THE ACID TEST

Old hippies can look forward to becoming nouveau riche thanks to the booming trade in Sixties psychedelic posters. Fiona Sturges takes a trip to Bonhams auction house which is preparing the largest sale to date

Paying tribute to the 30th anniversary of the "Summer of Love", Bonhams Chelsea is staging its own commemorative love-in with the sale of an extensive collection of vintage rock'n'roll posters, sketches and original drawings by the leading psychedelic artists from London and San Francisco. It is the largest collection of Sixties psychedelia ever to be exhibited and sold.

During the Sixties these posters served as advertisements for bands, hippie events and campaigns but today they are collected because the artwork captures the spirit of the decade.

Stanley Mouse - regarded by his contemporaries as the greatest rock'n'roll artist of his time - was working in San Francisco in the years leading up to the 1967 Summer of Love and was soon involved in the emerging poster and party culture. He remembers how the craze came about. "The younger generation was congregating around Haight-Ashbury [the city's famous hippie district]. They were throwing parties in old fire stations. Then the parties got bigger and they moved into bigger venues and halls, and the promoters moved in. They started running the parties three or four times a week. It soon became a tradition that the local artists made posters. Their output got bigger as the parties got bigger."

The market value of psychedelic posters, magazines and album covers was first recognised by Bonhams in 1987 when they were auctioned alongside more general memorabilia from the Sixties. Since then prices have steadily risen. Ted Owen, Bonhams' rock and pop specialist is optimistic about their investment value. "We ran a sale of psychedelic posters and Pop Art last year which went down very well. No one really knew these posters still existed, which is why we isolated them. There has been a great deal more interest recently and prices are beginning to rise."

Psychedelic posters are now recognised as being both artistically and culturally important by institutions such as the V&A and MoMA in New York which now exhibit examples in their galleries. The Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame and Museum which opened in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1995 has also staged an in-depth exhibition called I Want To Take You Higher: The Psychedelic Era 1965-1969.

You don't have to have "been there", however, to know the art work as even if you are not familiar with the artists, their posters are instantly recognisable because of the bands they promoted. The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan and the Beatles are among the groups that will be represented in technicolour glory at Bonhams' auction.

Also up for sale is the original artwork for Rick Griffin's famous Flying Eyeball - a chillingly realistic eyeball suspended by Asterix-style wings swathed in fire - which first appeared on the poster for Jimi Hendrix's 1968 concert at the legendary Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco. The motif, which became the a trademark for both Hendrix and Griffin, is tipped to reach a staggering pounds 90,000.

Meanwhile the skull and roses symbol, created by Stanley Mouse, cannot fail to evoke nostalgia among fortysomethings as the emblem for the cult American band, the Grateful Dead (though to younger generations it looks like an Eighties heavy-metal insignia).

Since commercial flyposters had not discovered the merits of super-adhesive paste, Mouse's sought-after posters were easily removed from the streets and pinned up in the bedrooms of "Dead Heads" across the city. But today it's Mouse's personal collection of posters and drawings which are in the auction, including original pencil sketches, prints and proofs for the Grateful Dead posters (apparently, the band regard him with such great esteem, they recently held a benefit gig to buy him a new liver), all stamped with his logo of a mouse. The estimated prices for the Mouse posters range from pounds 1,000 to pounds 20,000, depending on their scarcity and condition.

Mouse says he has now made a dramatic move away from his psychedelic past and prefers fine art. "I paint a lot of life models in the style of Degas and Monet. I'm not into the be-here-then trip."

Serious Acid casualties will be captivated by design group Funky Features' "black light" posters which were decorated with day-glo images of Vikings, goblins and enchanted castles on fuzzy-felt backgrounds and then sprinkled with glitter. Made to be displayed under ultra- violet light, they adorned the walls at San Francisco's Avalon Ballroom in its Sixties heyday (estimated prices for Funky Features' posters from pounds 100). Bonhams is also selling a number of "Acid blotters": perforated and decorated pieces of blotting paper which would have been submerged in LSD and consumed morning, noon and night. Some are signed by the cult, and recently deceased, Acid guru Timothy Leary. Bonhams is assuring buyers that these examples have remained unimpregnated.

London Bohemia is well-represented in the sale by artists Nigel Waymouth and Michael English. The British equivalents of San Francisco's Mouse and Griffin joined forces to become Hapshash and the Coloured Coat.

During the Summer of Love, hippie publishers and club promoters Osiris Visions commissioned Waymouth and English to promote London's UFO nightclub. Their first poster announced the launch of the UFO Festival and featured a huge pair of lips and glowing pink wobbly Art-Nouveau lettering. The pair went on to produce some of the most collectable - and indeed indecipherable - posters of the decade, valued today for their expensive and labour-intensive silk-screen- printing and offbeat and idiosyncratic designs. Waymouth also sold his psychedelic paraphernalia at a shop called Granny Takes A Trip on the King's Road, Chelsea.

Like Mouse, Waymouth has now rejected his off-beat style in favour of a respectable and highly successful career painting portraits of, among others, the Duchess of York and the Earl of Lichfield.

For die-hard nostalgics there are several alternative rock newspapers and fanzines. These include copies of the International Times, Europe's first underground newspaper, which organised events such as the Technicolour Dream, a 14-hour-long love-in at Alexandra Palace. There are also rare issues of the anarchic Oz which was founded in Australia but moved to England after its designers and journalists saw Britain's burgeoning hippie scene. Designed by Martin Sharpe - also responsible for the dazzling cover of Cream's Disraeli Gears and a close friend of Eric Clapton - Oz became renowned in the hippie underworld for its avant-garde design, vibrant colours and pseudo-intellectual content. One of Sharpe's most famous images for the cover of Oz is Blowing in the Mind, a drawing of Bob Dylan wearing enormous sunglasses and engulfed in a swirl of psychedelic bubbles. This image became so popular that it was turned into a mass- produced poster, a copy of which is in the sale. No doubt the creators of this legendary image are now designing for Homes and Gardens.

"High Art" Auction, Bonhams Chelsea, 65-69 Lots Road, London, SW10 (0171 393 3952). Sale 16 September 11am-5pm; viewing 14, 15 September. A touring preview will also take posters to San Francisco, New York and, from 21-25 July, Bonhams Knightsbridge, Montpelier Street, London, SW7 (0171 393 3900).