Christie's auction house in London recently held an "Art of Travel" sale, raking in more than R15-million for 88 vintage travel posters. The prints, dating from the mid-20th century, hark back to a golden age of travel, when the journey itself — by steam trains, ocean liners and new-fangled aircraft — was part of the thrill, and customers were urged, in starkly splendid colour, to head off to exotic and romantic destinations.The highest price went to a colour lithograph byAlexandre Alexeieff, born in the Russian Empire in 1901. He was an artist, filmmaker and illustrator who lived and worked mainly in Paris. His 1932 poster, titled “To London by Sleeper", evoking a thrilling moonlit journey from Edinburgh to King's Cross, fetched a staggering £30,000 (R651,000).mini_story_image_hleft1Also on sale were some works from Lucien Boucher and David Klein.Boucher designed colour lithographs for Air France from 1934 until 1962. His 1961 poster, titled "Air France Planisphere", a bright, red map of the world, featuring birds, planes, ships, famous buildings and people in traditional dress, fetched £7,250 (R156,000).Klein, who made ads for Trans World Airlines in the US in the late '50s and '60s, when TWA was one of the world's most progressive and prestigious airlines.Klein's posters are credited with helping to create the idea in Americans' minds that seeing the world meant flying with TWA.His bold ad for New York, made in 1960, showing the city as a star-spangled jumble of squares with a plane soaring overhead, sold for £4,000 (about R86,000).Altogether, the posters sold for a total of £725,125 (R15.6-million)...