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Untitled Mexican motif, pen and ink (or tempera) on paper, 1967. The work was reproduced in our most recent book, The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Jim Flora.

One-half of an undated black and white business card (mock-up) from the 1950s. At the time, though he lived in Rowayton CT, Flora shared an office (and probably an art studio) at 21 East 63rd Street in Manhattan. A classic tempera painting from the period caricatures the neighborhood. No copies of the printed version of this card exist in the Flora collection. The discoloration in the upper right is an aging artifact.

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…

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.

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.

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…

Today we launch a new Jim Flora fine art print: Ferris Wheel Fireworks, adapted from Flora’s second kiddie book, The Day the Cow Sneezed (1957). The long-sought book will be reprinted this fall by Enchanted Lion. At that time we’ll issue a print of the book cover, which includes the artist’s fabulous hand-typography. However, during the image restoration process, Flora archivist/printmaker Barbara Economon saw the print possibilities of the book’s chaotic two-page (34-35) tableau. The…

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…

Quadruped of indeterminate zoological origin; detail, Where Will It All End?, tempera on paper (1993). The full work, previously unpublished, was reproduced in The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Jim Flora (page 66). The rest of the painting is no less disconcerting. Flora was 79 at the time. Many of his 1990s works betray a wobbly hand. Bold ideas continued to flow from the artist’s hallucinatory imagination, but the brushwork was less meticulous than in previous…

Tempera on paper, mid-1960s. The previously unpublished work was reproduced in our second book, The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora. It’s on our short list to issue as a fine art print.

Detail from Flora’s third children’s book, Charlie Yup and His Snip-Snap Boys (1959). Charlie, who wields a mean scissors (his “Snip-Snap Boys” are paper cut-outs), is in the upper left astride Beezer, his “helicopter horse.” For fans—like us—of Flora’s 1950s big-eyed figures, this was the end of the line, his last satisfying children’s book on an artistic level. He wrote and illustrated 14 more, which sold well and charmed generations of young readers. But our…

For years we’ve attempted to interest publishers in reprinting Jim Flora’s 17 popular children’s books. At the top of our wish-list were four titles: The Fabulous Firework Family (1955); The Day the Cow Sneezed (1957); Charlie Yup and His Snip-Snap Boys (1959); and Grampa’s Ghost Stories (1978). We consider these the top-tier Flora kiddie books on an artistic level—with The Day the Cow Sneezed the most outlandish of the quartet. We’ve had inquiries, offers, meetings,…