Vintage Poster Archives
Dig for Victory — All My Own Work 1940s | WW2 Home Front Poster
Dig for Victory — All My Own Work 1940s | WW2 Home Front Poster
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A kneeling gardener, blue beret tilted and red bow-tie askew, presents a black chalkboard chalked with the words 'ALL MY OWN WORK' to the viewer, his expression one of quiet satisfaction. Behind him, a pile of freshly grown vegetables, green cabbage, cauliflower, carrots, onions, beetroot and celery, spills across the composition. Above, in bold cadmium-red brush-script across a cream ground, the campaign headline reads: 'Dig for Victory.' The cartoon-humour illustration style, close to the Punch magazine graphic tradition, was a deliberate choice by the Ministry of Agriculture, making the message warm and self-deprecating rather than commanding.
The Dig for Victory campaign was launched in October 1939 by the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, run throughout the Second World War and continued into the early 1950s as rationing persisted well beyond the armistice. This variant bears the H. Manly & Son Ltd, London N.22 printer's imprint and the HMSO code SI 3415, placing it among the post-war reprint editions of circa 1951. At its height the campaign had encouraged three and a half million new allotments across Britain, turning parks, sports grounds and domestic gardens into productive vegetable plots.
This reproduction is digitally restored from an archival source and printed using the giclée process on 200gsm Enhanced Matte Fine Art Paper with pigment-based archival inks, preserving the warmth of the original cream ground and the saturation of the cadmium-red headline.
The poster sits naturally in a kitchen or dining space, given its celebration of home-grown food, and carries equal weight in a study or home office for anyone with an interest in British wartime graphic design and the social history of the home front.
