Raleigh 1970s Poster — Outrunning the Lion (Export)

— Poster —
RALEIGH

THE RALEIGH
NOTTINGHAM
ENGLAND

THE RALEIGH CYCLE CO. LIMITED NOTTINGHAM ENGLAND

RALEIGH

PRINTED IN ENGLAND
ADX 0875

[A cyclist in a white shirt and white trousers rides hard to the right across an ochre plain, glancing back over his shoulder. A lion charges after him through the scrub with its mouth open and its tail up, and a plume of dust rises from the rear wheel between them. The machine is a black roadster with a full chaincase, a saddlebag and a lamp bracket, and the sky behind is banded orange and red. RALEIGH is lettered in heavy red italic capitals across the top of the sheet. The heron head badge sits at the lower left above the company line, which is followed by the later boxed Raleigh corporate mark; the printer’s reference ADX 0875 is set very small at the lower right, beside the words PRINTED IN ENGLAND.

Two marks from different eras appear on this one sheet: the old heron-and-pillar badge lettered THE RALEIGH NOTTINGHAM ENGLAND, and the boxed italic Raleigh device that the company adopted much later. The artwork itself is far older than this printing — it is the design that hangs as a picture within the later beach poster in this archive, and it was worked up again for the press advertisement headed “The lion had to give up”. The sheet is therefore a late printing of an early idea, and the year given here is an estimate from the corporate mark rather than from anything the sheet prints.]