Jamie Reid valuation
Cut the ransom-note lettering that defined punk, and never stopped being a political artist.
Jamie Reid was born in London in 1947 and died in 2023, and his graphic work for the Sex Pistols — the ransom-note lettering, the safety pin, the defaced portrait of the Queen for God Save the Queen — is among the most reproduced imagery of the twentieth century.
What a work by Jamie Reid is worth
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation is free, made online from the photographs you send, and it commits you to nothing. We act for sellers across the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States.
Write to info@whitebankfineart.co.uk, or start below.
Bio
Jamie Reid was born in London in 1947 and died in 2023, and his graphic work for the Sex Pistols — the ransom-note lettering, the safety pin, the defaced portrait of the Queen for God Save the Queen — is among the most reproduced imagery of the twentieth century. It was not an isolated commission: he came out of Suburban Press, an anarchist printing operation in Croydon, and the politics ran through everything afterwards, including decades of work on land rights, protest and druidic and pagan themes that the punk association tends to obscure.
The market divides sharply between original artwork and paste-ups from the 1970s, which are scarce and historically documented, and the very large volume of later signed editions and reissues. Those are not the same object and the gap between them is wide. Original period material needs provenance; the editions need edition size, publisher and signature checked. Anything on paper from the 1970s carries the condition problems of cheap stock — acidity, fading, tape — and should be assessed before framing.
At a glance
- Born
- 16 January 1947, London
- Died
- 8 August 2023, Liverpool
- Movement
- Contemporary art
More on Wikipedia.
Croydon, Suburban Press and the anniversaries
Reid grew up in Croydon, studied at Wimbledon Art School from 1962 and Croydon Art School from 1964, and took part in a sit-in there with Malcolm McLaren. He founded Suburban Press, a radical political magazine, in 1970, and it was in designing it that he developed the ransom-note lettering.
He made a series of screenprints in 1997 for punk's twentieth anniversary, and in 2007 Never Trust a Punk for the thirtieth anniversary of God Save the Queen. From 2004 he exhibited and published prints with the Aquarium Gallery, which held a retrospective, May Day, May Day, in 2007. He was an honorary bard of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids, and died at home in Liverpool in August 2023.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.
