Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: For some the heart of Pictorama is in the toys, but for others it is the pictures and we are on a Felix-y photo tear. This was a must have pic once I spied it on eBay as I knew it was unlikely I would see it again. Like yesterday’s photo this one took weeks to make it here from Ipswich, England (others have zipped through from Britain in days – so much for the once great and dependable British post) until I began to worry that it was lost.
However, when I arrived back in Manhattan last night after my extended sojourn in New Jersey (yes, I still have a nasty cold but am much better), it had arrived at our door and was safely awaiting me here at Deitch Studio. (As were Kim and the kitties – Blackie dispensed with his typical several hour moratorium on recognizing me and followed me into the bathroom immediately upon arrival. I was missed!) I was not disappointed with it among a satisfyingly large haul of other future post photos.
Notably today’s is not a photo postcard, but instead a photo, printed on surprisingly thin paper making it potentially a bit fragile. Written on the back is Kite/Felix £25. If that was what the seller paid then they did not turn much of a profit, but perhaps that is just what she had it marked to sell somewhere which would mean it paid for her to auction it.
I assume that this intrepid looking group constructed this brilliant Felix kite and I do wish we could see it flying. There is an air of adventure and expedition about them. The gentleman in the suspenders on the far left, with his sunglasses and hat, really looks a bit like he is off on safari. The other fellow sports a vest and tie no less; both men are mustachioed. It is impossible to be certain, but I think the women are wearing matching dresses and do they have ribbons (like awards?) pinned to them? Everyone wears hats on what appears to be a rare hot sunny British day. Someone more knowledgeable about period clothing could probably date this better but I would guess the late twenties.
Felix has taken to the air in a variety of ways of course – we know of various enormous balloons that his likeness has graced as per a few from my collection below. (Those balloon posts can be found here and here.)
Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.
Felix of course is splendid. He stands shoulder high on the smallest of the women, hands on hips. He is reduced to a basic geometric design, but has his signature grin and pointy ears. The kite design is a bit hard to discern, but appears to be a variation on a box kite with wings off each side. He is a pip!
Felix stereocard. Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.
I went through a phase of kite enthusiasm as a child and I would have loved this one. However my father, a child of the city, did not have a well of kite flying or construction experience to draw on. Ever intrepid however as I remember he purchased one or two more fragile models we attempted to construct before bringing home an inflatable one. (We never went for a box model sadly.)
What this kite lacked in romantic visual appeal, it made up for in ace flying ability. Dad attached it to a fishing pole with plenty of line and it went off! I believe we had several splendid runs with it on the beach and in the backyard before one day, flying very far away over the water, it came down and was lost. My kite mania was assuaged however and, likely to my father’s relief, we did not seek to replace it.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: I have always found the term notions as applied to sewing paraphernalia rather romantic. These days your basic notions are getting harder and harder to find, at least here in New York City. Sewing baskets house your tools – pins, needles, thread, scissors, tape measure, hooks, chalk, buttons and the like and they still exist but were more prevalent in the first part of the 20th century I think.
These days kits are sold for the likes of us who may only sew the occasional button – needles, some thread and a needle threader (I needed one of those even before my eyes went bad), which can cover your need for executing the basics, but back in the 20’s sewing was more of necessity and the ever popular Felix might hold your yarn, needles or thread. (Recently I wrote about a Felix curi-oddity that came my way which appears to be meant to hold needles, thread and the like. You can find that post here.)
Pictorama readers may remember that my adventures in stitching tend to be ham-handed at best. With a little luck I can get the occasional button back on. I have stopped short of doing any sewing on my toys however and certainly a hem is beyond me. However, sewing tools and notions do charm me and a few of my other sewing related posts can be found here, here and here.
This fragile small item showed up on eBay recently and intrigued me. I have never seen it before which accounts for a number of years of Felix looking, although things certainly do still turn up. It is plastic and mass produced – there is a crack in the top which means it doesn’t screw on tightly any longer. There may have been many produced, however the thin plastic seems to mean the survival rate is low. A worried, early blocky Felix paces across the front. It has a very hard to read Made in France embossed on the bottom.
