Flea Market Find: Vintage Classroom Posters

At a flea market on my recent trip to Beijing, I came across a surly gentleman with a big stack of old educational posters he claimed were from the 1950s. Some were pretty gross (I've saved the sea creature anatomy poster for after the jump), but others were beautiful, especially for a lover of scientific curiosities. I walked away with a portrait of the solar system in cartoonishly bold colors. While it's certainly fun to have found these with Chinese lettering, old classroom posters can often be found in local flea markets as well, and they're a fun way to decorate a casual space or a child's room...

Told you—pretty gross. This one's not exactly the type of thing I'd want to admire on my wall day after day. Maybe it could work in a beach cottage...? Nah. In any case, posters like this are available in many more palatable designs, like botanical diagrams, maps, and evolutionary charts.

A quick search on ebay for "vintage educational poster" yielded a pretty good selection, including this kind of mod cross-section of the moon. We've seen posters like this before at the Alemany flea market, too. Anyone have another good source for these?

Check out Tammy's post on ohdeedoh for more vintage educational poster info.

(Images: Susie Nadler)

Comments (16)

nice find!
love the birds, too.

posted by baba yaga on July 14th 2009 at 10:10pm
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these are so cool! what will you do with those? i could imagine cutting out some of the designs and mod-podging it on something.. i remember an old issue of martha stewart she did it on ornamental wooden eggs.

posted by clancyslover on July 15th 2009 at 12:40am
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Holy male genitalia!

posted by MaySea on July 15th 2009 at 3:16am
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That's gross? Are you kidding? Call me a biology geek, but I would way prefer that sea creature anatomy poster to the moon one, which seems rather dull.

posted by pyewacket on July 15th 2009 at 9:22am
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Uh - what's 'gross' about the sea antaomy one....? I fail to see the logic in that....(call me a biology geek, too)

posted by Amy in T.O. on July 15th 2009 at 10:38am
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I love the sea anatomy poster! Nothing gross about it at all.

posted by Amy in T.O. on July 15th 2009 at 10:42am
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I've somehow gotten 4 old anatomy posters from work. The 'grosser' (awesome-er) ones are far more interesting than the 'pretty' (boring) ones. Wish I had more walls for them but they are easy to roll up and hang so they definitely lend themselves to be changed every once and a while.

posted by Hollie on July 15th 2009 at 11:29am
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You guys, stop posting the things I love and try to find cheap and thus making them more expensive! But seriously, I love these-- the best are the old French maps and the German botanical ones. Sigh.

posted by marie516 on July 15th 2009 at 12:34pm
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oh, the flea market posters are fabulous! i would've made off with the whole stack. what i'd give for some hi-res scans of those. agree that the squid poster is quite interesting and not at all gross.

posted by inaccrochable on July 15th 2009 at 12:38pm
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@inaccrochable http://caliban.mpiz-koeln.mpg.de/~stueber/haeckel/kunstformen/natur.html is a resource with high res scans of scientific posters.

posted by girlonthem00n on July 15th 2009 at 4:32pm
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I saw some great ones at HD buttercup, maps and instructional posters for various topics in french, but they were much bigger and more expensive - in the $150 range. so thanks for the ebay links - I will have to lurk around there for an affordable find!

posted by lovelyrita on July 15th 2009 at 4:38pm
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No winder kids are all screwy these days. The great educational posters have been languishing in attics and trunks and are mow just making their way back into the light of day.

There was always an underlying cool link knowing that some of the educational posters used in my formative years had been used by my parents and their generation.

Totally off topic but where ate the links to the past for the new generation?

posted by Seaside on July 16th 2009 at 1:56am
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Thanks for the link, girlonthemoon!

posted by Lilli K. on July 16th 2009 at 2:55pm
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Evolution NYC sells reproductions of German scientific charts from the 50's, but I don't think you can get them off of their website. Mine is a dandelion cross-section, but they have lots to choose from, from the lovely to the gross. Anatomy of a starfish, anyone?

posted by caitapiller on July 19th 2009 at 11:16am
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SQUID DIAGRAM = AWESOME

posted by Cosmotosis on October 17th 2009 at 9:48pm
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On a separate note, I got a bunch of old National Geographic from the library and found a bunch of old posters in them... I have one of the Triassic period, an 18th century conception of what a map of the Americas looked like, and an amazing evolution one, all from 70's - 80's era. My room has a lot going on, so they all fit right in!

posted by Cosmotosis on October 17th 2009 at 9:52pm
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