Frank Kettlewell: A Future Cartoonist Needs His Mother, Now

David From Manhattan takes us on a rare visit to that place where postal history meets cartooning. He writes:

Frank "Ket" Kettlewell, born Benjamin Franklin (after his father), was a successful editorial cartoonist, cartographer, painter and photographer, who worked for the Oakland Tribune from 1912 until his death on June 11, 1969 at 79. His signature, "KET," usually included a tiny bird. 

But in Dec. 1905, "Frankie" as he signed himself then, had just turned 16, and was writing from his place of birth, St. Helena, Cal., to Mrs. B.F. Kettlewell--his mother, Libbie, who was visiting her father in San Francisco. Frank appears to have had an art lesson or two. On thin card he drew the front of the family house in light pencil, went over it with pen & ink, and applied watercolor. He then cut it carefully to postal card size, and glued it just as carefully to a 1¢ William McKinley card. Except for a subtle weight difference, it's not apparent. If caught, the post office applied a 1c penalty for anything mounted to a card, basically raising your cost to that of a first class letter. 

Frankie fooled them, but then this was not your typical teenager, though the message to his mother, who was away with his older brother Charles, was certainly from a 16-year-old, with a sign comically pinned to a modest St. Helena home, and a helpful arrow drawn at left: "WANTED A COOK AND DISHWASHER."

We don't know if Libbie took offense at her son's view of her status, but Mrs. Kettlewell, who lived until 1951, held on to the card and appears to have taken pretty good care of it. Frankie moved to San Francisco in 1906, shortly after the great quake to be with his grandfather, and ended up doing volunteer work while waiting, impatiently one imagines, for the city to rebuild its art school.

A selection from an archive of 30 Kettlewell drawings, ca. 1916-1935, can be found on-line at Geographicus Rare Antique Maps.

Note:  Thanks to David From Manhattan for educating me about a subject of which I am not very knowledgeable. This is his seventy-second contribution to the old blog.

05067

Ed Arno and Warren Miller, et al., From the Collection of Paul P. Goldberg

One has to admire the zeal of collector Paul P. Goldberg, who sent out hundreds of self-addressed blank postal cards to a great many of the cartoonists of his day. The present set of twenty date from the years 1966 to 1974, a time when Goldberg moved from Philadelphia to Plymouth Meeting. There are two New Yorker names here. Ed Arno's drawing may or may not predate his first appearance in the magazine in 1969, which was permitted only after the passing of his near-namesake Peter Arno in 1968. Warren Miller is represented as well with a bold and bearded self-portrait.

Well-known panel cartoonists Lawrence Lariar and George Dole are included; neither ever had their work appear in The New Yorker. Jean-Claude Suares, the first art director of The New York Times's Op-Ed page, has drawn his nose as a pen nib much as Arnold Roth did elsewhere in the Goldberg collection. One wonders, with this assortment of talented cartoonists, what proportion of the sale price of $135.50 owes to the presence of Brad Anderson's big dog Marmaduke.

Twenty cartoonists
eBay listing ended December 17, 2024

https://www.ebay.com/itm/176094313816?itmmeta=01HPTDN7ZC6KWM14VY3HT1XR63&hash=item290009fd58:g:~uEAAOSw3dBlddBR

Twenty cartoonists
eBay item description

Twenty cartoonists
eBay bid history
This time the second-to-last bidder wins it.

Note:  I don't make any of this up. Michael Maslin's "The Two Arnos" from 2008 appears online at The New Yorker's website here.

04587

The Art of the Redraw: Leslie Starke, et al., From the Collection of Paul P. Goldberg

A group of ten postcards collected by Paul P. Goldberg and sold on eBay last month caught my notice because one of the ten cartoonists providing small sketches was Leslie Starke, whose work appeared in The New Yorker and Punch, among other publications. I mean no disrespect to the other nine cartoonists represented, but Starke's drawing was the only one of the lot which looked like a realized single panel cartoon. Could it be a redraw?

Starke's cartoon depicts a monk gazing into a lit fireplace and seeing demons. The central demon's face is unfortunately overprinted with a cancellation mark, a well-known potential hazard of mail art.

Starke's postcard has to be the one with UK postage added. Perhaps Goldberg mailed a self-addressed US postal card to some American publication in which he saw the cartoonist's work and the magazine forwarded it overseas.

Leslie Starke, et al.
eBay listing ended December 14, 2023

https://www.ebay.com/itm/176086792220?hash=item28ff97381c:g:oAgAAOSwAGRlcnlp

Leslie Starke, et al.
eBay item description

Leslie Starke, et al.
eBay bid history
Ten bidders go after ten autograph drawings with fifteen bids. The one who places the last bid wins it all.

Starke's sketch, it turns out, is indeed a quick redraw of a cartoon that may well have been published, only one can't easily determine where or when. The original drawing was sold on eBay and the sale is archived behind a paywall on Worthpoint. I wonder if Goldberg knew of the other version.

Sketch for Paul Goldberg

Leslie Starke's signature

Some important information may or may not have been removed from the backing.

Leslie Starke
Worthpoint archived eBay listing accessed January 24, 2024

https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/monk-leslie-starke-original-comic-art-1863242860

Note:  Perhaps someone familiar with Leslie Starke's prodigious output will recognize the monk drawing and let us know where, if anywhere, it was published. Punch perhaps? If you know, please quote chapter and verse. 

04568