Clearly the top can be used as a thimble (I understand the need for and practicality of the thimble, but have never effectively employed one) and inside is a spool which I assume held thread. The top of the spool unwinds and that’s where you could keep a few needles. The thimble top screws on to hold everything together, perhaps the bright orange color helped you keep track of it in your sewing box or maybe even your purse. There was a bit of room inside and perhaps there was a small tape measure or more importantly an edge or some kind that would help you cut the thread. Doesn’t seem to be room for one of my beloved needle threaders however, alas.
Felix sewing kit. Pams-Pictorama.com collection.
Interestingly, a note came with the sewing kit and it reads, Dear Ms. Butler, Thanks for bidding on this unusual cat sewing kit. My best guess is that it was acquired by my mom, who was born in Berdstown, IL 1921. I hope you have a collection of eccentric objects to which this is a welcome addition! Julie Johnson. I am anxious to introduce Julie to the Pictorama collection which I think I can fairly say houses its share of eccentric objects. I will keep her note with it – I love knowing a sliver of history associated with it.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: Today we are celebrating some recent apparel acquisitions, both which came to me in fairly unorthodox ways. Both are notable for baring a passing but undeniable resemblance to Kim’s sometimes comics avatar Waldo and other Deitchian cat characters.
Happily acquired for the Pictorama wardrobe!
The first came via a DM heads up from our friend and comics history expert Bill Kartalopoulos (@kartalopoulos) on Instagram one day. The supplier is called Yarrow Goods. They offer the shirt in black as well as the combo I purchased shown above, and they have subsequently introduced the same Doin’ Great logo in Japanese (no idea why), but nonetheless perhaps more interestingly, as a sweatshirt. If it was a hoodie there would be smoke arising from how fast I took out my credit card, but I think a large pullover one could be a great addition to my winter running attire layers nonetheless. I love the t-shirt although my consumption of cotton t-shirts is low. However, it could become my winter pj top once serious seasonal chill sets in.
Kim’s Alias the Cat.
In my opinion, it bears perhaps a more striking resemblance to the protagonist in Kim’s Alias the Cat. (For anyone fans who missed it, Alias can be purchased on Amazon here.)
Probably coming to the Pictorama closet soon.
The other shirt was much harder won and came over the transom in a very unusual way. One night over dinner we were watching American Pickers and I noticed that Mike Wolfe was wearing a really great baseball shirt which also sported a Waldo-like character with a dollop of Waldo’s joie de vivre.
Let me start by saying that a good baseball shirt is truly an essential part of the Pictorama wardrobe. My fondness for them pre-dates the prolonged pandemic embracing of ongoing at home casual attire, but have only risen in my estimation during this time. They seem to possess a multi-function quality which morphs from extra layer in bed, to a layer while running and not to mention a hedge against morning chill first thing for that predawn cup of winter coffee. I had a series of soft and thin cotton ones from The Gap which I literally wore to rags. Quite simply, I wanted this shirt and I wanted it badly.
Luckily I could read the words Hydra Glide on it clearly and that lead me to the makers of the shirt over at Dice Magazine. Not surprisingly (for those of you who follow American Pickers anyway) this turned out to be a motorcycle magazine.
Hmmm. Another Waldo kissin’ cousin?
American Pickers has long been a favorite of mine and I guess among the sins of my television watching Kim might favor it. My fondness for it goes way back and pre-dates an addiction to home renovation shows (I favor the ones with old houses in another part of the country I could theoretically afford if I sold our studio apartment) which I first discovered while on the road for work and became my go to over the past 18 months to unwind. (There was a long early pandemic period where we watch way too much CNN which I have entirely barred absent the sort of natural disaster which might make it necessary to briefly venture back.)
Off the Antique Archaeology Face Book page – toys!
For those of you who are not familiar with the show, it is essentially a low budget show on the History network with these folks who travel around the United States poking around old buildings, barns and attics and buying stuff to sell in their shop. They give some explanation about the objects along the way and although it leans heavily toward early motorcycles, bikes, cars and related advertising (which I have admittedly developed an appreciation for), toys and things more squarely in the Pictorama purview turn up. I have on occasion seen a wind-up toy and trotted off to eBay and purchased it. (See a post here although unidentified as such, and a great tin rollover Pluto I wrote about which can be found here.) Of course since Pictorama and Deitch Studio have acquire only policies we are unlikely to ever invite them to dig here.
