This three-tiered montage appeared in Fortune magazine in 1947 as part of a 48-state series sponsored by the Container Corporation of America. Flora, an Ohio native, was commissioned to illustrate his birth state. A color version—as it ran in Fortune—was reproduced in The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora. Tearsheets turn up periodically on Ebay. The above greyscale version—presumably the original, described as “watercolor, gouache, and pencil on paperboard”—is in the Smithsonian collection, according to their…

Peter Ceragioli Jr. was born this day in 1932. You may not recognize this West Coast jazz pianist, accordionist, and composer by his birth name. Beyond TV and film soundtrack cognoscenti, he’s probably obscure even by his stage name—Pete Jolly. The keyboardist was a child prodigy on accordion, as spaceagepop.com points out: When he was eight, he made his first broadcast appearance, billed as “The Boy Wonder Accordionist” on CBS Radio’s Hobby Lobby. The show’s…

Detail from a series of woodcuts Flora produced as a freelancer for the Union Central Life Insurance Company of Cincinnati around 1940. They were reproduced in UCL’s monthly Agency Bulletin to illustrate articles about the history and legacy of the Crescent City. The images proved so popular they were issued as a limited edition folio by the company in 1942. Flora later admitted that at the time he produced the woodcuts, he had never visited…

Jazz clarinetist Benny Goodman, as portrayed by Flora for the March 1952 issue of Columbia’s monthly Coda new release booklet. Goodman was a founding father of the mid-1930s jazz big band (“swing”) style—launched in force after he hired arranger Fletcher Henderson in 1935. As he matured, he performed and recorded classical repertoire; the above figures illustrated Coda’s preview of Goodman’s recording (with the American Art Quartet) of Mozart’s Quintet for Clarinet and Strings. Flora was…

Left half of endpaper, Charlie Yup and His Snip-Snap Boys, Flora’s third children’s book, published in 1959. This seems to be the rarest of Flora’s out-of-print kid-lit. Antiquarian book dealers ask three figures for used copies. This book also betokens the end of Flora’s classic, edgy 1950s commercial illustration style, which became tamer in the 1960s.

Unfinished pencil and tempera sketch, ca. 1950-51 (Flora’s Mexican sojourn), found in artist’s notebook. There’s no evidence the work was refined or adapted for any other purpose. The ghost image in the background is the bleedthrough of a series of figures on the reverse. The left figure above has some female attributes, the right some vague echoes of manhood. Regarding the lady, we won’t speculate on what’s protruding from her butt or clustered in her…

Bandleader/clarinetist Woodrow Charles “Woody” Herman (1913-1987) rendered by Flora in the June 1946 issue of Columbia Records Disc Digest. Flora used alternating-color patterns throughout his career (see examples here, here and here). Because he was partly color-blind, skin tints were irrelevant. Herman was born today 97 years ago (less than a year before Flora).

Yesterday we (officially) launched our latest limited edition screen print series, Mardi Gras Quartet. (They’ve been “unofficially” available on our website for months.) Based on an early 1950s series painted by Flora while living in Mexico, each print is identical except for color scheme. The original four variants, along with sketches and figure studies (displayed at the bottom of the linked print page), were reproduced in our second book, The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim…

Detail, Sherwood Walks Home, Flora’s eighth children’s book, 1966. We won’t reveal the outcome, but we suspect the cat is the most determined diner.

Untitled acrylic on board, ca. mid-1960s. This modular work echoes illustrations Flora provided for the covers of Computer Design magazine during the 1960s and ’70s. We’ve yet to determine whether this painting or an adaptation actually graced a CD cover. If not, this blog post might represent its first public exposure (we haven’t reproduced this work in any of our Flora anthologies to date).