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Mitten Kittens

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: These inquiring little fellows caught my eye and I liked how the writing was stenciled into the negative of this very old card. Clearly something entertaining was used to capture their attention just off camera. The tabby in the middle has moved a bit and is a tad blurry as a result. I suspect this handful of kits was used again and again as models at the studio. The feet of the two tuxies are huge and those must have grown up to be some big cats.

Kittens and mittens to back at least as far as the Mother Goose poem which has verses where the kits in turn loose their mittens, find their mittens, soil them and then wash them. The verse ends oddly however with Mama smelling a rat nearby. I suspect ratty was dinner, however the thought is never finished and an odd one to end the poem on. (In its entirely it can be found here.)

My copy of The Fur Person by May Sarton.

The term making mittens refers, as far as I know, to a cat kneading with claw paws. I didn’t grow up with that term however. That action was always starfish paws to us, or mushing when we were very little. I call them claw paws these days especially with my kitties whose claws have grown too long I’m afraid. The term starfish paws came to us via a volume by May Sarton, The Fur Person, a wonderful book chock-a-block with cat love and lore which I have written about previously and that post can be found here. Blackie has a bad habit of doing it while sitting on my lap and my knees are scarred with his ongoing and intense ministrations.

There are many photos of be-mittened cats on the internet, the indignities which I will ignore except to say that folks have hung onto the idea over time.

Although this card has a somewhat homemade look, it is the product of a large professional studio. Stenciled neatly at the bottom is Pesha Photo. This turns out to be Louis James Pesha who owned the eponymous Pesha Postcard Company of Michigan. His work is largely known best for his photos of the Great Lakes region and enjoys some ongoing popularity today. To my knowledge I have not purchased other cat cards made by him previously. A quick Google search reveals mostly the aforementioned landscape and water views.

Pesha Photo not in Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.

Mr. Pesha was born in Ontario, Canada in 1868 and moved to the United States in ’01 starting his photo studio then. Evidently at first he specialized in cards like this one, popular subjects and trick photos. He had long photographed the landscapes, railroads and scenes around him and began printing and selling those as postcards later on.

An automobile, seating what are believed to be his wife and son [?], is parked in front of one of Louis Pesha’s photo studios. Dave Burwell Collection, Sarnia Historical Society.

Pesha dies tragically young in a car accident (he owned a luxury steam engined car purchased from the White Automobile company and I wonder if the one shown above is the car in question) in October of 1912 while visiting his parents. He was only 42 and he leaves a young daughter (no mention of a son in his online bio) and widow who continues the business until postcards pass out of fashion in the early ’20’s.

My card has an indicia pressed into the lower right corner which I assume also marks it as a Pesha card but is illegible and I depended on the writing on the bottom, Pesha Photo 1517, etched into the bottom.

This card was sent at 3 PM on January 21, 1911 from an unidentified location to Mr. Elmer Rosbury in Toledo, Ohio under General Delivery no less, and received by the post office at 9 AM the next day. (Much better delivery than we can hope for these days I might add.) The writing is in pencil and it is difficult to read. As far as I can tell it reads, Dear Elmer: – Will write tomorrow had a girl Friend down from Minders (?) and we went to this Farmers Blow Out last night. With love from Ethel.

With my best Caturday wishes to all!

Fat Tuesday, 1928

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Today’s card is a bit faded, but nonetheless a great addition to the Pictorama collection. While I am pleased to have acquired some outstanding photos of folks sporting Felix Halloween costumes and Felix (and Mickey) in some great parade shots (some of those can be seen in posts here and here) I believe this is the first Mardi Gras Felix photo I have acquired.

Identified at the bottom as being from New Orleans La. February 21st 1928 I checked and confirmed that this was indeed Fat Tuesday, the kick off for Mardi Gras, that year. It is a photo postcard which was never mailed and there is nothing else written on it. (Fat Tuesday is of course the celebration on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday when eating and drinking reaches a frenzied peak in order to tide you over through the period of Lent.)

Pams-Pictorama.com collection from a 2014 post.

