See Saw

INTRODUCING OUR NEWEST PRODUCT:

Keepsake Card Kits: where the old meets the new

Each kit includes: one greeting card, custom made by Liza Cowan, one medium priced item (seed bomb, moleskine notebook, or other item as available and suitable) and one small priced item (laser cut wood art, mini bouquets, typewriter keys, or other items as suitable and available)

All packaged in a cardboard box with mylar lid, ready to give!

Max Fleischer and the Rotoscope: Out of the Inkwell

I  love this cartoon and wanted to share it with you. Sheer genius. The Tantalizing Fly by Max Fleischer, created in 1919, the same year as The Easy Road To Readng in the previous post. Notice the difference between the sweet nostalgic art of ML Spoor and the avant garde perspective of Fleischer. Radically different approaches to art always happen in the same historical moment.

Fleischer made this cartoon using technology of his own invention, the rotograph. He also invented the rotoscope 

 
Rotograph

 
Patent for the rotoscope. Max Fleischer

Max Fleischer, with his brother Dave Fleischer,  were  famous not only for the Out Of The Inkwell series, but also for Betty Boop, Koko The Klown,  and the animated versions of Popeye The Sailorman, and Superman.

A slightly different version of The Tantalizing Fly, as well as a much better explanation and history of the rotoscope than I could ever hope to do,  is part of this inkwellink  Ray Pointer mini documentary about Fleischer:

For a wonderfully erudite and in depth look at animation and the early 20th Century avant garde I highly recommend Hollywood Flatlands: Animation, Critical Theory and the Avant- Garde, by Esther Leslie. Not an easy read, but well worth it.

 

                                 Painting by Liza Cowan. Acrylic on canvas.

This guy isn't Koko, but he reminds me of Koko. I painted him in 2005. Was an old memory of Koko  floating around in my subconscious when I painted him? Could be.  

Children's reading primers

I've been collecting early childhood readers and primers for ages. I love them for the typography, the illustrations and for the peek into the social life and pedagogy of the early 20th Century.

Here are a few lovely examples:

  

The Easy Road To Reading, Lyons & Carnihan 1919-25, illustrated by Mary Louise Spoor and Gertrude Spaller.

  

The Easy Road To Reading First Reader. Illustrated by Mary Louise Spoor. For more on ML Spoor

 
Champion Arithmetics, children's math primer, 1937, Evanston IL

 
Champion Arithmetics. Illustration by Nell Hulke Compton. 1937

  

Happy Days, Quinlan Readers. 1949 Allen and Bacon Publishers

 
Happy Days Children's primer. Quinlan readers. 1949. Illustration Constance Heffron

  

Down Our Street. McMillan 1939.

 
Down Our Street. Children's reader. 1939

  

Health Stories and Practice, 1931, Lyons & Carnahan publisher, illustrations by Vera Stone Norman and Irene Dorcy

 
Health Stories and Practice. 1931. Illustrated by Vera Store Norman or Irene Dorcy

 
Health Stories and Practice. 1931. Illustrated by Vera Store Norman or Irene Dorcy

 
Journey to Health Land. Ginn & Co. 1924, illustrated by Blanche Fisher Laite

 
A Journey To Health Land. Illustration Blanche Fisher Laite 1924

  

Childhood Readers, City and Country, Scribners,1932, illustrated by Florence and Margaret Hoopes and Margaret Freeman.

 
Childhood Readers, City and Country. Illustrated by Florence and Margaret Hoopes and Margaret Freeman. 1932

 
Childhood Readers, City and Country. Illustrated by Florence and Margaret Hoopes & Margaret Freeman, 1932

 
Childhood Readers, City and Country. Illustrated by Florence and Margaret Hoopes & Margaret Freeman, 1932

 
Meet Our Friends, Bobbs Merrill 19500. Illustrated by Janet Ross and Raymon Naylor

 
Meet Our Friends. 1950. Illustrated by Janet Ross and Raymon Naylor