Hand-painted draft page from Kangaroo for Christmas, Flora’s fifth (of 17) children’s books, published by Harcourt Brace, 1962. The box of lines in the upper left indicate placement of text.

Spot illustration, dedication page, The Day the Cow Sneezed, now back in print thanks to Enchanted Lion Books. The first review—favorable!—courtesy the For Immediate Release (Kids) blog: I like his habit of calling attention to certain words by putting them in all caps, nearly on every page: POW! WHAMBO! and my personal favorite KA-BLOWIE-BLAM! I also enjoy the language he uses, specific phrases such as “scrunched as flat as corn flakes.” It’s just plain good…

Topical illustration (mechanical), tempera on paper, ca. 1961. Assignment, title, periodical, and publication date unknown. The Flora collection contains dozens of such illustrations of unknown provenance. The crosshairs at the corners are printer’s registration marks, used for aligning overlays and film plates.

In 1956, Flora mocked up a proposed illustrated series about his fascination with Mexico. The storyboard, entitled Footloose in Mexico, consisted of vignettes drawn from his residency and travels south of the border. On the back of the heavy artist’s board draft was handwritten, “Sketches for a magazine that never got off the ground.” The identity of the failed periodical is unknown. No descriptive copy was included, just dummy lines for text placement; hence, the…

Untitled, incomplete tempera and pencil drawing, ca. 1950, found in a sketchbook from Flora’s Mexican period (1950-51). The ghostly shadows in the periphery reflect bleedthrough from an image on the reverse side of the page. No finished or refined version of this work has been found.

Mount Adams ascension, one of a series of woodcut prints the young Flora rendered for the Union Central Life Insurance Company of Cincinnati’s August 1941 publication, Life Association News. The images accompanied an article entitled “Where to go … What to do … While you’re in Cincinnati.” These woodcuts have not been republished since their first appearance seven decades ago. The location of the original wood blocks is unknown.

With the anticipated October reprint (by Enchanted Lion) of Flora’s 1957 kiddie book The Day the Cow Sneezed, we’re focusing on the re-emergence of the Flora children’s market. We’re planning an open edition (low-cost) fine art print of Cow’s playful cover, and we’re proofing the above image for a planned bedroom-suitable print. The overalls-clad night-sky moonswinger appears on the back cover of Flora’s 1972 Atheneum-published book, Pishtosh Bullwash & Wimple. When the proof proves proven,…

New from P22 Type Foundry: Based on playful hand-lettering from the 1955 Jim Flora Mambo For Cats RCA Victor album cover, the set includes “Flornaments,” consisting of 72 miniature figure icons (dingbats) from Flora artworks. Samples:

untitled tempera & pencil on paper found in early 1960s-era sketchbook

Henry Ford in Cetara, rough pencil drawing found in 1991 sketchpad. Cetara is in Italy. There’s no refined sketches and no indication the sketch was developed into a finished work. Flora traveled widely and artfully chronicled his globetrotting. This sketchbook contains no other images of Italy, but does contain a letter handwritten in a Mexican hospital while Flora was being treated for “over medication and loss of blood.” On the preceding page was a journal…