Dull Tool Dim Bulb

J.J. Cromer sends a Bell out of the Sky Art Photography and the Company Picnic

A huge bunch of Bell employees at what I presume is the annual mandatory company picnic. It wasn't enough that you had to go (and potato sack) you also had to herd together and look up at the camera in the suburbs of Indianapolis, Indiana. My guess, as the tiny logo at lower right reads "Indianapolis Photo Co" but who knows. Bell Telephone? Bell Helicopter? I believe there was a Bell Helicopter plant in Indianapolis, and that would make sense here, right? But then lots of these guys are wearing boaters and skimmers. Anyone who knows for sure is welcome to write in.

I am doing an enlargement of each letter so you can find your relatives!

This splendid proto Spencer Tunick (in clothes) was sent by artist J.J. Cromer. Cromer is an astounding artist, and it was kind of him to send along a few photos he thought deserved the Dull Tool Dim Bulb treatment. Thanks J.J.! Gift accepted!

Cromer is extraordinary.. Just two of his works are shown below. TRULY extraordinary. I think Chelo Amezcua, Carlo Zinellli, Nellie Mae Rowe and a host of other one-of-a-kind artists, though Cromer clearly lives in a city of his own. Seldom does Horror Vacui look so good.

A Dry and Practical Matter JJ Cromer

The Steering Committee JJ Cromer

J.J. sent a few photographs, which will allow me to link to his site several times. Not only kind of him, It will encourage folks to check out his work again. If you like this blog, you will like his art. There is a remarkable body of work, an impressive exhibition history and a delightful sense of line. Check him out HERE.

"BELL" undated group photograph Indianapolis Photo Co. Gift of JJ Cromer

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Folk Art Train with Human Caboose Snapshot 1939

Snapshot Anonymous (Train with Caboose) 1939 Collection Jim Linderman

A Good Game of Horseshoe Pitching Picture collection Jim Linderman

Collection Jim Linderman Dull Tool Dim Bulb

Close.

Link to the National Horseshoe Pitchers Association HERE

Original Photograph, no date (c. 1900?) Collection Jim Linderman

Browse and Order Jim Linderman Books and Ebooks ($5.99 each) HERE at Blurb.com

How to Make Magic (Number One)

A group of well-guarded secrets No Date COLLECTION JIM LINDERMAN

Proto Porn book by Jim Linderman in THINGS Magazine

Things Magazine has run a nice little blurb on the book PROTO-PORN: The Art Figure Study Scam of the 1950s. Things is lovely, a magazine and weblog about objects, collections and discoveries... and this is much appreciated.

‘During the 1950s, under the quasi-legal rubric and ruse of “Art and Photo Figure Studies” hundreds of soft-core digest books featuring blurry photos of semi-naked women were sold by the truckload to a willing, greedy and needy consumer market’: the story of Proto-Porn: The Art Figure Study Scam, one of several publications by Jim Linderman, keeper of the (somewhat nsfw) Vintage Sleaze weblog. This is of course Taschen territory as well: American Pin Ups, Gil Elvgren, 1000 Pin-up Girls, etc. etc"

Things Magazine is HERE and highly recommended.

Man with Pear Folk Art Bust Carving collection Jim Linderman

Prize Winners! Females Finish in First Place Tinted Tintype photograph collection Jim Linderman

A group of hand-tinted ribbon holders!

Prize winners Tintype Photograph circa 1880 Collection Jim Linderman

Jigsaw Plywood Folk Art Heads

What can I say? Folk Art Plywood Jigsaw Heads. 1950? Collection Jim Linderman

Two Fiddlers Fiddling Tintype collection Jim Linderman Ferrotype

A fine pair of fiddlers Tintype circa 1870 Collection Jim Linderman

See Jim Linderman Books and Ebooks for the iPad HERE

World's Smallest Carvers! Engraved Copper Plate Folk Art Eagle

CLICK TO ENLARGE

A tiny copper plate engraving with a pennysworth of Honest Abe for size comparison. It occurs to me that engravers are actually carvers...very skilled carvers with a steady hand. I have yet to see a chain-saw engraving.

Copper decorative folk art hand engraving No Date Collection Jim Linderman

Browse Dull Tool Dim Bulb ebooks HERE

Fat Man Tintype Circus Sideshow or Just a Large Man? Collection Jim Linderman

Certainly the largest man I've ever seen fit onto a tintype. Sideshow performer or just portly?

Tintype circa 1870 collection Jim Linderman

(See also THE PAINTED BACKDROP: BEHIND THE SITTER by Jim Linderman NOW AVAILABLE AS A $5.99 DOWNLOAD FOR IPAD HERE

Fake Native American Band RPPC Real Photo Postcard collection Jim Linderman

Real Photo Postcard circa 1910 Collection Jim Linderman

Browse and Purchase Dull Tool Dim Bulb Books and EBOOKS ($5.99) HERE

The Albatross of Maine Charles Tower's Fantasy Bird from the Insane Hospital collection Jim Linderman

The Insane Hospital of Augusta, Maine opened in 1840, but much of it burned down ten years later. Since there were so many insane people in Maine (they turned down 100 applications for lack of space) they rebuilt in 1854. By 1900 they had over 1,000 inhabitants.

