Dull Tool Dim Bulb: Toys

Showing posts with label Toys. Show all posts

Antique Handmade Folk Art Toy Animals

Antique Handmade Folk Art Toy Animals, Depression era. Wonderful abstractions, as well as paint surface. Collection Jim Linderman.

Bible Beehive Dexterity Game Bonus Post (from the old time religion blog)

Bible Beehive Dexterity Game! (Idle hands are the Devil's playground)
Bonus Post (from the old time religion blog by the same author)

Busy Hands Bible Game (no date) Collection Jim Linderman

BOOKS AND AFFORDABLE EBOOKS BY THE AUTHOR ARE HERE

Mystiscope Fortune Teller 1925 Collection Jim Linderman

Mysticope Fortune Teller Wheel and Answer Book 1925 National Novelty Company, F.L. Morgan Company. Collection Jim Linderman

Doll Party

Untitled original photograph, no date Collection Jim Linderman

I've Been Working on the Railroad (In China with Warren) Folk Art Railroad Men

Another pair of honest. hard working guys (see post of yesterday) but today our worker class members are tin articulated railroad men. Bonus below is Warren Buffet singing the song to the Chinese.

Tin articulated toy, circa 1900? Collection Jim Linderman

JIM LINDERMAN DULL TOOL DIM BULB BOOKS AND EBOOK ORDERS HERE

Looks like Warren is getting better along with the rest of the world than some Republicans I know. Railroads are good here too...one can move tons freight with a few gallons of gas and without the diesel pollution. Warren seems to have the right idea.

Miniature Floating Flotilla Toy Boats of Wood

Miniature handmade boats, largest 5 inches

Wood, Paper American Flag. circa 1950? Origin Unknown (occupied Japan?) Collection Jim Linderman

DULL TOOL DIM BULB BOOK AND iBOOK CATALOG HERE

Folk Art Paper Dolls from FAIRYLAND Handmade Homemade Primitive and Real

For decades, it has made no sense to me that common commercial paper dolls usually created as branded products from licensed characters attract more attention from collectors than folk art, handmade versions which are MUCH scarcer and more beautiful. Mark it up to marketing, I guess...after all, a child who watches 24 hours of television a day is going to prefer the latest Disney creation more than a doll in a homemade burlap sack, and that seems to be a preference which stays with us until adulthood and beyond, unfortunately. I've always much preferred the charming handmade versions children created when the money was short and even paper scarce. This little group of fairies was found in a pile of ephemera in an antique mall for one dollar. Made by a little girl, dating probably to the 1920's or earlier, the whole lot was packed into a very old envelope, browned with age, and reading in script "Fairyland" "SAVE" which someone did. Each is only a few inches tall, and if you click to enlarge they'll be bigger than they should be, but go ahead.

A few years ago my giant collection of vintage handmade and homemade paper dolls was used to illustrate what is, to this day, still the best essay and investigation in to the handmade doll. Since most attention in the toy literature has been devoted to commercial toys, including those which were premiums in products and provided in newspapers...very little published material on the folk art paper doll exists. The much missed magazine FOLK ART which used to be published by the American Museum of Folk Art has a back issue department and the Francine Kirsch article "Costumed by Hand" (along with many pages of illustrations which make these little fairies look even more primitive than they are) is in the Spring/Summer 2007 issue. After the article appeared, the collection was dispersed, but I still can't pass a set by.

Handmade set of Paper Doll Fairies, circa 1920. Collection Jim Linderman

A Tea Party without Fools RPPC

Tea Party without Fools
Real Photo Postcard 1907 Collection Jim Linderman

Things to Build: Boomeranger, Potato Gun, Giant Midget Plane and a Crisco Can Air Cannon

Images from Boy-Craft. 208 pages of Real fun, Real play and Real work for Boys 10 - 16 years old. Diagrams and more by U.S. Huggins, Frank Solar and Martha King. 1928. (A Masterpiece) Collection Jim Linderman

Leaf Sewing Cards

Same thing as the post following, but secular and much more fun! Milton Bradley invented the paper cutter (!) but his endearing quality was quality toys. I can't date this set, but each represents a different leaf, thus teaching the child understanding of the world around them rather than the one only available to those who follow. These splendid cards would easily date to the late 1800's, but the company continued producing them in various versions, such as farm animals, well into the 1950's.

