Filed Under: "commercial illustrations"

Topical illustration (mechanical), tempera on paper, ca. 1961. Assignment, title, periodical, and publication date unknown. The Flora collection contains dozens of such illustrations of unknown provenance. The crosshairs at the corners are printer’s registration marks, used for aligning overlays and film plates.

Page from 1957 sales brochure for Electromechanical Design magazine. Flora illustrated an unknown number of covers for this (now long-defunct) monthly. In the 1950s and ’60s, he was often a go-to artist for science-related journalism, as evidenced by his work for Research & Engineering magazine.

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…

Jazz clarinetist Benny Goodman, as portrayed by Flora for the March 1952 issue of Columbia’s monthly Coda new release booklet. Goodman was a founding father of the mid-1930s jazz big band (“swing”) style—launched in force after he hired arranger Fletcher Henderson in 1935. As he matured, he performed and recorded classical repertoire; the above figures illustrated Coda’s preview of Goodman’s recording (with the American Art Quartet) of Mozart’s Quintet for Clarinet and Strings. Flora was…

Spot illustration, Research & Engineering magazine, April 1956, showcasing the secret to corporate achievement: sever your rival’s head. The sword-wielding executive regiment works most effectively when your competitor is a sawtoothed reptile. In the above illustration the exec-suite platoon seems to have arrived after the fact, as evidenced by the detached noggin and “+” in place of eyeballs, which in cartoons usually signify death.

Pretzel-making machine, spot illustration, Research & Engineering magazine, September 1955, marking Flora’s debut in this short-lived monthly. The cover art is credited and the interior illos unmistakably reflect his whimsy, but no art director is listed in the masthead. Starting with the combined October/November issue Flora is ID’ed as art director, a position he held thru August 1956. An extensive gallery of Flora covers and interior illustrations from R&E was reproduced in The Sweetly Diabolic…

Spot illustration, Portrait of a Great American, a 1943 CBS radio trade circular about singer Kate Smith’s prowess raising money for war bonds. Most of the booklet’s illustrations were reproduced in The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Jim Flora, but this perky flower was omitted.

Detail, Okeh Records retail banner for then-new (1943) 78 rpm disc “Born To Lose” by Ted Daffan’s Texans. The grieving beau has an odd tic: crying out of one eye, thereby expressing semi-sorrow over the loss of his gal. The full banner was reproduced in our second anthology, The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora.

Flora explains how the brain reacts to stimuli—it’s all cogs, pulleys and tiny hammers. Another (see below) illustration from the November-December 1944 issue of Columbia Coda.

Illustration, Columbia Coda, November-December 1944. The pianist is … we’ll get back to you on that. The clarinetists and violinists, forced to perform incognito due to union regulations, were represented on the session by essential anatomical components attired in boots and bowties.

NOW AVAILABLE: the next four works in the Primer for Prophets screen print series. Cool Flora illustrations of the American nuclear family during the 1950s, when grocers employed stockdogs, crows fought tug-of-war over lingerie, and cigarettes were obligatory in the obstetrics ward. The images derive from a 1954 trade-only alphabet booklet that Flora illustrated for CBS-TV, depicting consumer markets for prospective TV advertisers. The third set of prints features ECONOMIZED, NURSED, UNDERESTIMATED, and WASHED. Each…

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