Iconic Beatles artwork under the hammer

Original artwork used by the Beatles on their Rubber Soul album goes up for auction on Wednesday having lain forgotten for 42 years in its artist's attic. Charles Front was a little-known art director in London when he was approached by Bob Freeman, the Beatles' photographer, to create artwork for a new sleeve.

'To me it was just another piece I'd done and I had put it away and forgotten about it,' says Front, now retired. 'When I took it down to Bonhams I went on the underground with it in a carrier bag. When I came back after discovering its value I was absolutely clutching it in a case.' The lettering will be auctioned at Bonhams in London with a guide price of £8,000 -£10,000.



Front designed the iconic bubble-shaped lettering, heralding a style that became a staple of poster art for the flower power generation. But he said that the design for the typography was not, as many critics have since claimed, induced by psychedelic drugs.

'Whether the Beatles were into LSD or not I don't know but I certainly wasn't. It was all about the name of the album,' he said. 'If you tap into a rubber tree then you get a sort of globule, so I started thinking of creating a shape that represented that, starting narrow and filling out. I was paid 26 guineas and five shillings.'