Leaf Sewing Cards and box c. 1880 Hand-Stitched Collection Jim Linderman

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jim Linderman

"...Linderman is widely regarded as one of the foremost figures in a field of vernacular art collectors working beyond the margins of most institutional axioms and impulses, in what is essentially it's own self-taught art form."
Ursula Magazine Hauser & Wirth 2019

"Linderman produces the most sublime books on dreamy, arcane subjects, sexy stuff, too, all with rare one-of-a-kind images." Craig Yoe 2017

"...disclosing an underground history of American popular culture one oddball tale at a time"
John Strausbaugh in The New York Times

"...one of the blog writers to watch for"
ARTSlant

"...wonderful, extraordinary, fascinating, remarkable and profound" Fans in a Flashbulb International Center of Photography Museum 2016

"Brilliantly Astute, Acerbic and Aesthetic Jim Linderman"
The Museum of Everything 2014

"Dull Tool Dim Bulb is always worth a visit" THINGS Magazine 2016

"...grumpy..." The Austin Chronicle 2014

"Perpetually ahead of the collecting curve...a one man Taschen. An authentically curious individual...diligently archiving the forgotten curiosities of American History"

Emma Higgins in Art Hack May 2012

"Jim Linderman likes Art, Antiques and Photography and his collection of Vernacular Photography, Folk Art, Ephemera and Curiosities is a wonderful place..."
LifeElsewhere with Norman B. 2014

"...collected over the years by Jim Linderman, a character who seems the perfect subject for a Harvey Pekar comic. Linderman treats collecting like a calling, and his finds have a resulting air of authority, stunning in their capture of bygone picturesque moments."
Derek Taylor Dusted

"The pictures, discarded artifacts of ecstatic Americana, come from the stash of Jim Linderman, who in his introduction recalls advice he’s plainly taken to heart: “Collect the heck” out of whatever you find interesting."
Drew Jubera Paste Magazine

"His interest in art is rivaled only by his interest in music, and one expression informs the other. He pursues objects with thoroughness and an innate sense of curiosity..."
Tanya Heinrich Folk Art Magazine

"Linderman acknowledges the obscure at the same time that he elevates it.... His collections tell vast stories in sotto voce, allowing curios and objects shadowed by mainstream culture and ideology to converse and be heard. What we hear is an enormous American sub-culture speaking in forbidden, marginalized languages: stuff discovered boxed in the attic out of embarrassment or zealotry, smutty ash trays crowing next to religious pamphlets, each claiming a part of the complex, sometimes contradictory, always conflicted American imagination, a chaos of memories that will one day vanish."
Joe Bonomo Author of Conversations With Greil Marcus, Jerry Lewis Lost and Found and No Such Thing As Was

"...he's one of the world's greatest pickers."
Brian Wallis in The New York Times

"Documenting--one clipping at a time--the scrapbook of a leg and garter aficionado that was dumpster-dived in Virginia in the 60s" "...an outstanding image-archaeologist who has compiled a shelf-ful of worthy and unique photographic histories."
William Smith Hang Fire Books

"Linderman has a knack for discovering untold stories and introducing them to a wider audience"
Joey Lin Anonymous Works

"Jim Linderman...makes us all look a little puny"
Could it be Madness-this?

