TWO vintage advertising posters by a Bolton-educated artist could sell for more than £1,000 each at an auction next week.

Tom Eckersley’s 1938 poster — Scientists Prefer Shell, You Can Be Sure Of Shell — is expected to sell for between £1,000 and £1,500 at Christie’s South Kensington in London tomorrow.

And at the same sale, his 1948 poster for Gillette razors could fetch between £800 and £1,200.

After leaving Lords College, Bolton, Eckersley went on to become one of Britain’s outstanding poster artists.

In 1948 he was awarded an OBE for his services to poster design and his work now hangs in some of the world’s most famous galleries, including in the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Imperial War Museum in London; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Library of Congress in America and the National Gallery of Australia.

Nicolette Tomkinson, head and director of the posters department at auctioneers Christie’s says Eckersley’s work is “hugely important”.

She added: “Tom Eckersley was a pioneering designer and his work has influenced many that have come after him.

“His posters are now highly sought after and they can only go up in value.”

This year also marks the centenary of Eckersley’s birth, on September 30, 1914.

He was the son of dairy farmer John Eckersley and wife, Eunice, who lived at Laburnum Farm in Lowton.

He was an award-winning student at Salford School of Art, where he met Eric Lombers, with whom he collaborated on the Shell poster.

He died on August 1, 1997, aged 82.