Filed Under: "architecture"

Flora woodengraving for short story “The 6.98 Jacket” by Robert Lowry, appearing in Hutton Street, published by Little Man Press, Cincinnati, 1940. Print run unknown, but all LMP chapbooks were extremely limited editions between 125 and 400. The booklet contains 18 meticulous woodcuts by Flora, none of which are known to have survived. If they were left in the custody of Lowry, he likely sold them or used them for kindling. The man was volatile….

Draft overlay, The Day the Cow Sneezed, 1957, found amid the James Flora Papers in the Dr. Irvin J. Kerlan Collection, University of Minnesota. Who was Dr. Kerlan?

Pencil sketches for Till Eulenspiegel LP cover, 1955. The above skeletal figures eventually morphed into this rough layout: … which was refined as this unfinished tempera setting: … which evolved into this finished RCA Victor Red Seal cover: Till Eulenspiegel was an impudent prankster in German folklore. Flora rendered several pen and ink drawings of the trickster in the 1990s. Perhaps he recognized a kindred spirit.

… is now open. Jim Flora hand-printed notecards, fine art bookmarks, and 2009 letterpress calendars at affordable prices. We’ve also released a number of new fine art and album cover prints over the past few weeks but haven’t had an opportunity to alert our mailing list. Here’s two, but there’s more over at JimFlora.com: Self-Portrait, ca. 1947 Gunfight on the Roof, 1951

Pen & ink with tempera, year unknown (ca. early 1990s). One of countless water’s edge works in the collection. Flora lived on Long Island Sound, loved boats, loved the seaside, and drew inspiration from all. Head Harbor Lighthouse, built from heavy timber in 1829, sits on Campobello Island in New Brunswick. It was the summer home of FDR.

Detail from “Ohio,” full-page illustration commissioned by Container Corporation of America, 1947. The montage (fully reproduced in The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora, page 167) originally appeared in several nationally distributed magazines, including Fortune and Time. A detail previously posted here came from a scan of the magazine tearsheet. The above detail originated from a higher-resolution color print issued in 1948 by CCA. As their name implies, CCA manufactured containers. The one pictured in cross-section…

One of a dozen woodcuts by Flora depicting New Orleans landmarks, historical vignettes, and social settings. The series was commissioned around 1940 by the Union Central Life Insurance Company of Cincinnati for their Agency Bulletin. The whereabouts of the original blocks are unknown. At the time, having recently completed studies at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, Flora was a struggling freelancer. “Soft-spoken and unassuming,” the Bulletin proclaimed, “James happens to be the sort of artist…

Cover artwork (typography removed) of Sidney Bechet 78 rpm set (Columbia C-173), 1948. Flora had a particular fondness for early New Orleans jazz, especially the recordings of legendary soprano saxophonist/clarinetist Bechet (1897-1959).

Our friend Takashi Okada of Tokyo has become the pre-eminent Floraphile in Japan. Besides being an avid customer of Jim Flora fine art prints, Takashi recently designed the Daisy Holiday CD package, which adapts Flora’s 1947 Green Mansions resort brochure illustration (licensed from the Flora estate). Additional Flora elements appear on the jewel case inlay and in the booklet. Here’s a Tokyo record store display flush with Flora. If you don’t live in that part…

We’ve finally collected an online gallery of Flora’s 20 children’s books (17 of which he authored). They’re up for viewing at JimFloraArt.com, the Flora family website. While you’re there, the site has had a makeover and includes three pages of original Flora art from the 1990s that’s being offered for sale.

Farm scene draft for The Day the Cow Sneezed (1957), Flora’s second children’s book. The landscape image is one of 80 scans Barbara and I recently acquired from the Kerlan Collection at the University of Minnesota. We plan to reproduce a number of these early work pages in our third book of Floriana, currently being compiled and written. Among the artifacts — donated to the University by the artist — was an eye-popping version of…

Top section of untitled three-tiered tempera and pencil, from sketchbook, ca. early 1950s. The two lower tiers, using the same color palette, are no less comically inscrutable.