Waldo, from Kim’s recent Reincarnation Stories, for comparison!
Admittedly, there are times when I while watching I wish they would have a better look at an object I’m interested in (oh man, wait, why aren’t they interested in that film poster? was that a Bonzo dog I just saw?), but on the whole it is a more satisfying than frustrating experience. The shop’s online presence, at a glance, does not seem to extend to the items sold in their stores so alas, no chance to score that foot long photo you lusted after in a recent episode as far as I can tell. However, all this to say, while beloved in their own way, they are not exactly who I would expect to look to for contemporary fashion.
Shirt has finally entered the Pictorama collection/closet!
I found the shirt with surprising ease online at DicE Magazine. However, of course it was an old item and they were sold out. Living in the age of the internet and feeling persistent, the show wasn’t even over before I had located it in Japan at a site called Webike. I ordered it, but will save you the excruciating details which played out over more than a month with additional fees and the shirt stuck at some sort of holding company, Google translation of the site failing me and a plea for help to the company going unanswered. (Don’t try this at home folks!)
Freakishly, just as I gave up, I went back to the original site and (yes!) scored one. Meanwhile, the wheels of Japanese commerce also eventually turned and yep, a second one showed about a week later. (Final cost to date unknown.) I now own two and frankly I like it so much that if they were less expensive I would give them to everyone on the Pictorama holiday list. For now I may just order another and tuck it away for a future rainy day – especially since I bet a bunch of you are hitting the website now.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: As I write on this (chilly) October morning I have a large standing plastic Santa and suitcases wedged behind me, piles of dry cleaning around me, and a mini mountain of off-season clothing tucked into plastic bins within view. These bins are of course filled with clothing that, due to the pandemic and not traveling into the office – or even seeing much of anyone – I haven’t touched in two seasons. I did have a moment of thinking I should just get rid of all of it.
It should be noted that this tower of tubs is so beloved by Cookie, who now spends her day lounging on top of them, lording it over everyone else in the apartment how high up she is, that I have decided that when this is all over I need to buy her a tall cat tree. I dislike them and we have so little space, but it makes her excessively happy.
Cookie on an earlier and somewhat shorter incarnation of the clothing tubs, during initial drying.
When I left Pictorama readers last week we were drying out Kim’s notes on our visit to the whorehouse museum in Butte, Montana by spreading them across our one room studio apartment. (That post about our trip to Butte and the story that came out of it can be found here. The beginning of this three part tale can be found here.) I failed to mention that, in addition to the clothes that were destroyed by the storm, the rest were damp from having sat in the water filled basement – so those also were spread out here and the combination giving the apartment a distinct musty smell. I bleached cleaned the locker and the objects that encountered the water and I thought I was done. However, a few days later the building required that everything be removed from the basement for the duration of “several weeks” while they put in new dry wall, paint, etc. And so we find ourselves more crammed than usual.
Ida also forced the hand of two leaks in our ceiling and we have the delight of spending the coming week intimately acquainted with workmen tearing out these sections of ceiling and making repairs. Sometimes I marvel at how much can really go on in our 600 square feet. I laugh when I look at tiny houses and think they have nothing on us here on 86th Street in Manhattan. Anyway, an industrial dehumidifier is on loan from the super and runs day and night. At first I was dumping gallons of water daily. It seems to be doing its job, decreasing amounts of water are disposed of twice a day, and it will disappear with the ceiling repairs. (Blackie loves the dehumidifier, Cookie hates it. It is loud.)
Cookie, the Queen of Everything, enjoying her perch atop of the containers.
I am very aware that although annoying, our damages are nominal compare to that of others suffering from this and other recent storms. However, this apartment which is perched at the very top of an aging white brick building, which was erected in 1960, seems to attract leaking and flooding and pipe issues which we fight, repair and hold at bay ongoing. This is merely another in a long line of repairs, all of which we tell ourselves must be the ultimate one.
