Reproduction, Cotton Bale Labels

Kauffer’s first commercial commission after his Underground posters came from a Manchester-based cotton exporter. Kauffer designed labels for cotton bales sent to Latin America. He treated these labels as mini travel posters, portraying sunny, exoticized locales that he drew from reference photographs. His graphic style and depiction of figures was derived almost directly from the posters he had seen in Munich, Germany. Ultimately, Kauffer designed eight different groups of labels over 12 years.

Inspired by German poster artists, Kauffer used flat color patterning to express modernity in his commercial art. Germany, like Great Britain, was a colonial power whose advertising often featured people from Asia, Africa, and the Arab world in servile roles. Skin tone and facial features were exaggerated to emphasize otherness. Kauffer actively adopted this racialization, at times copying explicitly from German designers, including Ludwig Hohlwein.

This object was previously on display as a part of the exhibition Underground Modernist: E. McKnight Kauffer.