Collecting: Vintage Turner Airbrush Prints

Recently, I’ve gotten into hunting up vintage Turner Manufacturing Co. prints. These mass-produced mid-century era prints have a distinctive look, with pastel colors that fade into one another. The flamingo print pictured here (so sorry for the glare; it hangs in my dining room and is very hard to get a good photo of due to all the windows) is the most popular with collectors. There’s not a lot of information to be found about Turner prints. They were manufactured in Chicago, and were very inexpensive…appealing to people who could not afford fine artwork or were decorating on a budget. They feature birds (flamingos, cranes, cockatoos), flowers, ladies in old-fashioned Victorian dresses and bonnets, leopards or country scenes….bland, pastel, idealized images that would have made them the Thomas Kinkaid prints of their time. I like them a lot! (I have a soft spot for Kinkaid prints, as well, so go figure.) The 1950’s color palette appeals to me…this flower print is part of a set of four prints; I’ve only managed to find two. This is the other one. I’m not sure if they were originally sold together or separately; Turner prints were often made to be displayed in pairs, for example, there are lots of sets where one print is of a fancy Victorian lady, and the other is of a dapper Victorian gentleman. I found this one at the flea market last month. When I researched it on the internet, I found an identical one that was listed for upwards of $400, and the print was described as “rare.” Since then, I’ve come across several more on this web…all Turners were mass-manufactured, so I doubt that there IS a rare Turner print, and I estimate the value much closer to the $20 I paid at the flea. Turner also made mirrors with the prints as decals, and sold prints in mirrored frames; these items have a really nice 1950’s look to them. The first Turner mirror I ever saw was inside Disney Studios theme park. It hung in the lobby of the Prime Time Café when I visited as a junior in high school in 1990–the year after it opened. I don’t think it is still there; the restaurant’s décor, although still 1950’s themed, has been updated/refreshed. I’m not sure I can adequately describe how wonderful I thought the Prime Time Café was on that first visit. I would have happily moved right in! This print with the cranes is the same large size as the flamingo print pictured above; both hang in my dining room. They are from the flea market here in Nashville, and I paid significantly less than identical prints listed for sale on Etsy or Ebay. If you are interested in Turner prints, I encourage you to search locally for them; they are quite common and easy to source in antique stores, vintage stores, estate sales or flea markets and you will likely find much better prices than you will see on-line.

Happy collecting!

Mrs. T