Attempted Bloggery: the sower

Showing posts with label the sower. Show all posts

Monday, January 6, 2014

Charles Addams: Any Wednesday

Here are two related examples of original drawings by Charles Addams. Both depict Wednesday, the somewhat morbid daughter of the Addams Family who is here depicted as a more-or-less ordinary teenage girl thinking about her dream man. Both presentation drawings were made in Addams cartoon collections and both incorporate the Simon & Schuster logo of the sower, who doubles as the idealized man on young Wednesday's mind.

The first is undated and appears in a copy of the collection Black Maria (1960). It was offered for sale by the Complete Traveller Antiquarian Bookstore back in 2010 when "The Addams Family" musical was on Broadway. It received some publicity in the New York Times City Room blog of July 1, 2010 where questions of its authenticity were discussed fairly reasonably. Its $2,000 price tag was also duly noted.

The second drawing dates from 1978 and shows a reclining Wednesday thinking once again about the man on the logo, the sower. It appears in a copy of Favorite Haunts (1976) and has been available from Baumann Rare Books since late 2012 or earlier for $3,800.

Charles Addams, A standing Wednesday sees the Simon & Schuster sower in her wardrobe mirror, inscribed "For Helen/Can this be love?/Chas Addams"
in Black Maria (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1960)

Charles Addams, A standing Wednesday sees the Simon & Schuster sower in her wardrobe mirror, inscribed "For Helen/Can this be love?/Chas Addams"

in Black Maria (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1960)

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/01/familiar-pigtails-in-a-house-of-vintage-books/?_r=0

***

Charles Addams, A reclining Wednesday dreams of the Simon & Schuster sower.
Inscribed "For Pat and Charles with all best/Chas Addams/1978"
in Favorite Haunts (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976)

Charles Addams, Favorite Haunts (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976)

http://www.baumanrarebooks.com/rare-books/addams-charles/favorite-haunts/83443.aspx

October 23, 2016 Update: Sold!

Note: Charles Addams remains a towering figure among 20th century cartoonists. Previous blog posts about his art may be found here.

The website for the Tee & Charles Addams Foundation is here. No word yet on when the Charles Addams Catalogue Raisonné will be ready, but I'm ready for it now.

Charles Addams is as newsworthy as ever. Find stories about him on Ink Spill here.

Presentation copies of books with original drawings in them occasionally find their way onto this blog. You can take a look at a few of them here.

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Thursday, August 29, 2013

Signed with a Drawing of Pogo by Walt Kelly

A prized copy of the first Pogo collection was signed and inscribed by Walt Kelly with an original drawing of Pogo Possum. The eBay seller is correct to point out that this is not a first edition, but it is a highly-collectable copy just the same.

Walt Kelly, Pogo, 1948

Walt Kelly, Pogo, 1948, inscribed "Best wishes / to Mrs. Kirk Hoerman / Walt Kelly / + / [drawing of Pogo]"
Note that in the book, Simon & Schuster's logo "The Sower" has been redrawn by Kelly in the character of Pogo.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Walt-Kelly-Cartoonist-Signed-Copy-of-His-First-Book-Pogo-Original-Sketch-/400349195910?pt=Art_Drawings&hash=item5d36abee86&nma=true&si=UB68sj2DvLx%252F9kdb54zXrlCgzYs%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

This printing of the book is dated 1951 and the recipient is a Mrs. Kirk Hoerman. From that, I pieced together some biographical information, mostly about her husband. One Kirk Hoerman is mentioned in the University of Missouri at Kansas City Kangaroo Yearbook for the Class of 1947. Acknowledgment is given on the School and Faculty page for the Bushwhacker section, the yearbook of the School of Dentistry, page 199, "to Kirk Hoerman for drawing the splendid cartoons...." In 1960, he coauthored a paper on nutrition in Ethiopia which indicated he was then a Commander in the Dental Corps of the U.S. Navy and the chief of the biochemistry laboratory of Naval Medical Research Unit No. 3 in Cairo, Egypt. He would be about 88 today. A Kirk Conklin Hoerman was married to Donna Wilson, according to Ancestry.com, but the year isn't stated. Today he is retired in Arizona and I believe he remarried.

I'm going to speculate--it keeps me busy, after all--that in 1951 or perhaps later, Kirk Hoerman, a dentist with a talent for cartooning, must have admired Walt Kelly's Pogo, and may have obtained this book for his wife at a signing or by some other means. Of course, they could have gone together--there were, it seems, no children yet--or she could have obtained it herself, but I wanted to try to tie the story in with his cartooning. It seems to me that many amateur cartoonists, myself included, have a real appreciation for the works of the great cartoonists.