Dull Tool Dim Bulb

With Love to Cleveland Folk Art Carving

African-American folk art carving circa 1960 Collection Jim Linderman

19th Century American Folk Art Drawing c. 1865 Collection Jim Linderman

19th Century American Folk Art Drawing c. 1865 Collection Jim Linderman

Now Available ECCENTRIC FOLK ART DRAWINGS OF THE 19TH AND 20TH CENTURIES from Blurb.com. FREE PREVIEW BELOW

Giant Pin Ups on the Road ! Vintage Handpainted Billboard Signs of the Past

There is no real evidence that billboards are effective in generating profit, but they do aid in brand recognition. Signs offering a "petting zoo" and clean bathrooms probably worked during the glory days of road travel, but today it is mostly the big yellow hamburger sign drawing in customers. The concept of sex in advertising also comes to play here. That we KNOW is effective. There is no way to measure how many riders have been killed by the wandering eyes of the driver in these snaps. The photographer stood close enough to the signs to eliminate any skid marks on the ground.

Lady Bird Johnson tried to eliminate billboards during the Johnson administration. To preserve beauty, not the money in your pocket. Some countries have outlawed them for safety, but texting while driving is far more dangerous now.

I would have looked at these while passing, but I don't think I would have gotten off to buy tires.

Vintage (1940?) Pin-up Billboard Snapshot photographs. Thanks to CURLEY'S ANTIQUES.

Primitive Handmade Electric Motor with Certificate of Accomplishment 1947

Primitive Handmade Electric Motor with Certificate of Accomplishment 1947
Collection Jim Linderman

Hand-painted Wedding Watercolor

Painted by Hand wedding watercolor with applied felt hat, picture frame and wedding veil. No date. Collection Jim Linderman

Sideshow Banners Vintage Photographs of a Ten-in-One

A "Ten in One" is a sideshow with ten different shows. This one had a dozen.
Sideshow Banners Vintage Photographs of a Ten-in-One Anonymous, no date.
Collection Jim Linderman

Vintage Folk Art Valvoline Hand-Painted Sign Easy Flow Oil c. 1950 Petroliana

Original vintage Folk Art Valvoline Hand-Painted Sign Easy Flow Oil c. 1950. I heard that Frank Fritz and the American Pickers are coming to Michigan. Got this JUST IN TIME! Pretty unusual to find a painted by hand petroliana sign, and whoever made it designed his own logo! He even remembered to paint the V upside down when letting the oil out.

Antique Folk Art Valvoline Hand-Painted Sign Easy Flow Oil c. 1950 Collection Jim Linderman

Erotic Folk Art Antique Wood Carving Two Nude Women and a Dog

Erotic Folk Art Antique Carving Two Nude Women and a Dog circa 1930 Pennsylvania origin Collection Jim Linderman. Thanks to Mark Smerkanich

A HUGE Barn RPPC Collection Jim Linderman

A HUGE Barn! Note tiny cows headed to pasture!
Real Photo Postcard photograph Collection Jim Linderman

19th Century Folk Art Drawing of a Woman with Bustle collection Jim Linderman

19th Century Folk Art Drawing of a Woman with Bustle (Emma Naylor) drawn on the reverse of an Ashtabula Railroad Company receipt dated 1866. Collection Jim Linderman
SEE ALSO THE BOOK (and instant download Ebook) HERE for Orders and Free Preview

Hell's Playground White Cargo and the Socialite who visited Africa Hedy Lamarr Stars in Blackface!

What does this woman have in her hand? HELL'S PLAYGROUND, her expose of the effect marauding colonialists had on the people of Africa. Watching the new production of Roots on the box gives me pause…we tortured the ones left over there too, unfortunately. This is Ida Vera Simonton. The socialite visited the French colony of Gabon in 1906. Her "expose" is hardly that, as the entire point of the book was to present the inhabitants as savages, and she tromped through Africa protected by a handful of big white men with big guns.

It appears her trip was more an excuse to avoid testifying in a murder trial than it was fact-finding. Her rich family sent her off to try to avoid scandal involving the case of a murdered architect.

Hell's Playground was published in 1912, and ten years later Broadway producers ripped her off, creating the far better known play White Cargo. She sued to be compensated.

The later film version starred Hedy Lamar as Tondelayo, a femme-fatale who I guess tempts the fellows…and then murders one or more. Witchy woman! They darkened her skin so she could appear African. The New York Times called her "mahogany" and Hedy became a star!

Watch the trailer. Then watch the hilarious catchphrase. What are those natives UP to.
Original Photograph collection Jim Linderman

Itty-Bitty Tintype Bowser Photograph of a Dog 1/16 Plate

Tintypes were the far cheaper yet far less attractive child of the daguerreotype and the ambrotype. Still, they brought ownership of a photograph to the masses. Here a loving friend has documented his dog for the ages. GOOD BOY! STAY! Stay...

Original miniature tintype of a dog circa 1870. 1/16th plate. Collection Jim Linderman
Courtesy Curley's Antiques

ONE DOLLAR DINNER Hand-Painted (twice) Antique Folk Art Sign

Dinner for a Dollar Hand-Painted (twice) Antique Folk Art Sign. Once to announce a gas station had moved, again to announce dinner was reasonably priced. Michigan origin.
Collection Jim Linderman

American Folk Art in Place: IN - SITU The BOOK by Jim Linderman Available NOW!

AMERICAN FOLK ART IN PLACE: IN-SITU by Jim Linderman is NOW available. A large format vintage photography book which reveals hundreds of folk art environments and unique folk art sculptures as installed over the years. The book documents numerous outsider art installations (many previously unknown) and photographs of known and unknown artists at work. All photographs will be drawn from the collection of Jim Linderman, whose previous vintage photography books include the ground-breaking Take Me to the Water, The Birth of Rock and Roll and Arcane Americana. The book will be the companion to Eccentric Folk Art Drawings of the 19th and 20th Centuries from the Linderman Collection. Same size, same format and also available as an affordable instant download e-book. American Folk Art In Place: In-Situ is a much expanded and revised edition of the now out of print original book of the same title. Details and a free preview of the book will follow. Inquiries to J.Winkel4@gmail.com

Shown: Untitled snapshot (Feed the Monkey) unknown location, circa 1950. Collection Jim Linderman

Vintage Pin Up Girls Drawn by William Fitzgerald 1935 - 1950

Pin-up drawings by William Fitzgerald 1930 - 1950 Collection Jim Linderman

Folk Art Sewer Tile Head from Grand Ledge Clay Product Company of Michigan End of Day Art

Michigan had several clay sewer tile factories, and like the others (particularly in Ohio) their workers would take unused clay at the end of the day and make whimsical pieces of pottery for friends. This sewer tile head (with a pile of tiles stacked ready for transport in the Real Photo Postcard) is signed on the base Curtis Rugge who was a pretty good sculptor. See also the essay by Marsha MacDowell and Kurt Dewhurst from 1980 titled The Sewer Tile Clay Pottery of Grand Ledge, Michigan. Interestingly, they point out that Michigan drew employees from Ohio to work for them...a small rivalry, but likely also an exchange of skills and ideas for pieces like this.

Grand Ledge folk art Sewer Tile Head and Real Photo Postcard 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

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