Dull Tool Dim Bulb

Man on ICE Real Photo Post Card of a Stunt man Freezing

Man on ICE Stunt (coming out live on the radio!) Real Photo Post Card of a Stunt man Freezing Collection Jim Linderman

Original Vintage Photographs Reverend John D. Ruth Bible Garden Georgia Folk Art by Jim Linderman

Original Vintage Photographs Reverend John D. Ruth Bible Garden Georgia Folk Art by Jim Linderman 1995 © Dull Tool Dim Bulb
See also IN SITU: FOLK ART IN PLACE by Jim Linderman Free Preview and Orders HERE

Antique Erotic Folk Art Sculpture Carving Nude Woman

Antique Erotic Folk Art Sculpture Carving Nude Woman circa 1930? Collection Jim Linderman

Antique Folk Art Drawing of an African-American Man c.1888 Georgia Origin Collection Jim Linderman

Antique Folk Art Drawing African-American Man, Georgia. Dated 1888 Drawn on an envelope. Collection Jim Linderman
See also the book from Blurb ECCENTRIC FOLK ART DRAWINGS by Jim Linderman available in paperback or affordable instant ebook from Blurb.

Girl with Dog and Stick 19th Century Antique American Folk Art Drawing Watercolor

Girl with Dog and Stick 19th Century Antique American Folk Art Drawing Watercolor
Collection Jim Linderman
SEE ALSO the Book and Ebook available now ECCENTRIC FOLK ART DRAWINGS: Obscure Drawings of the 19th and 20th Centuries
Free Preview and Orders CLICK HERE.

Christmas Abundance Vintage Scrapbook of Die-Cut Stickers

Christmas Abundance Vintage Scrapbook of Die-Cut Stickers Circa 1935 - 1950
Collection Jim Linderman

Miniature Clay Antique Boot Folk Art and the First Santa Toy

Miniature clay boot created circa 1900 by the American Marble and Toy Company in Akron, Ohio. Little more than one inch tall, and produced by the thousands. My understanding has always been that the factory burned down at some time and boxes of the tiny toys of clay were dug from the ruins. Sure enough, according to the website American Toy Marble Museum "...on one unlucky day in 1904, thirteen years after it had been incorporated, The American Marble & Toy Manufacturing Company burnt to the ground. This unfortunate event appeared, to some young pilferers, to be a great day for marble collectors: the next morning, every little boy in Akron came down to scavenge and fill his pockets with marbles. This was no play ground, far from being a safe place for such innocent children to be hanging (and looting) about. The police were called in to keep these treasure hunters from unlawfully appropriating the marbles, and soon after, the city ordered the charred remains of the factory to be buried."

Image BLUE SANTA & FRIENDS

Interestingly, the factory was also responsible for the very first SANTA CLAUS toy! The little fella, known as "Blue Santa" was dug up in 2009...you can hear the story on NPR HERE, and the picture is taken from the BLUE SANTA AND FRIENDS site which provides the full story.

Tiny Stoneware Boot circa 1900 Collection Jim Linderman
Courtesy Natalie Curley Antiques.
SEE ALSO THE SEWER TILE and SEWER PIPE FOLK ART POTTERY Website.

Frat House Freeze! Ice and Snow Sculpture from Maine 1939 Vernacular Photographs

See also the Book (and ebook) In Situ: American Folk Art in Place available now.
Ice and Snow Sculpture from Maine 1939 Vernacular Photographs. From the Facebook site BOX LOT.

Self-Taught Naive Memory Painter Emily Lunde Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas drawing samples from the hand of Emily Lunde. Like Grandma Moses, I suppose, Emily Lunde was "self-taught" "naive" and a "primitive" but as far as marketing was concerned, maybe not so much. As you can see from these sketches (and samples) for her paintings...they were carbon copies the artist embellished with ink later. These were done not long after the Museum of American Folk Art Encyclopedia of 20th Century Folk Art and Artists was published. Perhaps that book brought her far more attention than she ever had, and she resorted to painting "Greatest Hits."

The drawings were mailed to a patron (not me) in 1991. At that time, she estimated having painted some 1,000 paintings. She passed on in 2007, so there was likely time for plenty more.

Three hand drawn and "blueprint" drawings by Emily Lunde 1991
Collection Jim Linderman

19th Century Folk Art Drawing "Good Night" Anonymous

19th Century Folk Art Drawing "Good Night" Anonymous. 11" x 14"
Collection Jim Linderman

Bill Alexander, African-American Illustrator 78 rpm Record Labels for Roy Milton

Bill Alexander went on to be an illustrator for Eerie magazine, but I have a penchant for his early work illustrating record labels for Jazz and Blues great Roy Milton in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Bill Alexander Illustrated Record Labels for 78rpm recordings 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