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[Apr. 12th, 2008|11:01 am] |
The Pony Engine. Illustrations by Gregorio Prestopino, 1958
And photos from the Flinstones pop-up book How Pebbles Got Her Name, 1974. The illustrator wasn't credited.
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[Mar. 20th, 2008|01:18 am] |
Ronald and Susan by Lea Hindley Smith. Design by Visvaldis Upenieks. 1975
Cover:
Some page design:
Here's the backstory for this book for anyone that cares. My friend Matt McGeachy has been researching a group called Therafields that operated in Toronto from the 60s up until the 80s. He's been conducting interviews with former members and hired me to do transcription for them, so I've come to learn a little bit about the project.
COLES NOTES VERSION!
Therafields was an experimental psychotherapy commune founded by Lea Hindley Smith (who had worked as a nurse, but apparently had no formal training in psychoanalysis.) The project placed a particular emphasis on group therapy. Members could start out in individual work, but house groups were commonly set up in properties all around the Annex with anywhere from 10 or 15 people living together and engaging in intense, weekly group sessions. And it really got huge - at its peak, Therafields boasted several hundred members and owned around 28 different houses in the Annex, all for the express purpose of operating these house groups.
From what I gather, Hindley Smith eventually transformed into a sort of a cult leader as her mental and physical health deteriorated. The group finally closed shop in the 80s as a result of a lot of messy, complex reasons which are kind of beside the point of this blog post.
ANYWAY, what’s interesting about it is what a huge presence it had in Toronto. Lots of peripheral connections to the city’s history and art scene- bpNichol and the Four Horsemen were some of their more prominent members. (There are some others worth mentioning, but posting their names on a public forum might not be the best idea.)
So that’s the deal with Lea Hindley Smith, who wrote the book, and the Therafields Foundation, who published it. I’m hoping Matt will give me more info on the designer of the cover, Visvaldis Upenieks. All I know is that he was Hindley Smith’s lover for a time, and was the architect of “The Willow,” a farm owned by Therafields which she used as her residence.
More information on Therafields can be found in Philip Marchand’s account of his experience in the group here, and I guess you can read Matt’s paper when it’s finished and published too. |
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[Mar. 14th, 2008|10:25 pm] |
Some Roger Duvoisin illustrations. Petunia Takes a Trip, 1959:
 
and Veronica, 1961:
And from the other side of the Dandelion Library edition of Veronica, here's a nice out of context image from Piet Worm's Three Little Horses
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[Mar. 7th, 2008|09:38 am] |
I like this cover. Tulips by John Peterson, 1963
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[Mar. 4th, 2008|07:09 am] |
X Marks the Spot by Marylin Hafner, 1972
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[Feb. 23rd, 2008|08:34 pm] |
Elf King Joe, Cornelia Brown, 1968
Just a small scan. . .
I wish I could scan more from this, but it'd wreck the spine of the book. This is filled with really weird imagery and patterns. |
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[Feb. 21st, 2008|06:57 pm] |
A picture puzzle from my beat up copy of the Chatterbox Presentation Issue 1911. One page of this series is missing from the book, so I only have these three scans.
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[Feb. 20th, 2008|09:09 pm] |
 
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[Feb. 17th, 2008|01:08 pm] |
The Helpful Friends by Crosby Newell, 1955
Click the images to see them larger.
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[Feb. 15th, 2008|09:29 pm] |
A Frog He Would A-Wooing Go by William Stobbs, 1969
Click for a larger scan.
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[Feb. 11th, 2008|10:45 am] |
Al Dempster inside cover illustration for Walt Disney's Pinocchio, 1953. My copy of this is falling apart, but I love this spread:
Look at those colors! Also, this is how I wish my room looked like. |
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[Jan. 30th, 2008|08:12 pm] |
Mad Magazine newspaper strip gags
And a nice Wally Wood spread (sorry about the fold in the middle, made me miss some details in the scan)
TRY TO NAME THEM ALL |
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[Jan. 21st, 2008|09:04 pm] |
Found this for a dollar today - but I can't read it! Printed in 1978.Any help on who illustrated it or what it's called?
[edit: ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) birdflew and wiped have the author's name as Alona Frankel, and the title of the book is apparently something like "Book of the Elephants". Thanks guys!]
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[Jan. 17th, 2008|01:10 am] |
More scans - illustrations by Harry McNaught from Howdy Doody's Lucky Trip, a Little Golden Book.
 
 
Here's a fun fact you probably won't care about! According to David Michaelis' wretched tome of slander and deception (I actually liked the book), Charles Schulz never wanted to name his strip "Peanuts" - he thought it was an undignified title. His original title "Li'l Folks" was too close to "Li'l Abner" and "Little Folks" (a strip from the 1930's.) While brainstorming suggestions, a United Features employee named William Anderson noted that the Howdy Doody Show would refer to the kids in their audience as the "Peanut Gallery." The syndicate liked the suggestion so much that it stuck, and Schulz stayed bitter about it for years.
ANYHOW I'm going to stop wasting my life and go to sleep now. |
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[Jan. 16th, 2008|11:59 pm] |
Carlos Marchiori illustrations from Sally Go Round the Sun, 1969
I put up scans from something like two years ago, but I thought I'd post some more. It's one of my favourite books in my collection. Eventually, I'd like to get a better copy - this blog here has some other nice scans, including the book's cover, which didn't come with mine when I found it in a Value Village bin way back when.
I don't have alot of info on Marchiori, but you can see an excerpt of an animated short he worked on called "The Drag" over at the NFB site.
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[Jan. 12th, 2008|06:50 pm] |
I love Otto Soglow! He had such an incredible sense of design. My own drawings are usually full of dense, busy little markings, so I've always been envious of this sort of economy:
/images/addendacomicbooksimage.jpg)
(I guess it's the same thing I admire in Richard Mcguire, Saul Steinberg, Schulz)
I just picked up the Canadian edition of Readers Digest's "It's Against the Law" series, featuring some art by Soglow I hadn't seen before. The drawings aren't really as sophisticated as other Soglow illustrations I've seen (in fact, these scans from another installation in the same series are much more interesting,) but I liked them enough to upload a few anyway:
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[Jan. 7th, 2008|09:35 pm] |
I forget where I got this:
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[Nov. 30th, 2007|01:02 pm] |
deer park elementary school 1977-78 yearbook
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[Nov. 30th, 2007|12:25 pm] |
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