Barney Wan (1932-2023), Vogue, London, Signed Original Illustration. Ink on paper. Signed with seal. 

Overall Size: 25 x 20 in.

Sight Size: 21 1/2 x 17 in.

Barney Wan, who has died aged 89, was the art director who played a leading role in the success of British Vogue in the 1960s and 1970s when the magazine was referred to, both reverentially and derisively, as the fashion bible. Edited by the legendary Beatrix Miller, the magazine was pivotal in the creation of the image that London was "swinging", and Wan was in there with a calm eye that was at once helpful, skilled and opinionated. When he took over as art director, computer technics were still the unknown aids of the future. Graphic design work was manual, involving a lightbox to view colour transparencies or black and white contact sheets, which would then be marked up and processed through a photocopier ready to be cropped to the required size with a large pair of scissors. It was skilled work. The art department smelled permanently of Cow Gum, the essential rubber-solution glue that designers used to paste the trimmed pictures, accompanying text and graphics on to one sheet in order to create mock-up pages. Even the cover, the flag that would sell the issue on the bookstalls, was created this way. This was Barney Wan's world.