Still and all, as I pointed out last week, part of becoming intimate with the basement relegated possessions has had a silver lining. For me, it came in the form of a long forgotten oil painting. It is mine and by this I mean I painted it. I have shed much if not most of my artwork aside from my photographs which are tucked into boxes. However, a few favorite paintings are tucked under the bed and this one was in the basement. It is largely unscathed by the experience although I have cleaned it up a bit after its probably decades long sojourn in the basement.
I have painted since childhood. I learned to use oil paint in high school and I knew I had found my medium in paint. I love the smell, the texture, the colors and really just about everything associated with it. The stink of the paint, turpentine and linseed oil immediately relaxes me and takes my mind elsewhere, even if I just catch a whiff as I walk past the Art Student’s League on my way to work. I have also always drawn and I began life and figure drawing also in high school. In college and beyond this slowly morphed into a long series of self-portraits. This is one of the last I did, back in the apartment prior to this one where I had space to paint, and it shows me in bed with my beloved cat Otto who frequently slept on my pillow in that fashion. My other cat Zippy on top of me. I don’t smoke (never have) so the cigarette is just an addition to the composition.
Rare extant oil painting by yours truly.
Lack of space when making the move to this apartment meant that painting eventually gave way to photography – early process photography including daguerreotypes and platinum prints. But, as they say, that is another story.
I find that I have enjoyed looking at this painting, currently propped up against some boxes by the front door. One day Kim suggested, out of the blue, that we hang it. Funny, I had been thinking the same thing. Some rearranging of photos to be done, but we think we found a spot for it where a wooden mask from Bhutan currently resides.
Meanwhile, even before the contents of the locker migrated up to the apartment, one day Kim wandered out of the apartment and downstairs where he retrieved an entire box devoted to story boards for a film of one of his stories that was never made. It is dated 1983 and I share the first few pages here. It is made up of a compilation of a number of stories that appeared in various publications over the years (I remember one reprinted in his compilation Beyond the Pale, one about a potato headed boy) with the goal of tying them together into a Deitch flavored film.
This was in conjunction with Brian Yuzna, of sci-fi and horror film fame, during a fabled stint in North Carolina, in the pre-Pam days of yore when Kim lead a somewhat nomadic life down South, dotted with intervals in Los Angeles. It seems to have reached a zenith with Brian turning his hand to his film Re-Animator (Kim makes a small appearance at the end) and somehow Beatifica Somnambula never being finished. However, Kim regaled me with stories about props that were constructed, giant fiberglass potato head and others.
Kim Deitch story board from Beatifica Somnambula.Kim Deitch story board from Beatifica Somnambula.Kim Deitch story board from Beatifica Somnambula.
Oddly Kim had been mulling over a bit of business from this odyssey for a future story – not the upcoming book, but the one after that – so the rediscovery and chance to paw through the box of story boards was especially welcomed. I won’t spoil any future story surprises, but when you eventually read Tales of the Midnight Demon think of this post.
I guess all this to say that creatively what is made is never completely lost. I am mulling how in a small way I might start painting again, although paint covered cat paws immediately come to mind. While I will be (very) relieved to have our storage restored to us and maybe have the apartment back to a semblance of normal before Thanksgiving, I think I will bring Santa upstairs this year. Maybe instead of a Christmas tree, we’ll get that cat condo and decorate it this year.
Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Thorough Pictorama readers may remember back in March of 2018 (March 24, almost exactly three years ago!) when I posted about the photo below in the post It’s Clint Flynn – on Spark Plug (which can be found here).
At that time I confessed my rather specific interest in this mini-genre of photos which depict people on various homemade versions of Spark Plug, the horse character of the Barney Google comic strip fame, which made its debut in 1919. (In my mind these are like an addendum to people posing with Felix – collecting those photos being part of my life’s work.) In 1925, the year today’s photo was snapped, Barney Google and Spark Plug would have been hitting their stride fame-wise.
Pams-Pictorama.com Collection
When I say mini-genre of photos I do not exaggerate as I have only seen three in my life (although I am convinced that there are many more to be found which I plan to uncover and of course acquire.) I was able to purchase two of the three known to me. It was the first one, at a Hake’s auction I believe, that got away which started me on my hunt for further ones. (Strangely, like some of my Felix photos, I believe that first one hailed from Australia. Australia in the 1920’s must have been a crazy, great place.)
