A 1998 postcard published by the Gotham Book Mart in New York announces Edward Gorey's holiday book The Haunted Tea-Cosy: A Dispirited and Distasteful Diversion for Christmas. Who could possibly have resisted?
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| Edward Gorey AbeBooks listing accessed November 2, 2025 |
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| Edward Gorey AbeBooks item description |
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In the November 4 sale of illustration art, Heritage Auctions offered an original Gahan Wilson Playboy cartoon that is hardly the usual Christmas fare.
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| "Apparently, every Christmas he'd take the tree out of storage and add a few more ornaments!" Gahan Wilson Playboy, December 2001 |
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| "Apparently, every Christmas he'd take the tree out of storage and add a few more ornaments!" Gahan Wilson Original art Playboy, December 2001 |
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| Gahan Wilson Heritage Auctions listing of November 4, 2025 accessed sixteen hours before the live bidding |
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| Gahan Wilson Heritage Auctions item description |
And an even better price was achieved when the bidding went live.
Note: Many thanks to David from Manhattan for identifying the month and year of publication.
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Many readers back in the 1920s or early '30s were familiar with the Jazz Age illustrations of John Held, Jr. Often they depicted flappers and the men who loved them tearing up the dance floor. Those readers also would have been similarly familiar with Held's woodblock print style, which gently poked fun at the staid ways of their 19th century forebears, that is to say, the previous generations.
A 1931 page from Liberty magazine, via Rob Stolzer on Comic Art Fans, shows how deftly Held utilized these two very different and very wonderful styles to great effect:
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| Music Hath Charms John Held, Jr. Liberty, October 17, 1931 Scan by Rob Stolzer |
All of which is meant to serve as a preamble to a vintage Christmas card that turned up on eBay in Held's retro, woodcut style. It is time to gather round the punch bowl, ladies and gentlemen, and to celebrate the season. Let us offer Christmas greetings by raising a glass to all those present, and to that antiquated yet somehow forever-young style of Held's that today recalls our grandparents's grandparents. He frequently signed such art as if it were "engraved," or in this case just "Eng." Cheers!
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| John Held, Jr. eBay listing accessed October 25, 2025 |
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| John Held, Jr. eBay item description |
Note: My several posts depicting Christmas card art by John Held, Jr., in this "engraved" woodcut style may be seen here.
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In the CartoonStock Caption Contest number 200, a family relaxes at home. Each family member is armed, as are the pets and even the houseplant. The father speaks.
The rules of the monthly cash prize contest have not changed: Five dollars buys up to three entries. Real cash prizes are $500 for first place and $100 for each of five runners up. As of this writing, I've put $225 into the first forty-five pay-to-play contests and this forty-sixth challenge brings my total cash outlay up to $230. Having achieved runner-up status with three previous entries, I've collected $300 from CartoonStock, so I'm playing with the house's money, thank you very much. In fact, so few contestants enter that the odds may generally be considered favorable even for less-gifted caption writers. My three entries this round are shown below, above the break. The cartoonist is family man Liam Francis Walsh.
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| "I'd say we're ready for our Christmas card photo." "What do you say we leave the doors unlocked?" "Now how are we doing on butter?" * * * "The boy reads too many comics." "I love our nuclear family." "I always say, you can't have too much of a good thing." "Here we are, the Johnson Family, locked and loaded." "I love the Second Amendment—and our family." "I told you I'd give you security." "Feel safe?" "What do you say we stand our ground today?" "The bad guys wouldn't dare." |
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In The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest #971 from the issue of December 8, 2025, a lumberjack with a chainsaw has just cut off the top of a tree. The angry tree speaks. My entry appears below. The drawing is by Richard Sparks.
