Dull Tool Dim Bulb Arboretum West Michigan Dune Environment

Sandy, quick draining soil, Lakeshore winds, Dune environment Collection of pressed native plant and tree species 1992 Collection Jim Linderman

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Two Million Dollars of Folk Art Cigar Store Indians Trade Store Figures Real Photo Postcard (And a Favorite Photograph)

The June 8, 2010 auction at Heritage Auction Galleries which set a record for a Cigar Store Indian (over $200,000 for the splendid figure here) may mean what you are seeing above is a few million dollars worth of wood. A Real Photo Postcard, circa 1940, of a most extraordinary collection of carved trade store figures. Quite a group. The piece sold above had exceptional original paint, and often these figures have had repaints over the years. The last photograph, a particular favorite of mine, shows my father and a friend, circa 1935, likely in upstate New York.
Anonymous Real Photo Postcard (Group of Carved Trade Figures and Cigar Store Indians) circa 1940 Kodak "EKC" logo on reverse Collection Jim Linderman

Fashion Week ALREADY? What to WEAR? An Easy Solution

Yes, once again the seen make the scene..it's fashion week! My helicopter is waiting... Fashion for me consists pretty much of a few episodes of Heidi's show and a glance through the New York Times Magazine Section a few times a year.

But I like pamphlets...and I made an animated cure for the fashion blues from one in the file. The idea is to create a dozen looks from one suitcase.
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Original "Flip Book" Vacation Dress-O-Graph Published by Shell Oil Company (Yes...you read that right) "The Well-Planned Travel Wardrobe" 1957 Collection Jim Linderman

Pauline's First Valentine

Roll and Tumble with Wittich Book Review from the Past

Exercise on the Apparatus Tumbling and Stunts by W. J. Wittich Book Review from the Past by Jim Linderman

W. J. Wittich and H. C. Reuter created an amazing book in 1925, which to my reckoning will go out of copyright in two years, so I thought I would jump the gun here a bit and wake up the publisher. As the few pieces of junk mail I receive frequently say "Time to Renew!"

Each photograph looks like a David Byrne video. The images, which I find striking and quite beautiful, are not even credited in the book. They appear to be a mixture of time-lapse and beautiful group shots. It is most unusual for a "technical" manual such as this to have no line drawings at all, but we are fortunate...

Now you may be wondering exactly what this book is. Most of us and unfortunately most of our children won't recognize the action, but some will...this is an early gymnastics and body movement guide prepared with extraordinary care and skill. It was also prepared with a wonderful love of the human form. Appreciate the excerpt here from the introduction:

"Swinging and climbing sensations are still the most pleasant elements of the physical life of man. Let us not forget that the physical activities which we today call play and recreation are the activities which our forefathers for hundreds and thousands of years indulged in every day, and all the time, in their struggle for existence while they went through the periods of the savage life, the nomad, the primitive agriculturist, and the tribal life. Our children today enjoy better than to climb up into trees, onto sheds, and roofs; the higher they go the better they like the experience, much to the dismay of the overanxious mothers."

There are 50 photographs, all splendid. The activites sound as good as they look: Forearm-support Circle, Reading Newspaper. Lazy Man's Circle, Double Hip Circle, Development of the Kipp, Acrobatic Hand-Shake and Elephant-Walk.

No, I have not been in a gym class for a while, and since my marathon running days are behind me now, I appreciate agility and fitness more than ever. These examples make me hurt in a different way...Now it just hurts that I can't do them!

The Book is 110 pages, and while WELL out of print, I am sure used copies are around. MIne was Five bucks and was once owned by a fellow in Texas, but it came back to Michigan and I found it this weekend.

W. J. Wittich, from La Crosse, Wisconsin must have been quite a guy. 15 years after producing his book, he created the "Wartime First Aid Wheel" as it is called in the splendid book by Jessica Helfand titled "Reinventing the Wheel" a wonderful design book listed at right somewhere. Wittich's Wheel appears on page 85. It was an 8 inch disc packaged in a sleeve.

In addition to serving on the faculty of Teachers College, La Crosse, Wisconsin Mr. Wittich was an advisor to the American Red Cross and was also a painter. I'd love to have more information on both the technique of photography and Mr. Wittich himself, but all I have is the book. Which is great, and if it were used a bit more, I suspect our kids would appreciate moving like they did again when his book came out.