I do not know when Charles Tower was admitted, but this drawing and fantasy story about the Albatross of Maine was certainly done before 1900. You can read it, but I think it made more sense to Charles than it will to you.

Letter and Drawing by Charles W. Tower, Augusta Insane Hospital circa 1880? Collection Jim Linderman

Browse and Order Jim Linderman Ebooks and Books HERE

School for Boys Graduating Class By the Numbers

CLICK TO ENLARGE URBAN SCHOOLYARD

Someone went to plenty of trouble identifying all the young men here. A few gaps, but not bad. There are three boys named Morris, each further indicated by additional numbers on the reverse! (Morris number 2, Morris number 3...but I suspect they went by other nicknames, like "big" Morris and "stinky" Morris or something) The fellows in back graduated, and most of them went on to grade A schools.

Where and When? Couldn't tell you, but one of the lads was from Cleveland.

Class Portrait, circa 1910? Original Photograph, 6" x 9" Collection Jim Linderman
Browse or Order Jim Linderman Ebooks ($5.99) and Books HERE

Wyoming Cowboys Roll into Town on a Float

Click to Enlarge Fake Cowboys

The Wyoming Cowboys roll into Cleveland on a float...I will refrain from saying these rough and tough hombres are "floating" into town, but I gotta say they look like tenderfoots to me. Their dates look a bit surly, ornery and peeved though.

Original Snapshot, no date Collection Jim Linderman

Buyer Beware Folk Art This Little Piggy Went to Market

All sold within the last few weeks on eBay. These would fall into the "antiques made while you wait" category.

This little piggy went to market,

This little piggy stayed home,

This little piggy had roast beef,

This little piggy had none,

And this little piggy went wee wee wee all the way home.

Rhoda Ann Sargent RIP 1886 Hair Folk Art Memorial Tribute Death

Rhoda Ann Sargent's Hair woven into a tribute. 1886 Collection Jim Linderman

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Tintype Dog with Considerable Eyebrows Tintype Photograph collection Jim Linderman

A real pair of eyebrows on this li'l fellow. Perched on a birch stand, man's best friend.

Tintype Photograph circa 1870 Collection Jim Linderman

Rack of Carnival Knock-Down Punks and the Great Bicycle Ramp Jump Collection Jim Linderman

CLICK TO ENLARGE (collection Jim Linderman)

CLICK TO ENLARGE collection Jim Linderman

A big chunk of early carnival history on one photograph. A rack of knock-down targets sit underneath the giant wooden ramp of death for a bicycle daredevil above. I suppose one could take the time to squint at the signs and identify the location of this carnival which took over main street for a while, but what I here is already enough for me. Oh...and a nice ball toss target with a big mouth.

Carnival Real Photo Postcard (AZO Kodak) circa 1910 Collection Jim Linderman

Madcaps Fingerama Musical Madness (I guess...)

Ladies and Gentlemen, give it up for THE MADCAPS and their original FINGERAMA !!!

Original Real Photo Postcard Date Unknown Collection Jim Linderman

Harlem History and Tan Pin Ups Teena, Vera and Dolores

One of the earliest significant ads I can find in a mass market periodical offering nude photographs of African-American women.

(Or even women of color...)

From a 1956 issue of Frolic Magazine. Scarce today, Frolic was printed on cheap pulp but the covers were bright and vibrant to stand out on the top shelf of shops. In 1956 the magazine was published every two months with Luke Bailey as editor. Harlem was about 100 blocks north of the editorial offices.

The photo sets offered here were common in the day, but to cater to a race market was not. Mar-Mays photos MAY be yet another "branch" of the enormous "Marr" or "Marno" distributor of countless figure study digests documented as well as can be in the book
PROTO-PORN: The Art Figure Study Scam of the 1950s.

The ad here ran four years after African-American photographer Cass Carr was arrested for organizing nude camera shots which used ethnic models...and Bettie Page. Carr was a pioneer of sorts and lived in Harlem. His studio was shut down by police as reported in Jet Magazine in 1952. It is likely the photographs above came from informal (or even illegal) amateur camera club models such as those used by Carr.

Ads from Frolic Magazine 1956 Text by Jim Linderman

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jim Linderman

"...Linderman is widely regarded as one of the foremost figures in a field of vernacular art collectors working beyond the margins of most institutional axioms and impulses, in what is essentially it's own self-taught art form."
Ursula Magazine Hauser & Wirth 2019

"Linderman produces the most sublime books on dreamy, arcane subjects, sexy stuff, too, all with rare one-of-a-kind images." Craig Yoe 2017

"...disclosing an underground history of American popular culture one oddball tale at a time"
John Strausbaugh in The New York Times

"...one of the blog writers to watch for"
ARTSlant

"...wonderful, extraordinary, fascinating, remarkable and profound" Fans in a Flashbulb International Center of Photography Museum 2016

