Looking back to the past with an eye to the future
Pan Am, the renowned American airline originally founded in 1927 and officially known as Pan American World Airways LLC, has just relaunched. The completion of both the poster and the maiden 21st Century journey titled “Tracing the Transatlantic”, marks the start of the centennial celebrations for this icon of the skies.
For those nostalgic for the advent of airborne travel, Pan Am, first known for moving mail and then people to far flung destinations, epitomises the golden age of flying. The brand’s philosophy is underpinned by an exacting flare for design and customer service, found in every detail aboard every flight; affirmative attributes which set the tone in which millions of Pan Am passengers arrived in different countries around the world over the decades.
Those of you who remember this airline now owned by a syndicate put together by Nashville-born luxury travel industry veteran Craig Carter, will probably associate it with blue and white livery and the iconic and glamorous poster girl from the nostalgic good old days of travel. Those days when air travel was a joy not a chore, long before three hour check-ins, endless security checks and being corralled into soulless, allegedly duty-free brand shopping.
Hidden behind this reincarnation of Pan Am, with a new poster capturing the airlines’s heritage, is the story of a creative entrepreneur, Meg Gage Williams. Meg is the CEO of Stick No Bills. She was born into the Williams family dynasty famous for building up a copper and tin mining empire exporting from Cornwall during the 18th and 19th Centuries.
A 24ct gilded Master Edition of the Tracing The Transatlantic poster, with artwork meticulously crafted to commemorate the airline’s vibrant heritage. This one-of-a-kind edition went under the hammer at a grand finale dinner held at the Foynes Flying Boat Museum in Ireland at the end of the inaugural JFK round trip flight to Bermuda, Lisbon, Marseille, London and Shannon. It sold for a total of $13,212 (£9,757), with $7,347 of that donated to the Flying Boat Museum.
Meg Gage Williams and The Archives Design Group’s gilder Julian Godbolt at Stick No Bills Global Printworks & Poster Art Gallery in Palma De Mallorca
The story behind the Pan Am launch, especially for creative people, is Meg Gage Williams’ story. She founded her poster agency – Stick No Bills – in Asia fifteen years ago with her husband Philip James Baber.
Her passion for the power of poster art has seen her forge ahead with the Stick No Bills project since the tragic death of Philip in October 2023. It’s a passion stemming from her peripatetic childhood. Meg also understands the power of words, weaving poetic text into her licensed poster art.
She’s a fascinating character with an intriguing past. In 1999, before founding the poster company, she became enchanted by Sri Lanka while doing investigative journalism there. Her research evolved into counter-terrorist risk analysis focused on gun running and heroine trading gangs operating across insurgent conflict zones throughout the Middle East and Asia. These included then-war torn Sri Lanka’s Colombo and Jaffna. Her intuition suspected a lot more was going on than just tea, rubber and gem extraction in the pearl of the Indian Ocean, a Silk Road-born modern nexus point for all manner of trade between east and west.
It all began in Sri Lanka – Meg & Philip at The Galle Fort Market aka Galle Pola which they founded in 2010.
Meg took her surf board on these trips and quickly became bewitched. With her work she returned repeatedly over the next decade, surfing in between work meetings in Southern Sri Lanka. During this time she met Philip Baber in the Middle East, who was a successful advertising photographer. A dedicated surfer, he had also spent some time in Sri Lanka, including being in Hikkaduwa, one of the worst hit southern oceanfront towns, during and after the 2004 tsunami. He had also fallen in love with the island.
They found their love of discovering the best waves brought them together and tempted them to take a life break. After they married in 2008 their search for the perfect wave took the duo all along the east coast of South America. They returned to Sri Lanka in 2010 after inheriting of a surf hotel called Easy Beach, located in Ahangama on the south coast. Meg describes Easy beach as “a double misnomer. There was no beach left in Ahangama in 2010: just reef. And managing it was far from easy. It was more like a Tropical Faulty Towers”.
Then chance, or was it fate, took a hand. They stumbled on an old tea chest full of decaying posters in an abandoned cinema reel room in Colombo 5 in Colombo, just south of Mt Lavinia. This sparked the initial idea of remastering vintage posters and led them to set up the first Stick No Bills poster gallery in a beautiful townhouse in the merchant city of Galle Fort.
The Stick No Bills gallery in an old Dutch Merchant house on Pedlar Street in historic Galle Fort, on Sri Lanka south coast, where it trades seven days a week. Stick No Bills fine art prints featured at Iconic Images Gallery in Piccadilly, London
Curiosity about a collection of tea, early cruise, travel and film posters told the socio-cultural story of Ceylon over the years, going back to the 1870s, combined with being based in an old Dutch merchant house in this spectacular UNESCO World Heritage city, brought people from all over the world to their door – intrepid travellers amongst a first wave of tourism occurring as the Indian Ocean island-nation opened up post a protracted civil war.
From talking to visitors to this first gallery, Meg came to realise that wherever you are in the world, people want to take something special back with them as a memory. A nostalgic or amusing poster capturing the essence of landmark locations ticked that box for many and Stick No Bills has been on an incredible journey ever since.
All this love of covering walls with posters was inspired by her rebellious teenage years. “Plastering flyers on my bedroom walls gave me a sense of permanence within an exciting early lifetime of impermanence: my father was posted to over 18 different places during his 32 years in the armed forces. We were forever packing and unpacking boxes in new homes.
Stick No Bills Global Printworks in Palma de Mallorca, twinned with continental flagship galleries in Barcelona, Galle and Dubai.
Meg learnt as she moved around the world that everywhere you go posters capture the zeitgeist of a place and moment in time, bridging cultural and generational gaps to bring us all together, wherever we are.
Meg Gage Williams – the creative spark behind the Stick No Bills brand
The images spoke not only to her but everyone like her that loved cool music, unconventional fashion, provocative films, dance and stories that made her dream BIG! Now her Stick No Bills Poster Ltd imagery is, much to her parents amazement, catching the eye and attracting companies like Pan Am with their vintage and nostalgic creativity. Her quest is to preserve some of the greatest travel and film moments of the 20th and 21st Century.
Meg’s incredible collection of licensed historic Pan Am posters, has lead to being involved in the relaunch of Pan American and their return to the skies. With just 20 months to go until the hundredth anniversary of Pan Am in March 2027, Stick No Bills’ strap-line: “The journey has just begun” has never been truer.
In a world where genuine creativity and respect for heritage all too often goes unrewarded, or even unrecognised, it’s great to see what can be achieved with hard work, persistence and flare.
To find out more about Meg and Stick No Bills check out the website and Instagram
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All images © Juliet Coombe, The Archives Design Group and its licensors.