Photo Autograph Teeny Tiny Tintype Calling Cards

With tintype photographs no larger than a penny held in place with stickers from the Sunbeam Gallery in Rochester, NY. A gentility of the past.


Pair of Photo Autograph calling cards, Circa 1880 Collection Jim Linderman


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Lonely Uncle Sam Build an Uncle Sam Mailbox and Help Canada!

Sam stands silent. Uncle Sam Mailboxes took off around the time of the Spanish- American War, but this fellow likely stood through World War One. Dated 1924 on the reverse. I wanted to do my part for both country and the economy by linking to a source for plans to make your own. Here you go! Only $10.99 from Woodworkers Workshop.com. But guess what? The company is owned by Canadians! parent company is Woodchuckcanuck.com. Has it really gone this far?

Do it anyway...I love the those folks up there.
"Uncle Sam Mailbox" snapshot 1924 collection Jim Linderman

Vintage Graphics from the Golden Age of Obscenity Dull Tool Dim Bulb Books Brings Smut Art BACK from the Back Pages!

Using an archive of original and rare mail-order brochures from the 1950s and 1960s collected by Victor Minx, SMUT BY MAIL: VINTAGE GRAPHICS FROM THE GOLDEN DAYS OF OBSCENITY illustrates some 150 examples of art, graphics and design used to promote and sell soft-core pornography in glorious crumpled but colorful glory!

From a time when the mere delivery of a pamphlet such as these could result in an arrest! A staggering collection, assembled over a decade, shows vintage "come-ons" which wiggled a finger in print form to men all over the country. From back page ads came a flood of amateur and mob-run smut to your very doorstep courtesy of the U.S Mail, all of it wrapped in the ubiquitous plain brown wrapper.

Remarkable as it seems today, even primitive, hand-cranked projectors and 3-D viewers which allowed a blurry but taboo glimpse were offered along with stag films, photo-sets and slides.

Today laughable and virtually innocent, at the time the producers (and booksellers) of the material were hounded by postal authorities and subjected to numerous censorship arrests. The essay by Jim Linderman reveals how this censorship, now seen as absurd, occurred at a time when the word "freedom" was bandied about by moral watchdogs with their own hidden secrets and agendas.

Colorful, vibrant and often downright odd, it is another example of formerly lost and forgotten art being brought to light by Dull Tool Dim Bulb Books. Striking primitive and naive graphics which pre-date the punk esthetic by 20 years.

25 pages of the 2011 book are available for preview HERE.

Certainly one of the most unusual and interesting vernacular art books of the year, and once again a forgotten area of art history brought to light by Dull Tool Dim Bulb Books.

160 pages. 10" x 8" Full Color with an essay by Jim Linderman Hardcover and Paperback
Dull Tool Dim Bulb books published by Blurb.com

New York City Trashvertising Drop Cards Sidewalk Spam Fake Dollar Bills and Vanessa Del Rio

There is nothing funnier than a fake wallet on a string. You know...old wallet, five bucks sticking out...busy sidewalk. Two kids on the end of the string behind the fence giggling as they wait for a portly gentleman to bend down for it. Construction workers used to do it on 6th Avenue and howl.

Today it would be more cruel than funny, as the latest studies have found a majority of us can't reach down anymore. Portly has become just plain fat. Today a good percent of the population wouldn't even see it.

If it wasn't juvenile and in bad taste, I would tell you a glued-down quarter is funny too.

The WORST ADVERTISING IN HISTORY used to plague New York City Streets in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Tiny leaflets folded to look like a twenty dollar bill with an ad on the back for a strip club, dial-a porn or some other shady, sleazy, cruddy business. Junior mobsters were hired to dump the litter as they walked down city streets, often at dawn, which allowed the tricky things to blow around a bit before commuters hit the streets.

I saw a few of the amateur thugs drop them as I walked my dog...creepy punks a step below the guys who would hang glue-slap posters for lousy dance clubs anywhere their paste brushes could reach. Sidewalk Spammers.

The one above happens to be an ad for dirty film called "Foxtrot" which starred Vanessa Del Rio. I used to have the pleasure of watching Vanessa swim and sun every day at the rooftop pool atop the Holiday Inn on West 57th Street between 9th and 10th Avenue. It was for hotel guests, but for a buck CBS employees (and a few favored folk) could use it and I sure did. Spending your lunch hour with a super-tan Vanessa Del Rio in a bikini was a whole lot more fun than eating a slice of pizza at my desk. I often got back a few minutes late. I am putting Vanessa's name in the title here in case she has a service scanning the web for mentions of her...why shouldn't Vanessa have a nice, sunny memory too?