All three photos I have encountered sold for a significant price. The card I share today started at a price even I wouldn’t pay for it and eventually came down as I had expressed interest and gather I was the only taker. In part, I think this card suffered a bit because it was hard to be certain at first that it is an original photo postcard, not a reproduction, which it is.
Back of card. Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.
Unlike most outstandingly great photo postcards I have encountered, this one was mailed. Luckily it didn’t suffer noticibly on its journey. I show the back below and you will note the postmark, March 23, 1925! (I am loving all the coinciding of March dates today. March must be Spark Plug photo month, right down through the decades.) It was addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Chalfont, Muncie Ind. 720 W. Ponders Street. (The street address is added like an afterthought which I don’t believe I have ever seen.) The sender, unnamed, writes (somewhat cryptically), Golden Banders. Come and see our 1 ring circus it is free Thurs. We. is the date. Please come early don’t be late. March 26. 7.30.
Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.
On the front of the card 1 Ring Circus and a $ have been painted neatly onto the neg and printed. I’m not sure what the $ is referring to, tucked as it is between these two splendidly attired and painted clowns, adorned with pointy caps, each of them accessorized with a feather duster.
The woman, less sporty in her dress, but fully in the spirit of the thing, seems to be an assistant of sorts; she is holding Spark Plug’s head a bit possessively, although maybe she is also keeping him steady. (I really like her shoes – I own a pair like those that I am quite partial to.) The tot fortunate enough to be perch atop him is in a Buster Brown suit, with bow tie, and looks pretty smug and pleased with himself – who can blame him? Hotsy totsy!
Unlike the sturdy fellow in my earlier photo, this Spark Plug is a wonder of casual construction. I think he may have real plungers for feet and lower extremities and something mysterious above that connecting it all. (Interestingly plungers are frequently used to depict Spark Plug’s feet, he is not drawn that way in the strip where he just has enormous, clunky hooves.) His body appears to be an ambitious combination of wood and cardboard if I had to guess.
An interesting question is whether or not Spark Plug has back legs here – I do not see them. (Do you?) It seems like maybe white hat clown is holding him up? Not sure how that works – perhaps the clown jiggles you up and down? The solution behind this mystery is hidden now. Whoa! Steady there fellow I say!
Pam’s Pictorama Post: Buckle up for a very, very Felix day. For new readers a chance to catch up on part of my collection dedicated to the early representations of the famous animated cat and for dedicated readers some highlights of the past along the way.
I don’t think it would surprise long-standing Pictorama readers when I state that I look at a lot of Felix items and generally have a sense of what is available. Therefore when I come across something I have never seen before I’m pretty sure it is indeed unusual indeed. If I am unable to acquire it I more or less assume I will likely never see it again – we do find there are exceptions. However, it was in this spirit that I must have broken my own rule (one that I generally only write about objects and photos in my own collection), when I wrote a post on a Felix handkerchief that I lost at auction back in November of 2018. (They are shown in a slide show below – these are sadly of course not in my collection.)
I paired the post with another on some handkerchiefs that belonged to my Dad which I carry in my purse, or did in the before time when I carried a handbag daily. (Those two kerchief dedicated posts can be found here and here. Strangely my forays outside, limited that they are, seem to mostly take place with a credit card tucked in the back of my phone now, unless I am required to provide my own shopping bags at the store. No one seems to want cash these days.)
Felix hankies, not in Pictorama collection
Therefore, much to my surprise, I was able to score this single, but rather wonderful item which I share with you today. Unlike the frolicking, mouse chasing Felix in the earlier post, my hanky shows Felix deep in thought, doing his famous Felix walk. What I think of as Felix’s I’m thinking walk, has its origin in the earliest Felix silent cartoons and was his signature pose -for some reason I always think of Einstein when I see it. Felix knew how to strike a pose and there is also a sort of Ah ha! pose that frequently follows the walking and thinking. (And of course there are the wonderful things he does by disengaging his tail and using it for various purposes. We’ll perhaps discuss that another time given the opportunity.)
Felix sheet music from Pams-Pictorama.com collection.
