Dull Tool Dim Bulb

Wine Women and Gambling! A Wild Place in Tijuana Snapshot with Text

Wine Women and Gambling. A Wild Place in Tijuana! Original Snapshot collection Jim Linderman

Early Wind Power Farm Windmill Rotator with Hand Painted Folk Art Star Barn Red

Early Wind Power Farm Windmill Rotator with Hand Painted Star Michigan circa 1940
Collection Jim Linderman

Hand Painted Boy Scout Bust

Hand Painted Boy Scout Bust 1955 collection Jim Linderman

Ice Carnival 1939 (Cropped Skaters) Press Photo

8 x 10 cropped and embellished press photograph 1939 "Ice Carnival" Collection Jim Linderman

The Miniature Dollhouse Murder Scenes of Frances Glessner Lee Folk Art Forensics

I don't think anyone will mind me posting the entire Police Detective article from the 1950s which tells the story of the amazing murder scene reconstructions Francess Glessner Lee created to help train detectives. Amazing little works, and each costing around three grand to make! There was a nice documentary produced some 50 years after this article was written. It's a good show, and it is streaming in meticulous mayhem color. Movie trailer at end.

The film Of Dolls and Murder tells the story, and it is streaming on Netflix. Never have dollhouses
looked do gruesome.
It's a good story.

Erotic Folk Art Letter Opener

Erotic Folk Art Letter Opener with incised embellishment circa 1945-1950 Collection Jim Linderman

Hair Show 1961 Collection Jim Linderman

Untitled and Anonymous "Hair Show" South Carolina 1961 Collection Jim Linderman

Folk Art Carving Miniature Sculpture Family Tree

A folk art miniature carving entirely from one piece of wood, even the tree. Dated 1945, and likely a gift to honor a soldier home, or to encourage the start of a family tree! A mere 3 inches tall, with original paint.

Folk Art Carving of a Couple 1945 Collection Jim Linderman

Post-war Japan Transfer Stickers

New Forever Stamps! Post-war Japan Transfer Stickers

My Balls in a Cage Folk Art Sculpture of Wooden Whimsy

Folk Art Whittled Whimsy. How to carve a ball in a cage? Step number one is turn off the TV. The rest is HERE
Collection of Folk Art Carvings Mid 20th Century Collection Jim Linderman

Folk Art Sculpture Carved Whirligig (Detail) Collection Jim Linderman

Folk Art Sculpture Carved Whirligig (Detail) circa 1930 Collection Jim Linderman

Baby Makes Three Antique Folk Art Puppet Set collection Jim Linderman

Halloween at Dull Tool Dim Bulb Jim Linderman Self-Portrait 2014

This Halloween, I'm going with Big Baby...
Self-Portrait Jim Linderman 2014

A Family Tree of Tintypes

Friend Deanna Dahlsad wrote to share this family tree made of tintypes(!) You can read about the object HERE on the Fair Oaks Antiques website. The link tells the story of the find, other "tree" photographs and the availability.

Essential New Projects on Vernacular Photography and Arkansas Roots Music from Dust to Digital

I have always speculated (to myself) that Arkansas is one of the last undiscovered regions for the study of American folk art, vernacular art forms and music. Not the traditional South, not the traditional West...but a state rich with a fascinating history and fascinating people. Dust to Digital once again has hit the mark with a pair of beautiful releases which go a long way towards revealing the secrets of Arkansas. The Book? Making Pictures: Three for a Dime.

"In the 1930s, the Massengill family of rural Arkansas built three portable photography studios on old truck frames, attached each to the back of any car that would run, and started a mobile photo booth business that would last for a decade. Without formal training or help, the Massengill family invented and improvised ways to mimic the popular photo booths they had seen in drugstores and brought their business to the dirt roads and open fields they knew well. Making Pictures: Three for a Dime, featuring Massengill family prints and photo albums collected by the artist Maxine Payne, illuminates a sliver of the Depression-era South previously unseen by the public."

The Music? Corn Dodgers & Hoss Hair Pullers.

“For the traveling recording men of the late 1920s, Arkansas offered enticing pickings. The region was thronged with vigorous, idiosyncratic stringbands… Scarcely more than a decade, but a period, in music as in all American life, of galvanic change.” – Tony Russell, from the album’s liner notes

I can only say ESSENTIAL. Be you collector, library, museum? This pair of high-quality packages from Dust to Digital are required.

Our Homestead Domestic Chores in a Folk Art Sculpture Dollhouse c. 1910 Real Photo Post Card

Folk Art carved figures go through the motions. Looks like they are working far harder than the men... Whether these carvings were articulated is unknown, but the chores they perform are typical subjects for automatons and whirligigs. If anyone knows where this object is today, I would love to see it.

"Our Homestead" Domestic Chores in a Folk Art Dollhouse Cyko Real Photo Post Card circa 1910 unmailed.

Naive Erotic Folk Art Drawings by Pecs 1942

Erotic Naive Drawings of Pecs 1942 Each 11 x 17
Gallery Fred Giampietro exhibited a wall installation of these works art the 2015 Outsider Art Fair.

Antique Folk Art Erotic Sculpture Cigarette Holder Late 19th - Early 20th Century

Antique Folk Art Erotic Sculpture Carved Wood Cigarette Holder Late 19th - Early 20th Century
Collection Jim Linderman

Vintage Folk Art Sculpture Billy Burke's 150,000 Toothpick Amusement Park from Folsom Prison

Billy Burke made three toothpick amusement parks while being held in Folsom Prison, this likely being the largest. He once made a roller coaster out of shotgun shells. Various wardens over the years would bring in visitors to see the construction. In 1994, the Sacramento Bee told his story which you can read HERE.

Toothpick Circus by Billy Burke Real Photo Postcard circa 1950 Collection Jim Linderman

Mr. Winters Garden Park in Mondovi, Wisconsin. Folk Art Environment Sculpture RPPC

Mr. Winters Garden Park in Mondovi, Wisconsin. Folk Art Environment Real Photo Postcard No Date 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