Filed Under: "1950s"

Our large (20″ x 20″) Mambo For Cats limited edition screen print is almost sold out. We’re now offering a miniature (7″ x 7″) giclée open edition print of this renowned Flora 1955 RCA Victor LP cover. At $25.00, it’s a great alternative for those on a limited budget—or with limited wall space.

Three jazz legends, stacked, in the July 1952 issue of Coda, Columbia’s new release monthly. From the top: Harry James (trumpet)Benny Goodman (clarinet)Art Tatum (piano) Each had a new LP that month: James with Soft Lights, Sweet Trumpet, Goodman’s Let’s Hear the Melody, and Art Tatum Concert. As art director, Flora launched Coda in 1943, and provided most illustrations for the (largely classical music) monthly until he was named Sales Promotion Manager in 1945. This…

We’ve received no reports of malfunctioning 2009 calendars—every day has thus far been accounted for, in the correct sequence—so we’re offering 2010 models, hot off Yee-Haw’s industrial presses. The spunky hyperactive figures date from Flora’s mid-1950s RCA Victor LP period. Each calendar is letterpress printed one color at a time on card stock, and accessorized with a 12-month tearaway calendar. Buy one ($12.50) or a set of three at the Little Shop of Flora’s.

Feature illustration, “A Long-Playing Medicine”LIFE magazine, June 10, 1957

Spot illo, “New Competition for G.E.,” a brief 1953 article about Continental Electric Equipment Co. of Kentucky.

Our third series of Primer for Prophets screen prints are in production, and should be ready for market by early October. “W” is among the featured letters. For more information, click on the “Primer for Prophets” tag at the bottom to see previous posts. The series is being produced by our friends at Aesthetic Apparatus, of Minneapolis. Series 1: Ate, Drove, Jived, and Smoked. Series 2: Cooked, Groomed, Kissed, and Quaffed.

Unfinished figures in tempera and pencil, photographed on sketchbook page. The undated work is probably from around 1960 because the contours resemble Big Evening, a tempera from that year.

Tempera overlay, The Day the Cow Sneezed, 1957, courtesy the Dr. Irvin Kerlan Collection, University of Minnesota Children’s Literature Research Center.

Get to know them — Flora-style! Individual letters culled from various works by the funky font master himself.

In an art class called “Soft Sculpture” at the University of Washington (Seattle), students were instructed to transform a favorite painting into food sculpture. SunShine McWane adapted Flora’s untitled 1950-51 tempera we casually refer to as “Gunfight on the Roof” (original work below). The resulting mixed-media delicacy, entitled “Cheese City,” was completed in January 2009. The materials—ingredients, actually—used by McWane include cheese (cheddar, Swiss, Colby, jalapeño jack), acrylic paint, plastic (GI Joe figures), one wire…

Illustration, Parade magazine, January 18, 1959. Article about people with genetic and/or psychological dispositions to behavioral patterns that cause health problems. The above tableau (from a tearsheet in the Flora archives) appears on page 9 beneath the semi-title ” … Disease Personality.” We’re missing page 8, which would provide the rest of the title.

Draft illustration, The Fabulous Firework Family, 1955(published that year by Harcourt, Brace) note: reposted from 2007