The then very popular phrase Felix Kept on Walking has its roots in this famed animated walk. (Although it also came to have a slightly racier meaning – as depicted on the plate below.) The Felix walk was celebrated in song, sheet music, song of the same name is shown below, but also in pins and other ephemera in the early collectible period. (An instrumental version of the tune can be found here, but in some ways for the full experience of the novelty tune you need the vocals which can be heard here. Or you can just chuckle over the lyrics here.) Some of the stuffed dolls from the 1920’s have Felix with a hump on his back and I have wondered if somehow it didn’t tie out to the bent over walk in deep thought, hands behind his back.
Felix Keep on Walking plate, Pams-Pictorama.com
Kim believes Buster Keaton satirized a few minutes of the Felix walk in Go West, 1925. An animated Charlie Chaplin, who obviously had his own trademark walk, does the Felix walk in the rather splendid Felix cartoon, Felix Goes to Hollywood. (It can be found on Youtube here. All these external links only good at the time of writing – they tend to come and go, especially the Youtube ones.) The Felix walk was known by all, a popular culture icon of the day. And, despite numerous redesigns over the decades, some remnant of the deep in thought walk stays with Felix right on up to the newer cartoons I watched as a child in the 1960’s.
Felix Lucky Bucks cut-out. Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.Pams-Pictorama.com Collection. Felix making clever use of his tail.
The handkerchief I acquired is small as seen here, definitely child-sized, and not quite as white as the image appeared in the photo provided. No matter about the condition of course and what to expect of such a fragile item which is rounding 100 years in existence. Hard to imagine a time when small children were encouraged to carry a hanky – and perhaps the lure of Felix helped keep them from losing it? I especially like the thought marks emanating from his head.
Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.
This handkerchief, like so many other fascinating early Felix items, hails from Britain. The embroidery is fairly small and concise. I don’t know much about embroidery but my guess is that it is hand done, but probably by an adult. Although I have not seen the evidence, I assume there were some sort of kit or template you could acquire. I wrote about an embroidered apron, also lost at auction, which must have similar root. The Felix apron post can be found here, also a 2018 post. It was called Breaking the Rules and I would be perfectly happy to have another shot at purchasing it too!
Pam’s Pictorama Post: Back in February (if we can turn the clock back that far which I grant you is a bit tough as I sit here poised on the cusp of this particular June 1), I made a power birthday buy from my friend Jean-Pol Ventugol at The Antique Toy Shop (his website can be found here) and I threw this plate in for the heck of it. This morning I was wrestling with some items on my work table (which has many photos and toys piled up on it – a remarkable and delightful pile in fact) in order to install a desk lamp retrieved from our basement locker and it rose to the surface, clamoring for attention.
I have written about several comics related mugs made by this company, the Patriot China Company. I started with the rather wonderful Little Orphan Annie mug (as shown below, and that post can be found here) and at the same time I purchased this I acquired the Three Little Pigs mug (which I posted about here) also made by Patriot. Unlike the mugs though, this plate has seen some hard use and is in rough shape.
Pams-Pictorama.com Collection
It is so worn that when I bought it I contemplated adding it to the cupboard and I may still eventually; it is so beat up, but I think it would still be very jolly to be eating off of it. I have in fact barely contained myself from making the Little Orphan Annie mug my daily coffee mug and have primarily been held back by the fact that it is somewhat child-sized, and frankly I drink a heck of a lot of coffee in the morning so I would be running back and forth constantly to the kitchen.
There is something deeply comforting and satisfying about this childish china though and the phenomenal popularity of it has made it all still so widely available that I have times when I consider making a big buy and converting our everyday dishes to these, with mixture of comic figures of days of yore.
This change of china would be notwithstanding the fact that I actually have kitchen plates I am emotionally attached to, which came from my great-grandparent’s bar. (I mentioned these in a post awhile back where I considered an all Felix life which can be found here.) Coincidentally those are sectioned as well and while I never thought about the appeal of neatly sectioned plates there is one. I have grown spoiled by our willow ware plates with their deep reservoirs which are handy in keeping our dumpling’s soy sauce safely from the sauce on our fish du jour.
