Filed Under: "1940s"

Spot illustration, Columbia Coda, August 1945. That was Flora’s final year as Columbia art director, and the final year of the monthly Coda, which Flora launched in 1943 and illustrated single-handedly. In January 1946, Robert M. Jones assumed the AD role when Flora was promoted to Advertising Manager. Coda was transformed into the monthly Disc Digest, few of which featured Flora illustrations.

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.

Rowayton Remembered, detail of woodcut print, ca. 1974 My Brush With Historya series by the readers of American Heritage magazineJames Flora’s contributionFebruary/March 1997 (Volume 48, Issue 1) During the late 1940s I lived in Rowayton, a small Connecticut village, with my wife and two small children. I was the art director of Columbia Records, a job I dearly loved. In my work I had many opportunities to meet the musical celebrities of the day, Frank…

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…

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…

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).

Some people dedicate their bodies to science. Shannon Wade, of Portland OR, dedicates hers to the art of Jim Flora. Not the first time, either. The above distended figure originally appeared on the title page of GUP, a 1942 Little Man Press publication written by Robert Lowry and illustrated by Flora.

Flora created the Columbia Records new release monthly Coda in early 1943 and illustrated most issues thru 1945 (after which the journal morphed into Disc Digest). The March 1944 issue is one of Flora’s most satisfying on an artistic level. The cover (above) illustrates a Columbia Masterworks four-disc album (price: $4.50) of Igor Stravinsky conducting his own Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring), described in Coda as “a ballet based on the paganistic…

Fletcher Henderson, tempera on paper, 1942, as reproduced in our third anthology, The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Jim Flora. In the 1920s, exploring ideas gleaned from orchestra leader Paul Whiteman, pianist Henderson created the template for what evolved into the jazz “swing” big bands of the 1930s. He was one of the most influential musicians/bandleaders of the 1920s, but others achieved greater and more lasting fame developing concepts pioneered by Henderson. Flora, a lifelong jazz…

Caution: archivists at work. Snapshot of two 1943 artifacts parked on a collapsible card table at CT storage facility housing Flora collection. Larger work is Charlie’s Egg, a tempera on (the back of a) Columbia Records convention brochure; the bottom partial is one of two covers for an unpublished kiddie book, The X-Ray Eye of Wallingford Hume. Both images were fully reproduced in our third Flora anthology, The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Jim Flora. Photo:…

Top half of 1948 Columbia 78 rpm two-disc sleeve, Come to the Circus. The complete cover and interior illustrations were reproduced in The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora. The 2004 book featured most then-known Flora covers from his Columbia and RCA Victor years. We have since discovered others, and are searching for a handful of strays that (based on archival clues) may or may not exist. Rather than include recent discoveries in our subsequent Flora…

Illustration, Table of Contents pageColumbia Records Disc Digest, February 1946