All participants are in similar, mostly, black masks and all wear jolly hats in addition to their costume and a close look identifies that they are all women. While these clowns, in their silky costumes, in the front are perfectly lovely, it is of course the group of three wearing these early grinning Felix costumes that won me over. It should be noted that a close look reveals that there is a fourth participant wearing a perfectly great black cat costume on the end.

Neither of the occasions I was able to make brief visits to New Orleans were during Mardi Gras and many years ago now. While I wouldn’t be surprised if my work eventually takes me there again I unwittingly stumbled onto a Fat Tuesday tradition at Dizzy’s, the jazz dinner club associated with Jazz at Lincoln Center, this year.

A whole lotta brass with Alphonso Horne’s Gotham Kings.

Alphonso Horne’s Gotham Kings make an annual Mardi Gras appearance at the club and this year it could only be described as a raucous and joyous celebration of their return to Dizzy’s on Fat Tuesday after a two year online hiatus. When one of Alphonso’s trumpet players was unable to make the gig he engaged four others for a total of five on stage. Trumpet players called to each other from locations across the room as they emerged from the audience, kicked the show into gear and made their way to the stage where they joined the rest of the band and a tap dancer. (I do love a tap dancer!)

Tapping and drumming!

The performance was capped off by the vocalist C. Anthony Bryant singing What a Wonderful World. The tune is far from a favorite of mine, but there wasn’t a dry eye in the house that night. (You can see a variation of the band performing it – in a Manhattan apartment – on a Youtube video here.) So while it is unlikely that I will make Mardi Gras in New Orleans next year, I know where I am likely to be.

C. Anthony Bryant closing the show.

David, Our Favorite

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Today I devote space to this nice little cat photo postcard. We can see that the name David was etched, carefully, into the negative, complete with quotation marks and a swirl below. The card is a bit dark, but we can see that David is a handsome, spotty puss. He sports a collar and although we don’t see it too clearly I like the spot on his forehead, right between his eyes. He looks like a lively fellow and something has his attention in another direction while having this photo taken. One imagines he was off and chasing after it moments after the shutter clicked.

This penny postcard card was mailed from Lisbon, Ohio on August 8 at 8 AM. It is obscured, but I think the year is 1912. It was sent to a Mrs. Chas Lutes, at 515 N. Park Street, McKeesport, PA. It is inscribed as follows, You may not know who this is but he is my favorate. We did not get a very good position yet it looks like him. Gaskills. Kim and I had some morning discussion around the signature, Gaskills. Last name used as moniker? Not sure really, but we agreed that was what the neat, if faded, script says.

Gus and Beau in their respective boxes at Mom’s the other day. Gus is also a recent rescue and Beau from Newark several years ago.

Our beloved pets! We keep photos of our kits and pups (bunnies and what all), but a bit interesting that this one was kept by the recipient (at least I assume it was she who kept it) carefully as well. Of course which detritus of the world ultimately sticks to any of us is a bit mysterious.

Like children, I guess I have always thought one shouldn’t have favorites among the cats. You do I guess, but it doesn’t seem right to cop to it anyway.

As some Pictorama readers know, I spend part of my time with my mom in New Jersey these days. She recently identified a new stray cat in her backyard and mom had cousin Patti and I feeding it until it trusted us enough for someone to come and trap it yesterday morning. Turns out to be a young female, longish hair with stripes, gray and black – she was mostly a blur to me as she dashed off while I offered food. I hope to have photos soon to share soon.

Peaches, another relatively recent rescue who lives with mom, still won’t let any of us near her although she does follow me upstairs to observe my endless Zoom calls while I am there.

Mom is full up with cats in her own small home, but we are determined to find a permanent loving home for this little girl. She is going by Stormy for now, named in honor of the windy and wet morning she was finally caught on. Stormy is with the rescuer for now, getting some tests and medical attention. As mom and I both said, we both slept better last night knowing that little kit was warm inside with a full tummy for the first time this winter.

This is the little sweetheart mom just rescued! Email for info! We need to find her a home.

Siblings

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: This photo postcard turned up this week and looking at it more closely made me laugh this morning. It is a fairly pristine photo postcard, nothing written on it and it was never used, a uniform bend along the bottom like it was in a book and that part stuck out.