Willow plate, our daily china
The Mickey Mouse plate, like the mugs, is just a bit down-sized a bit for a child – the sort of three quarter size of what I would think of as a luncheon plate. (A good plate for a diet – it would convince you to take just a little less.) This one must have delighted a child or children for many meals, wearing Mickey and especially Pluto down and fading them considerably. Perhaps there was just the one and they fought over it as I remember doing over certain a certain spoon and other items as a kid. Maybe Kim and I could start fighting over who gets their dinner on this one.
While I somehow doubt that I will purchase an entire set, you might expect to see a few more choice items added. As I come across them I find them irresistible and even while researching this I believe I found a pig mug I must have, therefore we will consider this to be continued.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: I have what I consider a very entertaining detour today which I hope serves as a sort of Pictorama pick me up for readers. The photo I am featuring today is one I have owned now for a very long time, I think it is safe to say it has been on our wall for more than a decade. (In fact I just found evidence that it was on sale on ebay in 2008.) I do not remember what I paid for it, however I do remember it came dear and it was a real dog fight at the time. It holds something of a place of honor on the walls here at Deitch Studio.
In researching yesterday’s post I stumbled across a photo from the same session. We took our photo off the wall to have a better look and since it stubbornly refused to allow itself to be hung again, I decided it was telling me it was time to tell share it and tell the story.
Clearly Pat Sullivan and a woman I am informed is his assistant and wife, Marjorie, are sorting through this enormous pile of submissions for a Draw Felix the Cat contest. If you look carefully in the pile you can see ads for the contest as well as drawings. The Felix in the corner is a large cut out which appears to be made of wood. The real treats in this photo are what is hanging on the wall behind them to the extent we can see it.
Pams-Pictorama.com collection
Aside from that great poster for the cartoon Gym Gems featured on the back wall, we’ve looked at it under magnification and have found the following – above the desk and nearest Sullivan there is: a portrait drawing of Mabel Normand, signed; a photo of Sullivan and wife in a car with an enormous Felix (I really want that one!); two signed photos of Charlie Chaplin; a drawing of a woman in a dancing costume and two other signed photos of male actors we can neither recognize nor read.
There is a reproduction of the Met’s painting by Pierre-August Cot, The Storm, of a young couple dashing through the rain. (Kim also had a color reproduction of this on our wall for many years until it faded into blurriness.) There is a piece of cartoon art under the poster for Felix Minds the Kid but the information is no longer retrievable. Lastly, there is a photo of two wooden Felix toys which appear to be writing, Hello Pat and a drawing of a nude woman from the back which is ornately signed, but I cannot make that out either.
While researching yesterday’s post, I stumbled across another version of that photo, clearly taken the very same day, with Marjorie and Pat in the same clothes. In this version, they are virtually buried under the drawing entries now, as is the desk and if you were to ask me I would say Marjorie is getting tired of this. (A poster for Felix Revolts has been revealed as well as two more drawings which I cannot make out. The top one, just revealing Felix, might be sheet music?) The nice composition statue of Felix which is barely visible in my photo is nicely revealed in this one.
Collection of the State Library NSW
The most interesting thing that I noted is that the Felix in this photo appears to be drawn in, unlike the wooden one placed in the earlier photo, complete with shadow and all. It was clearly used for newspaper reproduction with the telltale sign of the gray paint to emphasize and edit the image.
Meanwhile, written at the bottom of this photo it states: George Taylor’s old Sydney cartoonist friend – Pat Sullivan and his wife Marjorie wading through some of the final selections from hundreds of thousands of entries in the “Draw Felix” competition in New York in 1923. He was already acclaimed ‘the most popular American Cartoonist’. But he was born in SYDNEY! This photo is identified as being from the State Library in New South Wales.
I don’t know where the writing at the bottom originates, but the date on the contest is wrong because Gym Gems doesn’t come out until 1926. A quick search on George Taylor of Sydney in the 1920’s points to a journalist and aviation pioneer of the time as a likely candidate of the origin of the photo and whose dates are fairly parallel to Sullivan’s.
It was the image below, also from the State Library NSW, that inspired my entire collection of photos of people posing with giant stuffed Felix-es – and eventually this blog. It was the first one I ever saw and years later when I had my first chance to snatch one up I snapped to it.
Pam's Pictorama 