Dull Tool Dim Bulb

Watch your Fingers. Vintage Chinese Fireworks

Antique Folk Art Sculpture Man sliding into a Coffin

Antique Folk Art Sculpture Man sliding into a Coffin. Depression era. Collection Jim Linderman

How to Cook with Spirits Vernacular Photograph

How to Cook with Spirits Rotary Club Gaggle of Goblins
1946
Books and Affordable Ebooks by the author of Dull Tool Dim Bulb HERE

Winner! Buffalo Bill Folk Art made from 4,000 inches of Crepe Paper !

First prize winner May Hauser poses with her folk art Buffalo Bill sculpture made from a coat hanger and 4,000 inches of twisted crepe paper.

Original Press Photograph 1946 Collection Jim Linderman

Art of the Japanese Baseball Card

1949 set of Japanese Baseball Cards.

Sugar Ray Robinson and the Great Boxers in Watercolor

Sugar Ray Robinson was good. He entered professional boxing with an 85 - 0 record as an amateur. Nearly half of those 85 fights ended with a knockout in the first round. Credit where due, I guess...is that he invented the posse. The entourage. Everybody wanted to be in Sugar Ray's camp. I am sure all the fighters painted here have similar stories. I always hated Leroy Neiman and his garish sports paintings, but these are great. A young, aspiring illustrator named "J. Gallagher" did them around 1950, but that's all I know about him.

Watercolor Paintings of the Greatest Boxers by J. Gallagher, circa 1950 Collection Jim Linderman

Erotic Folk Art Carving / Sculpture Nudes with Dog Antique c. 1920

Erotic Folk Art Carving / Sculpture Nudes with Dog c. 1920. Collection Jim Linderman

The Curio Gallery is Open for Business! Vernacular Photo of a Bizarre Gallery Vernacular Architecture

The Curio Gallery is Open for Business! Vernacular Photo of a Bizarre Gallery.

Gus Whittles and Shows his folk art carving miracles.

Gus Putahl folk art carving display.
Real Photo Postcards collection Jim Linderman

Keychain Dummy Ventriloquist Head

Keychain Dummy Ventriloquist Head circa 1960? Eyes move back and forth, Jaw opens to yap. Collection Jim Linderman

African American Hero of Sport Babs Wingo the Wrestler

The star here is Babs Wingo. I am not sure if women wrestlers ever really took off, not being a fan of the sport today. Mostly grown men in superhero costumes playing to an audience with limited education. But I would have gone to see Babs.

Babs Wingo was no better at faking a move than the male performers, but she was out there with a few of her sisters. What a phenom. Her wrestling career was in the early 1950s. At time when African-Americans were segregated and abused, Babs was traveling on the road and climbing into the ring. One article from the time calls her and her tag team "grunters" but all the reviews were great. "Girls please crowd at wrestling show with hold galore" reads one. What a show!

Babs apparently weighed in at 150 pounds. Only 5' 3" and just 21 at the time. She also painted. I'd love to see some of her paintings. Coming from New Orleans, she would possibly have seen painters lining Jackson Square with work for sale.

Did Babs wrestle in heels? Hmm.

Life is good with diversity, even in the ring. Babs blazed trails.
Here is a time capsule film. It's great

Detail from a recently discovered wrestling poster c. 1950 Collection Jim Linderman

Turntable Mix Master Opera Beats?

Original Press Photograph, no date. Collection Jim Linderman

American Folk Art Construction in a Hardware Storefront Window RPPC

American Folk Art Construction in a Hardware Storefront Window which celebrates the local football team winning a big game. Real Photo Postcard collection Jim Linderman.

Patriotism 1929

Original Photo collection Jim Linderman

Folk Art Toy Made by Hand Antique Road Construction Repair

Handmade Folk Art Road Construction Toys circa 1940. Includes fence, barrels, numerous road signs and warnings along with red flags. Collection 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

Fair Use

Though the images, which I have myself largely scanned from my personal collection of photographs and ephemera, some are subject to © by the artist, syndicate that distributed them or otherwise the individual artists. The use here is regardless covered by the U.S. fair use laws because:
1. The image illustrates an educational article; its inclusion in the article adds significantly to understanding the text because it is a historical sample of the art covered in the critical commentary, and shows use of an innovative style. Therefore the image substantially improves the educational value of the article.
2. The image is used as the primary means of visual identification of the article topic, which directly concerns a visual artist, and is indicative of the style for which hethe artists are renowned.
3. Images are of lower resolution than the original. The image is not used here for profit.

4. It is not in any way replaceable with an uncopyrighted or freely copyrighted image pertinent to the work referenced in the article

The copyright for some images are most likely owned by either the publisher, the writer(s) and/or artist(s) which produced them originally.

Any other uses of this image may be copyright infringement.

Although most of the images here are original photography and objects owned by the author and in the author's personal collection, we cannot absolutely guarantee the exact copyright status of the items or offer written assurance that every or any aspect of this work is completely cleared for all usages. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item and securing any necessary permissions ultimately rests with persons desiring to use the item.

Any Trademarks used in this item listing are used for strictly descriptive purposes only. No association or endorsement is implied or inferred. No character or trademark ownership is given or implied.

If you are the owner of any aspect of an item which you believe to be copyrighted, please contact us immediately at j.winkel4@gmail.com