This exceedingly rare Double Crown (30 x 25in) Underground poster is one of only a handful of surviving copies of the first printing of Harry Beck’s now-iconic design at this size. After the successful publication of Beck’s pocket Tube map in January 1933 in an astounding initial print run of 750,000 copies, the London Underground then turned their attention to the poster editions.

The Quad Royal (50 x 40in) poster, intended for display in stations, was published in March 1933 in a print run of 2,500. Only three examples of that edition are known to have survived, two in private collections and one in the London Transport Museum’s collection.

The slightly reduced Double Crown edition followed in August 1933 in a smaller print run of 2,000 copies. These must have been deemed to be less essential than either the pocket maps or the Quad Royal posters and may have been intended to fill spaces in stations that were too small for the Quad Royal poster but still in need of signage.

The two poster editions are almost identical in their layouts, with four exceptions:

1. A north arrow was added to the Double Crown edition, slightly undermining the poster’s schematic nature. This arrow only appears on one edition of the folding pamphlet map (August 1933), but it remained on the poster maps until 1936 when it was finally removed.

2. A new roundel logo has been pasted over the original L.P.T.B. (London Passenger Transport Board) logo. Between March and August, it had been decided by Frank Pick and the Publicity Department that the L.P.T.B. logo was too clumsy and would be replaced by the more elegant ‘London Underground Transport’ logo seen here. As the posters had clearly already been printed, the new logo was rather crudely pasted over the old logo on all of the Double Crown posters.

3. The red/orange colour of the Central Line was softened in the Double Crown edition as it was very difficult to distinguish from the red of the Metropolitan Line on the Quad Royal poster.

4. The diamond symbols used to indicate interchange stations on the Quad Royal poster were replaced by the now-familiar hollow circles which are still used to this day.

We are only aware of five surviving examples of this Double Crown poster map, one of which resides in the collection of the London Transport Museum.