"Brilliantly Astute, Acerbic and Aesthetic Jim Linderman"
The Museum of Everything 2014

"Dull Tool Dim Bulb is always worth a visit" THINGS Magazine 2016

"...grumpy..." The Austin Chronicle 2014

"Perpetually ahead of the collecting curve...a one man Taschen. An authentically curious individual...diligently archiving the forgotten curiosities of American History"

Emma Higgins in Art Hack May 2012

"Jim Linderman likes Art, Antiques and Photography and his collection of Vernacular Photography, Folk Art, Ephemera and Curiosities is a wonderful place..."
LifeElsewhere with Norman B. 2014

"...collected over the years by Jim Linderman, a character who seems the perfect subject for a Harvey Pekar comic. Linderman treats collecting like a calling, and his finds have a resulting air of authority, stunning in their capture of bygone picturesque moments."
Derek Taylor Dusted

"The pictures, discarded artifacts of ecstatic Americana, come from the stash of Jim Linderman, who in his introduction recalls advice he’s plainly taken to heart: “Collect the heck” out of whatever you find interesting."
Drew Jubera Paste Magazine

"His interest in art is rivaled only by his interest in music, and one expression informs the other. He pursues objects with thoroughness and an innate sense of curiosity..."
Tanya Heinrich Folk Art Magazine

"Linderman acknowledges the obscure at the same time that he elevates it.... His collections tell vast stories in sotto voce, allowing curios and objects shadowed by mainstream culture and ideology to converse and be heard. What we hear is an enormous American sub-culture speaking in forbidden, marginalized languages: stuff discovered boxed in the attic out of embarrassment or zealotry, smutty ash trays crowing next to religious pamphlets, each claiming a part of the complex, sometimes contradictory, always conflicted American imagination, a chaos of memories that will one day vanish."
Joe Bonomo Author of Conversations With Greil Marcus, Jerry Lewis Lost and Found and No Such Thing As Was

"...he's one of the world's greatest pickers."
Brian Wallis in The New York Times

"Documenting--one clipping at a time--the scrapbook of a leg and garter aficionado that was dumpster-dived in Virginia in the 60s" "...an outstanding image-archaeologist who has compiled a shelf-ful of worthy and unique photographic histories."
William Smith Hang Fire Books

"Linderman has a knack for discovering untold stories and introducing them to a wider audience"
Joey Lin Anonymous Works

"Jim Linderman...makes us all look a little puny"
Could it be Madness-this?

"...insatiable collector of ephemera and ringleader behind an incredible circus of blogs — including the treasure trove dull tool dim bulb"
The Cynephile

"Yo no sé ustedes pero creo que es uno de los mejores sitios que he visitado en mucho tiemp"
Color Me in Blog

"...there's something beyond the endless photos and postcards and weird propaganda from another time that he lovingly documents - I think it's the collection as a whole, the portrait of a person fascinated with culture and communication. I have met people like this before, and in reading Dull Tool Dim Bulb I feel I have been lucky enough to meet one more. This site is a goldmine in terms of links..."
The Hyggelic Life October 2009

"Linderman is always on the lookout for the new and exciting"
Chuck and Jan Rosenak Contemporary American Folk Art

"...an amazing collection..."
Revel in New York October 2009

"Jim Linderman has a nice little colllection of interesting books and blogs...But every so often he just loses it."
American Digest March 2010

"FOR MOST OF HIS LIFE, COLLECTOR JIM LINDERMAN has searched high and low for authentic things--unique and special objects that define the artistic culture of the American experience. From folk art to popular culture, from pulp fiction to Delta Blues-- Jim is a walking authority on so many things American they are too numerous to mention. One thing is certain-- his collecting interests are for things that have fallen through the cracks, those things lost and forgotten--the box of material under the table at the flea market booth. If it wasn't for dedicated collectors like Jim Linderman-- so many important objects about our culture would have surely been lost to time and indifference."

"Jim Linderman maintains a most interesting blog about the most amazing things from his collection—a site he calls “Dull Tool Dim Bulb,” the only curse words his father ever uttered. I love it, and read it everyday."
"...an excellent writer and I devour your blog daily. I am impressed at your deep knowledge of things within your niche..."
John Foster Accidental Mysteries

"I am grateful to Jim Linderman for first alerting me to the existence of the 1930s Spiritualist hymn "Jesus is My Air-o-plane."
William Fagaly New Orleans Museum of Art, Author Tools of her Ministry: The art of Sister Gertrude Morgan

"Linderman describes a long gone world...(he) claims not to be a writer but he is most certainly an excellent researcher..."
BOOKSTEVE

"Jim Linderman, King of the Internet Ephemeral Arts"
Spaniel Rage

"Jim is a fantastic historian...show him some love"
Astrid Daley Fringe Pop / Sin-A-Rama

"Almost an experimental narrative"
Idiopath

"He came to us with hundreds of jaw-dropping baptism photos that he'd been collecting for 25 years," Ledbetter explains. "By the time he found us, he'd already done half a lifetime's works, and he trusted us to handle it properly." Lance Ledbetter in Creative Loafing 10/13/11

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