"Cigarettes Harm Your Health" by Reginald Mount 1962-1963

Martin Klasch: “Cigarettes Harm Your Health” Edward Reginald Mount, colour process engraving, 24.8cm x 38.1cm, published between 1962 and 1963 by the British Ministry of Health.

This poster is part of the Victoria & Albert Museum: its museum number is E.372-1964 and it is located at the Prints & Drawings Study Room, level C, case GG, shelf 42, box A.
(The Victoria & Albert Museum, “the world’s greatest museum of art and deisng” located in England. Its logo was designed by Alan Fletcher whom I wrote about before.)
Edward Reginald Mount was a British graphic designer (1906-1979):

Having worked as a designer for various advertising agencies in the 1930s, Mount joined the Ministry of Information at the outbreak of the Second World War.
During 1939-45 Mount, working with designer Eileen Evans, produced many posters for campaigns varying from security and salvage to road safety and the renowned anti-VD campaign of 1943-44.
The Mount/Evans studio in the 1950s and 60s, became closely associated with the post-war Central Office of Information, producing characteristically neat and precise designs for a wide variety of government agencies. Mount also designed the poster for the British comedy film The Ladykillers (1955) starring Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers. (“Mount, Reginal” The Art of War by The National Archive, England)

The National Archive offers 13 artwoks by Mount. Three more posters can be seen at Rennies website (Rennies is a British shop specializing “in 20th century british art & design”).
For the moment, it seems the best resource online about Reginald Mount is the post at Quad Royal where Martin Klasch first found the poster: “Cigarettes, Germs and Paper” (May 16, 2011). Quad Royal is a blog about posters and graphics. Here’s an excerpt from the post about Reginald Mount artwork:

Reginald Mount only really hoves into view in 1939, when he was taken on by the Ministry of Information as one of only a very small number of in-house designers. Before that it seems that he worked for advertising agencies such as Lintas and so probably never got to sign anything he did. Eileen Evans joined him there as a filing clerk, until her own design skills were noticed, and from then she and Mount worked together for more than thirty years.

Martin Klasch is also on Facebook: check him out.

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