The bench these girls are perched on is nice and of course Felix makes a highly desirable prop, a big composition one that was a popular prize at fairs, but also seemed to make their way into the world in large numbers. (I recently considered an early film still with an actress holding a white Felix, like an albino I guess?) The background here leaves much to be desired however and seems wholly inadequate both in purpose (why is it so low?) and in overall unattractiveness with its sad, feeble and faded windmill.

Felix has been handed over to the younger of the two of them and I am not sure that is sitting well with the older of them. She has something in her hand too, a top or a ball, which she has disdained to show us, hand curved around it in an artificial way. Clearly she has been instructed to put her arm around her sibling and from the expression of annoyance (and perhaps even irony) on her face this is all heading somewhere bad, maybe soon or perhaps later, but an eruption nonetheless. The younger of the two seems oblivious however, although as Kim said, it is a photo of a relationship and how it will play out over the next fifty years so she will certainly catch on over time. In a phrase – watch out!

They are both precisely and carefully dressed so I am assuming this is a photographer’s studio, rather than a photo taken at a resort or fair. White dresses, white socks pulled up and turned over, they are very neat with hair carefully combed.

A recently framed photo of me (left) and my sister in an unidentified backyard. We are sporting rare matching outfits which I do not remember owning so maybe they didn’t last long?

There are many photos of me and my older sister from about this age so I can appreciate it I guess. These days my mom is ensconced in a comfy chair, near a sunny window off the kitchen, with a photo frame with revolving images next to her and they catch my eye while I am there, snatching me back in time when I least suspect it. I have to lay claim to the original photos. These photos help my mom live happily in the past part of the time, me too when I am there. Occasionally new ones find their way into the mix.

It’s a somewhat random cross section of pictures that have ended up in the slideshow. I gather just one of many boxes handed over to the friend who loaded it. Toddler us, baby photos of my brother, a trip to Italy I took with my father, some photos of my uncle at a variety of ages from adolescent on, numerous cats we have lived with, the house where I grew up. A recent photo of my mom’s aide Winsome shown with her two granddaughters, all dressed beautifully for a recent wedding, winks through the mix. The photos of Loren and I with my father’s parents are the real time capsules for me, so very long gone are they now. Somehow I can still smell the flowers in her garden and hear the bees buzzing around us.

Photo of my sister from high school on a table at my mom’s house.

But the photos of Loren and me when we were the age of these two or not much older bring back visceral memories of the taking of those photos; the ice we were skating on, the yard where we played in the snow, the beach where we ran around, my grandmother’s backyard.

I will say that for all her very big personality, I think Loren was a more winning child in photos (always a huge smile) than this little girl appears to be. However, it is all very far in the past and we have no idea what really did happen to these girls after this.

Daydreams

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Today I am sharing a photo postcard that just wandered in the door this week. It turned up in a search because of the black cat drawing in the upper left corner, but I think it is an image that those of us who were once art students find familiar and that is why I bought it. Although this postcard was never mailed, it is inscribed with “Daydreams” in a neat script and underlined on the back.

Our aspiring artist has his inspiration images pinned up along with what I assume is some of his own work. These drawings largely appear to be exercises in commercial art and perhaps that is how he ultimately made his living. His brushes, which looks a bit large for the art pursued here, are neatly sticking out of a jar. When I look very carefully I wonder if there aren’t two other photo postcards perched under the lamp, at least one that might be this same space depicted previously.

Our artist appears to be mulling, posed artfully and self-consciously, over a photograph of a woman and at his leisure, sitting back in his chair with his feet up. Very natty, our artist is wearing a tie and is neatly combed. The photo documents a space and time well despite the artifice.

There is something odd and somewhat wonky about the printing of this photo and I cannot help but wonder if his friend the aspiring (perhaps not yet entirely successful) photography student from down the hall attempted it. Recognizing that it hails from a time when a photo lit exclusively by a single bulb would have been challenging to execute (film being much slower), perhaps that is part of the issue. However, it is also printed poorly with dark edges from where it was not properly set for printing, an errant over-exposed corner in the upper right. Over decades it has solarized in the way that early prints sometimes do.

