When do lawn ornaments become good enough to be called folk art? When you bring them inside.
Pair of wooden swans, circa 1940 Collection Jim Linderman
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Wood Folk Art Birds of Uncommon Form and Grace
When do lawn ornaments become good enough to be called folk art? When you bring them inside.
Pair of wooden swans, circa 1940 Collection Jim Linderman
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A Beautiful Indian Princess Real Photo Post Card RPPC Dull Tool Dim Bulb
Circa 1900 Collection Jim Linderman
Wire Mesh Masks for Odd Fellows Lodge Ritual Masks Folk Art
No, the one in the middle isn't Osama in final repose.
A group of Demoulin Masks! Lodge ritual objects. Demoulin was an astounding mail order company in the 1930s. These masks, three from the many they sold, were intended to be used in fraternal organization ceremonies. They are wire mesh, painted, with horse hair on on the "odd fellows" when needed and all originally had cloth straps to hold them in place. So these would date to 1920 or 1930.
As you can see, the company also produced some remarkable paper-mache parade and carnival masks.
One could bend these fellows back into shape, but I have to mow the lawn.
Demoulin was astounding. I am usually full of hyperbole, but their catalog will seriously drop your jaw. Gary Groth recently edited what appears to be a reprint (and more) of the Demoulin catalog titled Catalog No. 439: Burlesque Paraphernalia and Side Degree Specialties and Costumes A generous preview of the book is available on Amazon...I do not know if these images are in the book...I found them on the web while trying to figure out what the hell I brought home. But I can assure you if the book is as good as it looks on Amazon, you'll love it. In fact, it too looks quite astounding.
Group of three Lodge Ritual Fraternal Masks, circa 1920-1930 Collection Jim Linderman
When red means RED and STOP with Giant Backdrop
Red means STOP
Detroit News Original Press Photo 1939 Collection Jim Linderman
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Last Nail in the Coffin (The LAST Unheard Robert Johnson Track) 100 years of Traveling Riverside Blues
The only bad thing about Robert Johnson is that there are no more tracks to find. It used to be when one discovered an artist worth hearing, one had to go look for the rest at record stores, or under the mattress in bad neighborhoods.
Johnson is now 100...and they've all been found. The last discovery was made in 1997 when an "obscene" track withheld from the Columbia releases was added to the public canon. That the obscene lyric is the now familiar and standard blues phrase involving "juice running down a leg" doesn't matter, what does matter is that although the recording was purchased by the national trust, we still had to pay Columbia/Sony to hear it. The unreleased version of Traveling Riverside Blues on a 10 inch test-pressing was sold by the Alan Lomax archive to the Library of Congress American Folklife Center for $10,000, and was at the time the only unheard track by the artist. That Columbia was allowed to profit from it 8 years after millions had already paid for the reissue of Johnson's other output in 1990 (and the LP version years earlier) seemed odd to me.
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| Billboard Magazine June 17, 2000 |
But it was worth the wait and I gladly shelled out the dough for the shellac.
By the way, they also erased the smoke from Johnson's lips when they put him on a U.S. Postage Stamp. A perfect example of Orwell's premise. Erase the cigarette, erase history and create a new reality. Call me stickler.
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"Father, Shall you make me a Wind Toy today?" Wonderful Windmobile with Wheels
Jeepers. Dad must have gone crazy. Would you let your daughter ride on this thing with a good wind off the lake? This appears to be half windmill, half go-cart, all mystery.
Original Photograph Central Michigan circa 1920 Anonymous Collection Jim Linderman
Fern Bisel Peat Unsung Woman Artist and Children's Playmate
For 75 years Children's Playmate was just that. A playmate. From 1935 to 2008 (when it merged with Jack and Jill) it had kids thinking, drawing, clipping, making and thinking. These issues from the glory days give only a small indication of the beauty. Each issue was at the time digest-sized and 50 pages.
