Hong Kong was a stop on Trans World Airline’s around the world route. Displayed on this vintage menu cover created by the influential American artist David Klein, is the magnificent harbor with two of the thousands of sampans and junks that filled the harbor.

The crews of these ancient craft were dressed in identical baggy pants and conical hats, noted the menu, as were their ancestors who handled these same vessels through the centuries.

Klein produced posters for Broadway theatre productions, Hollywood films, the US Army and various corporate clients including TWA.

Born in El Paso, Texas, in 1918, he moved to California to study at the Art Centre School in Los Angeles ( later renamed the Art Center College of Design).

His extraordinary talent was perhaps most evident in his work between 1955 to 1965 for the so-called ‘Jet Age’ when commercial air travel became more accessible to ordinary folks.

Klein designed numerous award-winning travel posters for TWA – his TWA Times Square poster is on permanent display in the city’s Museum of Modern Art (MOMA).

He was also a prominent member of the California Watercolor Society and created this delicate and beautiful series of images for a ‘Great Cities of The World’ series.  The renderings were presented to passengers on various flight segments and could be taken home and framed.

Klein, one of America’s pre-eminent commercial illustrators, died in 2005.

This TWA image is one of several in our collection. 

Trans World Airlines (TWA) was a major American airline that existed from 1930 until 2001. It was formed as Transcontinental & Western Air to operate a route from New York City to Los Angeles via St. Louis, Kansas City, and other stops, with Ford Trimotors. With American, United, and Eastern, it was one of the "Big Four" domestic airlines in the United States.

Courtesy Private Collection.