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| "I happen to know you're not from the Sierra Club." |
These captions didn't stand tall:
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| "You do realize I once worked for Disney." "You're way out of your depth." "That's how you see yourself—just a hobbyist?" |
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My ascension to New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest finalist in Contest #969 this week has left me in the unaccustomed position of not having enough print copies of the current issue on hand. I have my subscription copy, of course, but the December 8 New Yorker is the very first time my name has appeared in the magazine and it couldn't hurt to buy a few extra copies, even at $9.99 apiece.
On Saturday, I headed for the Barnes & Noble on 3rd Avenue, figuring that store would be well stocked with magazines. And it was, though nothing like a few years ago when the place was housed in larger quarters on 86th Street. Still, the bookstore was stocked with about a dozen copies of The New Yorker right in front of the magazine section, appropriately, and at eye level. The problem was, only last week's issue was available, that of December 1, which should have been replaced Monday with the current one.
Alas, there were no other options readily available. Street newsstands these days have only a few newspapers to sell, and old awnings advertise magazines for stores which now carry vaping supplies instead. You can still buy magazines in the greatest city in the world, but it isn't necessarily easy.
Note: My quest has been chronicled and illustrated on Michael Maslin's Ink Spill here.
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Yesterday, I came to the end of Marcel Proust's seven-volume masterwork Remembrance of Things Past, as I still tend to call it. Nevertheless, by the last book it seems clear that In Search of Lost Time is truly a better and more meaningful translation of the title. So today I celebrate the author of this longest of novels about whom so much has been written. At least two essays on his work appeared in The New York Review of Books of January 9, 1964, and April 6, 2006. Four decades apart, both were illustrated with the same caricature by David Levine, dated 1963. It shows a weakened if not bedridden Proust raising a cup of steaming hot tea, smelling its essence, and, behind glassy eyes, no doubt recalling and reinterpreting some aspect of the life he has lived.
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| David Levine Swann Galleries Illustration Art sale of December 4, 2025 |
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| David Levine Swann Galleries Illustration Art item description |
Note: My reading is now moving on to Shadow Ticket by Thomas Pynchon, whom I'm quite certain David Levine never drew.
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Out of the Playboy Archives comes an original color cartoon by Eldon Dedini. It was published in the issue of December 1970. Set, one assumes, in Los Angeles at a swimming pool overlooking the Valley, it offers a stunning view.
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| "I still can't get used to a Christmas without snow." Eldon Dedini Original art Playboy, December 1970 |
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| Caption and Eldon Dedini's signature Playboy, December 1970 |
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| Eldon Dedini Julien's Auctions listing for August 26, 2025 |
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| Eldon Dedini Julien's Auctions item description |
The published cartoon looks similar to the artwork:
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| "I still can't get used to a Christmas without snow." Eldon Dedini Playboy, December 1970 |
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| "I still can't get used to a Christmas without snow." Eldon Dedini Original art Playboy, December 1970 |
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A 1989 ink drawing (with just a little bit of colored pencil) by Ronald Searle celebrates Santa's eye for the arts. The original work from the collection of Irvin Greif was sold last month in the Illustration Art sale at Heritage Auctions.
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More than sixteen hours before the sale, the bidding was at $725. The auction house's estimate was $1,500 and up. Whatever became of having a high estimate too?
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| Ronald Searle Heritage Auctions listing accessed sixteen hours before the sale |
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| Ronald Searle Heritage Auctions item description |
In the live bidding, the low estimate was met and exceeded.
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In a 1996 Ronald Searle ink and watercolor drawing, we see a beefeater in a restaurant being served dinner by a bull. The meal is not very filling and not very beefy and he is not very happy. A pencil notation on the front of the artwork indicate that it is one of two drawings made for a Town and Country article on London restaurants. It was sold last month at Heritage Auctions in the Illustration Art sale.
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| Ronald Searle Heritage Auctions listing accessed sixteen hours before the sale |
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| Ronald Searle Heritage Auctions item description |
Note: Was this beefeater illustration actually published? Was the drawing of the dandy attacked by books ever finished? If you have access to print images of either of these, please get in touch.
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