Filed Under: "smoking"

Pen & ink on heavy stock, 1990s, from the archives. Previously unpublished and uncirculated work.

Another pencil draft from the 1955 sketchbook we’ve been featuring the past few weeks. The purpose of this stand-alone drawing is unknown. Other sketches on the same and adjacent pages feature rough panels for a cartoon ad about Proctor toasters; none of those drawings depict a loss of limbs.

A celebrity in its own right, brags to the media about Benny’s awesome embouchure. Reporter doggedly chronicles sensationalistic account, anticipates major scoop. Detail, Columbia Records ad, Look magazine, 1943.

Detail, draft manuscript, The Fabulous Firework Family (1955)

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…