"...insatiable collector of ephemera and ringleader behind an incredible circus of blogs — including the treasure trove dull tool dim bulb"
The Cynephile

"Yo no sé ustedes pero creo que es uno de los mejores sitios que he visitado en mucho tiemp"
Color Me in Blog

"...there's something beyond the endless photos and postcards and weird propaganda from another time that he lovingly documents - I think it's the collection as a whole, the portrait of a person fascinated with culture and communication. I have met people like this before, and in reading Dull Tool Dim Bulb I feel I have been lucky enough to meet one more. This site is a goldmine in terms of links..."
The Hyggelic Life October 2009

"Linderman is always on the lookout for the new and exciting"
Chuck and Jan Rosenak Contemporary American Folk Art

"...an amazing collection..."
Revel in New York October 2009

"Jim Linderman has a nice little colllection of interesting books and blogs...But every so often he just loses it."
American Digest March 2010

"FOR MOST OF HIS LIFE, COLLECTOR JIM LINDERMAN has searched high and low for authentic things--unique and special objects that define the artistic culture of the American experience. From folk art to popular culture, from pulp fiction to Delta Blues-- Jim is a walking authority on so many things American they are too numerous to mention. One thing is certain-- his collecting interests are for things that have fallen through the cracks, those things lost and forgotten--the box of material under the table at the flea market booth. If it wasn't for dedicated collectors like Jim Linderman-- so many important objects about our culture would have surely been lost to time and indifference."

"Jim Linderman maintains a most interesting blog about the most amazing things from his collection—a site he calls “Dull Tool Dim Bulb,” the only curse words his father ever uttered. I love it, and read it everyday."
"...an excellent writer and I devour your blog daily. I am impressed at your deep knowledge of things within your niche..."
John Foster Accidental Mysteries

"I am grateful to Jim Linderman for first alerting me to the existence of the 1930s Spiritualist hymn "Jesus is My Air-o-plane."
William Fagaly New Orleans Museum of Art, Author Tools of her Ministry: The art of Sister Gertrude Morgan

"Linderman describes a long gone world...(he) claims not to be a writer but he is most certainly an excellent researcher..."
BOOKSTEVE

"Jim Linderman, King of the Internet Ephemeral Arts"
Spaniel Rage

"Jim is a fantastic historian...show him some love"
Astrid Daley Fringe Pop / Sin-A-Rama

"Almost an experimental narrative"
Idiopath

"He came to us with hundreds of jaw-dropping baptism photos that he'd been collecting for 25 years," Ledbetter explains. "By the time he found us, he'd already done half a lifetime's works, and he trusted us to handle it properly." Lance Ledbetter in Creative Loafing 10/13/11

Fair Use

Though the images, which I have myself largely scanned from my personal collection of photographs and ephemera, some are subject to © by the artist, syndicate that distributed them or otherwise the individual artists. The use here is regardless covered by the U.S. fair use laws because:
1. The image illustrates an educational article; its inclusion in the article adds significantly to understanding the text because it is a historical sample of the art covered in the critical commentary, and shows use of an innovative style. Therefore the image substantially improves the educational value of the article.
2. The image is used as the primary means of visual identification of the article topic, which directly concerns a visual artist, and is indicative of the style for which hethe artists are renowned.
3. Images are of lower resolution than the original. The image is not used here for profit.

4. It is not in any way replaceable with an uncopyrighted or freely copyrighted image pertinent to the work referenced in the article

The copyright for some images are most likely owned by either the publisher, the writer(s) and/or artist(s) which produced them originally.

Any other uses of this image may be copyright infringement.

Although most of the images here are original photography and objects owned by the author and in the author's personal collection, we cannot absolutely guarantee the exact copyright status of the items or offer written assurance that every or any aspect of this work is completely cleared for all usages. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item and securing any necessary permissions ultimately rests with persons desiring to use the item.

Any Trademarks used in this item listing are used for strictly descriptive purposes only. No association or endorsement is implied or inferred. No character or trademark ownership is given or implied.

If you are the owner of any aspect of an item which you believe to be copyrighted, please contact us immediately at j.winkel4@gmail.com

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