back of the menu card, printed in black in a serif font, describes who Robinson Crusoe was and the true story inspirations behind Daniel Defoe's story. 'Orient Line' is printed in outline capitals with blue shadow. At the bottom in italics is text mentioning that this is one of a series of six drawings on the same theme by the same artist drawn 'direct to the plastic sheet and printed by the Plastocowell lithographic process'; the V&A has two of the others, Ariel and Lemuel Gulliver, E.350-2005 and E.352-2005 respectively.

Inside, the left half advertises the fancy dress ball and describes the competition rules. Most of the text is in black sans-serif font with occasional bold but the heading 'Fancy Dress Ball' is in a black gothic font. It includes a half-page black and white image, initialed 'DA', of a man wearing a cloak patterned with stars and pulling off a stag mask. The luncheon menu is printed on the right half in a black sans-serif font with occasional italics, centered.

Given by Pamela Griffiths

Gift of Mrs. Pamela Griffiths, whose late husband collected them while a passenger on board.

Reason For Production: Commission

This menu card was made for a voyage on board the Orient Line cruise ship "Oronsay" in 1953. Illustrated menus such as this were printed in advance on land with the inside (menu part) left blank, to be printed on board ship. Passengers often kept them as souvenirs. The menus reflect the luxury of cruise liner travel during its heyday. "Oronsay" was a new liner, making her maiden voyage in 1951.

This illustration is typical of a drawing style that book illustrator and designer Lynton Lamb (1907-1977) developed to suit reproduction by line-block printing. He began using this technique for his early book covers for Oxford University Press, drawing in black ink and white paint on grey paper in such as way that the process printer could easily separate the black from the grey. The grey could be turned into any background colour without affecting the black and white drawing.

Lamb studied art at Central School of Arts and Crafts in the 1920s, under such illustrious names as painter Bernard Meninsky, printer J.H. Mason, wood-engraver R.J. Beedham, lithogragher A.S. Hartrick, and bookbinder Douglas Cockerell. He illustrated around 40 books between 1930 and the late 1960s. Lamb drew from observation and varied his technique according to the book’s subject, whether pen and paint, wood-engraving or lithography.

E.351-2005