Cookie and Blackie enjoying my desk.

It reminds me of studio spaces in I had in college and later the areas I have devoted to drawing in various apartments – some favorite postcards or reproductions pinned up along with some recent work, a work lamp, brushes at the ready. He is neater than me, by far; I generally was covered in black pastel (a favorite medium) or really made a mess earlier with oil paint. My photography work of more recent vintage was executed elsewhere so no pets or humans would be injured by fumes or chemicals in our tiny abode. Kim says this photo reminds him of a young him as well, although I will add he seems a bit disparaging about the prospects of this young man.

My drawing table, alas, has been my work desk, as shown above, for the last two years and sees more action that way than it was for producing drawings. (I wrote about setting up that work space in an oddly popular post that can be found here.) It can’t be seen in the photo, but I do keep some photos around me at my desk as well, among them one I recently acquired of me and my sister as tiny tots, in a long forgotten yard somewhere.

Framed photo of me and my older sister Loren which just turned up recently and lives by my desk..

Meanwhile, as I write I sit at the far end of Kim’s long work table as I type this. It is a personal idiosyncrasy that I write my blog sitting at our big computer, not my laptop. I think I have mentioned before that Kim’s work table is a long, wooden table that I think was designed more for dining than for drawing. We bought it at the 26th Street flea market from its maker years ago. The antique table I had assigned to Kim early on had fallen over from the daily use.

Kim’s desk this morning, work in progress.
The ever-growing pile of finished pages like grow like topsy.

I guess Kim’s workspace is a glorified and professional version of this student one, with an enormous pile of finished pages at his right, some favorite books and his lucky dogs in front of him and our mutual collection of early photos lining the walls above. He is not, it should be noted, someone who likes his own work up on the wall around him. His workspace and my mine sit side-by-side these days and are pretty much central to our daily lives with the two cats, here at Deitch Studio.

Cinderella and the Cat

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: I am wildly fond of this recent acquisition! I found it for sale on eBay from a Canadian seller and couldn’t buy it fast enough. It is a photo postcard, never mailed. In studying it, I believe the white bits at the bottom left are a bit of paint, not loss of emulsion. Nonetheless, this one zipping into a frame quickly to keep it safe.

It is an image I have never seen before and my efforts to turn up anything relating to it turned up nothing except animation and, oddly, a fair amount of assorted pornography. Cinderella is written at the bottom of this postcard image. There is a vague suggestion of a fireplace scrim on a painted scrim behind them. I assume this is a photo postcard from a vaudeville or roadshow version of the Cinderella story.

Cinderella here, although reasonably adult or at least adolescent, is fairly petit. She holds a strangely very small broom and her feet are clad in nicely strappy shoes which appear flat and potentially allowed for dancing. She is perched on a common bistro style chair which is a bit of an anachronism. This is a Cinderella still in impoverished mode with her lone friend which in this case is a cat. (Correct me if I am wrong, but the traditional story involved mice befriending her, didn’t it?)

Nice Lucifer the Cat toy from the Disney animation. Might need to find myself one of these!

In an effort to research if there was a variation of the Cinderella story that specifically had a feline friend I turned up an Italian animated film from 2017 called Cinderella and the Cat. It seems to be is a dystopian future version of the Cinderella story set on a ship in Naples. Although I don’t remember it, the Disney version (1950) had a cat too, Lucifer, shown as a toy above.

However, let’s not bury the lead, which is this glorious cat costume! He is not only adorned with a shaggy, striped fur suit, but also has amazing full make up and/or bewhiskered mask. The shagginess makes me think maybe mohair. The one hand that is visible is covered in a paw sort of glove; he has round ears and a lank tail curled beside him. The make up or mask on his face gives him wonderful bulging kitty jowls like a big old tom cat and really add to the overall effect.

As shown above, the back of the card only reads, Eina [?] and the Cat in a swooping script. Noted in the upper corner is 15. Cinderella which could be a contemporary note or an original one, making me wonder if it was a series of cards.