The artist was Fern Bisel Peat. She was born in 1893 and lived until 1971. She made a good living. but as with most women artists of the past, information is far more scarce than it should be. Fern could show you how to carve a pumpkin or draw an easter egg in the most charming and colorful manner. An unsung hero of commercial and educational art. Her work has been reproduced in a few places over the years, but as far as I know there has never been a retrospective, a comprehensive (or even cursory) biography or a museum exhibit.
Her work, in addition to providing extraordinary colorful covers to the magazines above, is often found on tin lithographed toys, puzzles and more. Because the magazine had a large circulation, original issues are available for small sums...despite them often being cut-up and written on as intended!
Issues of Children's Playmate 1938-1941 Collection Jim Linderman
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Ventriloquist Dummy Vent on a Box At the Circus in Black and White Jim Linderman collection of Circus Photographs #26
Number 26 in the series AT THE CIRCUS IN BLACK AND WHITE
Ventriloquist Dummy Head (at rest). Original Snapshot circa 1930-1940 collection Jim Linderman
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Wooden Clown Folk Art Ring Toss on the Nose Paddle Wild Paint
Carved wood handle ring toss game Hand-painted Circa 1940 Collection Jim Linderman
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Vernacular Architecture in the Desert Old Man Kelly and his Rhyolite Bottle House
Are bottles good insulation? I guess. You never heard Tom Kelly complain, but then he lived in the Death Valley desert and it probably only got cold at night, but certainly well below freezing. (Actually the maker never lived in the house.)
I bought this photo because I like vernacular architecture. Little did I know it is seemingly the most documented bottle house in the world! HERE is the link to Rhyolite, where the house is documented in excruciating detail, with pictures from 1905 when the house was built, all the way to a fascinating group of photos showing the restoration one hundred years later.
It was an adobe construction, and the bottles came from one of the 53 (!) saloons in the town at the time. Yet today, it is a ghost town! Mr. Kelly was 76 years old when he started construction. The complete story is HERE and quite a story it is.
I haven't dated my snapshot exactly, but it seems pretty early in the history. I have cribbed a few photos of the site, but do check the above links, it is a fascinating story, and a wonderful example of documentation, restoration and teamwork.
Snapshot of Kelley's Bottle House collection (top) Jim Linderman
Other Photos Rhyolite Site
Black Ink Lost and Forgotten African-American Cartoonists of the Negro Pulps
Anyone out there need a doctoral project? I can't do it, my plate is full, but I do have a knack for ideas and a small pile of fairly scarce magazines aimed at the African-American market from the 1950s and 1960s.
Even the magazines are fairly hard to come by...search "Bronze Thrills" for one. A major publication which ran decades, yet it seems our major institutions and collectors have dropped the ball. Same with Copper Romance, Tan, Jive and more. Even the larger circulation magazines such as Hue and New Review are hard to come by. Ebony and Jet, both out of Chicago's Johnson Publications are far better documented, and in fact the organization recently graciously made the entire text of Jet available online (and what a resource it is.)
I started rounding up a few African-American magazines for a series I am putting together on the Vintage Sleaze site: "Afro-Antics the Black Pinup" another unfortunate neglected victim of institutional racism. Until the "Black is Beautiful" movement of the late 1960s women of color were few and far between the pulp covers, and you might enjoy the discoveries I am making for the essays.
However, as I look for dark models I could not help but to notice some wonderful, and in terms of humor and quality, "equal" cartoonists we do not know. Since cartoonists love to create indecipherable signatures and the mastheads never credited them, these Black inkers are lost in time.
There ARE some known Black cartoonists of the era. The remarkable book on Jackie Ormes by Nancy Goldstein of two years ago is wonderful. There have been exhibitions on fairly well known black cartoonists such as Ollie Harrington, E. Simms Campbell, Wilbert Holloway and Leslie Rogers. There was even an issue of "All-Negro Comics" in 1947, but there was only one issue. Ishmael Reed blamed the demise on distributors who refused to carry it. At least the comic is easily found on the web today.
But certainly someone should know of Butch Austin AKA Mr. Jive who drew strips for Hep and Jive Magazine, and the others here who I can not even identify, not being an expert. Here are but a few examples from my quite modest little pile of magazines. One day I hope someone will put together the tale better than I ever could.
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