Filed Under: "1950s"

Untitled sketches and figures from sketchbook, ca. early 1950s. The hungry fellow on the bottom looks familiar:

Illustration, “The Challenge of Frontier Products Development”Research and Engineering magazine, cover detail, July 1956

The long-awaited series of fine-art screen prints PRIMER FOR PROPHETS are now available on eBay. Very cool Flora illustrations of the American nuclear family (and their weird pets) during the 1950s, when people had fried-egg eyes, dog food tins were edible, and teens grew bonus legs! Subtitled “A Flora ’50s A-B-C,” the images derive from a 1954 trade-only alphabet booklet titled Primer for Prophets that Flora illustrated for CBS-TV. The booklet was not circulated to…

untitled illustration, business card, 1950s

Compiling a resumé? Illustration, Research & Engineering, April 1956

Now on eBay:Spanky new from Jim Flora Art LLC and Yee-Haw Industrial Letterpress, Knoxville: three different sets of four unique cards each. The cards are hand-printed letterpress on recycled paper and come bundled with kraft envelopes in a clear sleeve. Fun to mail, funner to receive, but also klassy-kool for framing.Above: quartet of 1955 hepcats from the “Plant You Now, Dig You Later” set. Below, the “Deluxe-O-Tone” line of retro-record players (1940s- and 1950s-era):Here’s the…

“Industrial Research in Europe 1955” Research & Engineering magazine, cover elementOctober-November 1955

Detail, Mardi Gras figure studies ca. early 1950s, tempera on paper Sketches, full study, and completed color seriesincluded in The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora

Almost. The Flora pretzel-ized trumpet that graces the cover of this rare RCA Victor Living Stereo “cartridge magazine” originally appeared in 1958 on the back cover of the LP Portrait of Shorty Rogers. The illustration was recycled by RCA Victor’s art department on this 1960 Esquivel package, whose format was the (failed) forerunner of the cassette. The LP version of this classic album by the Mexican maestro had a completely different photographic cover. RCA also…

Jim Flora Art LLC is offering three hand-printed 2008 calendars: swingin’ sax, boogie-beat drummer, and starlite moon. We have a limited number (30 each) to sell. That’s it. It’s not a numbered edition — 500 backing cards each were printed by Yee-Haw Industries (Knoxville), but due to scheduling demands, the production team could only finish a few hundred calendars for retail boutiques. JFA LLC received 30 sets for our customers. Sales are first-come, first-served. Each…

Illustration, “Human Engineering: Tailoring the Machine to the Man” Research and Engineering magazine, February 1956

Esquire magazine, September 1954