This cat costume rivals that of performer Alfred Latell (who I have written about in posts here and here), a gifted animal impersonator who might best be remember for his Bonzo dog complete with moving parts, in a similar time and genre. (He is shown in the Bonzo costume below.)

Pams-Pictorama.com collection

Latell was identifiable and left some if uncertain tracks. Ultimately I was able to follow him all the way to a snippet appearance in a blurry bit of color film. Sadly this performer is unidentified and I was unable to turn up any snippets referring to such an act. I suspect this is a lower rent version than the Latell shows (and potentially Canadian), but the costume and make up are just amazing.

My imagination roils with thoughts of this bygone production and a potentially thrilling rendition of a cat pal to this Cinderella. Sad not to have more information, but I do have this image left to ignite and stoke dreams of cat acts of years past.

Felix Finds a New Home

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Pam’s Pictorama Toy Post: Today we are continuing our New Year’s weekend with a Felix post. This fellow is the last in a big buy I did from an unexpected and wonderful online auction in Great Britain this October. It was one of those affairs which had been moved online because of Covid and it was my lucky, toy collecting day, because I would never have been treated to the likes of it otherwise and some of these dealers are not online sellers. Given the amount I spent I would say they were glad to have run into me as well! (I have written about the other acquisitions, the amazing Deans Eugene the Jeep and a great postcard here and here.) Christmas came in October this year without question.

There is in my collection, a rather huge and very impressive Dean’s Rag Felix, the likes of which I have never seen otherwise, nor have I even met any kissin’ cousins until this fellow crossed my path. The story of that guy I will save for another day as I have not yet memorialized him here in the Pictorama archive of toy tales, but it involves a trip to London, spending more than I ever had on a toy (and I have never, ever told how much that was…) and emptying a suitcase to bring him home safely – who cares about clothes?

Pluto in Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.

I have written about the famed Dean’s toy maker previously – a few times devoted to some beloved Mickeys and also a rather exceptional Pluto. (Those posts for fellow toy fans can be found here, here and here just for starters.) Deans produced Felix in a variety of sizes according some old catalogue information I have seen. I would like to be more educated about them and will share as the information comes to light.

This chap caught my eye immediately as I strolled through piles of photos from a variety of sellers and, as I remember, I started bouncing up and down in my chair with delight! To make it even better (how does it even get better, right?) the seller was including the photo below of a little boy with a very similar Felix! Pictorama readers know that this is truly a wonderful two-ffer for me as the Pictorama archive sports many Felix photo images as well. I could hardly email my desire to purchase them fast enough.

Felix real photo postcard, Pams-Pictorama.com collection.

The young man posing with this Felix toy seems to be at a photo studio. He is perched on something that looks more like a small table or piano bench perhaps. While Felix appears to be warmly embracing him, he seems a bit awkward with his arms are gingerly around Felix which makes it feel like it probably isn’t his toy but a prop. This is a photograph rather than a photo postcard and there is no information on the back aside from a pencil number (no studio information) and some evidence that this was at one time pasted into a photo album.

Felix stands about 17 inches high. He has rather bat-like ears, a tad over-sized. (Peter, the seller, kindly offered to reinforce Felix’s ears which I agreed to – as it happens they had also been reinforced on my other Dean’s Felix. They must have been made thin and wore out quickly. His head swivels to allow for a saucy pose or two.

As you can see, this Felix is missing his nose – and of course the photo shows us what it would have looked like with nose. I am considering fashioning a nose out of felt and maybe just pinning it on so it would be easily removable. However, you can also see that the shape of the nose is still there. The eyes are an interesting sort of celluloid, at least that is what I think they are. Oddly, both in my photos and the original ones from the sellers, his hands seem a bit clumpy although they are not in person.

Close up of Felix now residing in the Pams-Pictorama.com collection.

Felix has the delightful Deans Rag Book labels on the soles of his feet, shown below.

The soles of Felix’s worn but still legible foot labels.