Anyway, I remember seeing hundreds of these crooked, low-down miniature trick circulars strewn all over around Times Square, and will confess to having fallen for them a few times. As I recall, the city was trying to outlaw the practice through anti-litter laws and the department of sanitation...sure enough, an article ran in the NY Times in 1991 which coined the word "trashvertising" or "trash cash" and discussed efforts to ban them without violating any fugwad's "right to free speech."

Imagine my surprise (and disgust) to find they are still being produced. "Drop Cards" they are called and you will find purveyors on the web today. Slime.

"Drop-Card" miniature advertising leaflet, 1982 Collection Jim Linderman

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"Clear Out, Art Boy...We're puttin' in a Darkroom"

Everyone loves the covers to original true crime magazines. I even love the insides. This little photo essay on the good life in small town America comes on the cusp...the precise moment when the painted covers by all manner of pulp artists skilled with oils and a brush changed to the camera artist. 1953.

Let's put it in the right lingo.

Rudy had been workin' the night shift turning out paintings for the murder rags...suddenly, a pounding on the door made his brush wiggle like the little finger on a ten cent hooker. The Camera guys were at the door, and they weren't going away. Rudy put down the brush and picked up his blaster. "Go away, shutterbugs" he cried..."No one is taking my work away!" Big Frank and his ugly brother Rocco entered the joint, slapped Rudy's gun from his hand and tore the paint-splattered rug right from under his feet. His days sniffing turpentine thinner were over. "Clear out, art boy" groused Frank "We're puttin' in a darkroom."

The insides had already changed...black and white photograph reproduction in the guts was easier, and although they were stilted and staged shots for the most part, they were actual photos from the 40s on. But the cover had to be in lurid living (or lurid dead) color, and so were painted. Advances in printing techniques made actual photos for the cover possible. New clarity and fresh layouts were developed using pictures of models being strangled with heaving actual cleavage, not heaving painted cleavage. The bright colors once used on canvas were replaced with bright color backgrounds. Art became artless. The crimes remained the same. 

BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR ARE HERE AND HERE

Sand Sculptures of Atlantic City Seaside Sand Sculpture without Snookie or the Situation

Working with sand! Sand Sculpture where I live is done with your toes and with every step, but the REAL art flourished in Atlantic City in the late 19th century. Talented artists began creating temporary statues and, as shown here, relief sculptures for passing boardwalk visitors.

They always had a purpose other than mere beauty. Some were commissioned by boardwalk businesses as advertising, others were sponsored by local fraternal organizations. There were independent artists as well, they worked for tips...but like all boardwalk "artists" many were con men. I don't know how you can pick the pocket of a fellow bending over to look at your sand sculpture when he is wearing bathing trunks, but it happened, and the practice of drawing crowds to sand art was outlawed in 1944.

Some artists worked close enough to the boardwalk to catch coins tossed by the strolling masses, early versions of "The Situation" and drunken shore slut "Snookie" (both who actually hang a few miles north at Seaside Heights, once one of my favorite places to escape from New York City for a weekend.) The only sculptures up there are The Situation's sculpted abdominal muscles.

Some would work on commission and create a sculpture of a paying customer. Many of the artists were African-American. Although not too well known, the Clarion magazine, (published by the American Folk Art Museum) describes Black artists working on the beach in a 1992 article, and as I recall, documenting an instance of an African-American artist being "lightened up" for a postcard.

For the silica masterpieces shown here, sand was densely packed into a box surrounded by 2 x 4 wood section and shaped with sticks and trowels. The sand surrounding the work was then painted black. I have found no less than two dozen postcards depicting the artists and their work, most dating to around 1910 (including one dated 1911 showing this very group of sculptures) but this is the only actual photograph I have seen. It dates to 1910 or so as well, I have seen the same group of works shown in a magazine around that time. As you can see, the artist added a few more works before the picture was taken for the postcard. Maybe they lugged them under the boardwalk when it rained.
Original Vernacular photograph of Atlantic City Sand Sculptures, circa 1910 collection Jim Linderman