As it turns out the seller, Peter Woodcock, is a somewhat reformed Felix collector who is just dipping his toe in the water of selling some of his collection although he and his wife Leanda have a robust antique toy business (many lovely bears),although I am not sure I would have found them online if it weren’t for the 200 Years of Childhood toy show moving online for this year. (I assure you that this is among the few silver linings I can attribute to Covid.)

I suspect that my tsunami of Felix enthusiasm is a tad overwhelming for Peter as I pepper him with questions and theories, but I so rarely get to correspond with a fellow Felix toy fan. Yay Peter! I have coaxed a few more Felix-es out of him so stay tuned as I think 2022 is going to be a very Felix year indeed.

An Abundance of Cats

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Readers here know that toys and photos of cats are the mainstays of the Pictorama collection. This pleasant pile of pusses cheered me immensely when it crossed my path. Cow spotty mom and dad kitties (maybe – they look a bit possessive anyway) mill around with three evidently all white fluffy kittens. Playing with them are these no less picturesque women in early 20th century dresses, hair piled high, brooches pinned on lacy bodices. A careful look shows other women in the background, also in summer cottons of the period.

Kittens, even in small doses, are a bit of work to live with and when our adored Cookie and Blackie entered the picture I was reminded. Less needy maybe than puppies (which seem to rank somewhere just newborn children for labor intensiveness in my opinion) kittens will still race around your house (in this case our single room) knocking things over, scratching and have their decidedly stinky and disastrous moments. Nonetheless, there is little as cheerful and charming in my mind than a pile of kitties.

The image cuts across the more than 100 years since this photo was made. Interesting to think that playing with kittens on a spring day in the yard remains the same activity it was then.

Naughty but charming Cookie and Blackie as kits, sitting on Kim’s desk – forbidden of course, but so cute!

I have only lived with a litter of kittens once in my life during what I have described before as an especially cat rich time of my childhood. Our cat Winkie escaped outside and mated before we were able to have her spade and her calico design when combined with a local tabby tom resulted in two all grays, a long thin drink of water orange stripe and a black and white tabby. They were in turn named Ping and Pong, Squash and Tigger. I don’t remember who in the family did the naming honors, but I do remember that Winks chose my parent’s closet to birth her kittens. (This after my parent’s bed had been rejected as the site by said mom and dad.)

Winkie was in turns both a very watchful cat mom and sometimes a neglectful one. She went through a period of dutifully moving the kittens from one hiding place (stuffing them under a low dresser at one point) to another because we insisted on looking at them and playing with them. Or was she actually trying to lose them? She would occasionally forget to move one with the others and said kitten would be found crying and rescued. Winkie was an unusually smart cat – barn born and polydactyl, with big mitt like front paws. She may have had a kitten abandonment plan which we continually thwarted. As soon as they were sufficiently grown she immediately forgot she had had anything to do with their genesis and generally look upon them as interlopers.

So tiny they fit together on our computer chair which remains a favorite perch.

We kept all four kittens which did mean our cat population burgeoned overnight. I believe we were already in possession of at least one other cat, another orange tom named Pumpkin. Since we lived in a house, albeit a large one, that was a lot of felines although that was still at a time when they were free range in the neighborhood, and roamed in and out of the house more or less at will. In my memory at least, a good time was had by all during this period, although our German Shepherd was probably a bit put upon, not to mention my mother who had the daily responsibility for cats and kids. (Dad traveled a lot for work and seemed both unperturbed, but also less engaged with the pet excess of those days.)

This postcard was never mailed and clearly remained evidence of a lovely day in the yard, enjoying cats and kittens.

Felix and the Folks

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: This photo postcard is among the more beat-up in my collection. Although it was never sent (and nothing is inscribed on the back) it suffers from some folds and marks as well as something blue it was exposed to which has lightly colored front and back. Nonetheless, I am pleased it survived and it was jolly enough that I was compelled to add it to the Pictorama library.

This nice group – I cannot say or really guess if family or friends – have posed themselves nicely on this stoop. A careful look at the details of where they are standing makes me realize something is a bit odd; there are bits of trim that look interior (at the top and above the door), but the bottom half looks like a stoop and sidewalk, an iron gate to one side, so I am not sure what I am looking at precisely.

Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.

This card cames via Great Britain where it does seem there was a time when it wasn’t unusual for a group to grab a Felix toy – large or small – and add him to the photo. I will always wonder how and why this started although obviously I find it charming indeed. Having Felix in your family photo was a thing and I have written about a few other images in my collection which have this same ad hoc quality of Felix inclusion. A few of many examples in my collection can be found in posts here and here and shown above and below.

Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.

What we choose to grab or do when we are asked to mug for a photo can illustrate something about us, revealing what matters most to us. I always like someone who grabs up their kitty of course (in fact I immediately like them better), but this does assume a certain level of patience on the part of the feline who does not always comply. I have commented on Blackie’s growing fondness for Zoom calls, but he has also been known to show up for a stroll over to Kim if he is on camera. Kim says I read too much into Blackie’s burgeoning public persona, but I think that kitty has a thought about what he is doing although I don’t claim to entirely understand what that is either.

Perhaps posing this tiny Felix was just a way of showing that they were having a good time and a bit of a giggle. The card is a professional photo postcard and it is possible that the photographer brought him along too I guess. Was Felix a beloved totem or a professional addition we will never know, but here he is waving to us probably almost 100 years later and he has won these folks a permanent home here at Pictorama.

Teddy Hunter

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Fall toy sales, luck and a certain sense of indulgence have contributed to a certain abundance here at Pictorama at the moment. This photo postcard hails from that fall haul and is one of the smallest, but not least of purchases. I would say it dates back to the nascent days of the teddy bear, when its relationship to a President Roosevelt was still very much in evidence. As the story goes, Roosevelt (big game hunter as well as President) when given the opportunity to shoot a bear tied to a tree had declared it unsportsmanlike and declined. The editorial pages made hay with it and the stuffed bear toys were created in tribute.

The little girl in the photo looks awfully pleased with herself and she is nattily clad in hunting gators, “ammo” type belt and has her hat at a jaunty angle, as is her rifle – aimed at the heart of this poor teddy bear. She has one foot atop him, victorious over the vanquished toy – I love her attitude. She’s feeling her role. Meanwhile, the bear looks like a Steiff to me, a nice size one and certainly that company was at the forefront of the teddy bear producing craze.

There is a great early animated film using these toy bears from this period, The Teddy Bears from 1907. It tells the Teddy Roosevelt hunting story in a mash up with Goldilocks and the Three Bears, featuring folks in bear suits and ending with a crazy bit of Steiff bear stop-motion animation. It can be seen on Youtube as of the time of writing here. (This was the best print I could access although there is a better one out there I have seen.)

Frame enlargements from the film.

I purchased this card from a British toy vendor via an online sale a few weeks ago and I believe it to be made in Britain, although I cannot make out the tiny makers mark in the lower left corner. The card was never used postally. I have never seen it before, but it does fall slightly outside my area of collecting so I don’t have a sense of how common it might be.

Somewhere in a parallel universe, I believe I collect early teddy bears, especially Steiff. Somehow those bears manage to have very human expressions – each slightly different as well. (They fill shelves and cabinets in a house I live in via that universe, staring sympathetically at me.) Oddly, the single model of black cat produced by that company in the first few decades of the 20th century, while very available is somewhat charmless. To me they all look alike and have little personality – a source of some sadness to me frankly.

Not in Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.

However, hold the presses, while researching this today I discovered these fascinating forerunners of the basic Steiff arched back black cat! Plenty of personality is not an issue with these guys. What’s more, I had the opportunity to purchase one in the same sale referenced above – it only would have required a few thousand dollars I didn’t have another use for.

I was feeling indulgent, but maybe not quite that much! It might have been a good investment however, these are extremely rare and are from the earliest days of Steiff according to the site, My Steiff Life, in a post written back in 2013. (The blog post can be found here.) One of the fellows she posts about actually has a Steiff identifying button in his tail! Evidently these cats were produced in both black and even more rarified white – of those I could not even find a photo. Below I share a photo of the fellow who got away. Alas, I guess we here at Pictorama can’t expect to win them all – but we can try.

Sadly, not in Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.