Quote and Credit

Quote and Credit

CLICK TO ORDER OR PREVIEW JIM LINDERMAN BOOKS

Surfa-Tone Tex Products Mid-Century Modern Wall Slurry! Antique Color Chemical Soup for the Wall.




It's SURFA-TONE the Rubber Paint!  In the "antique color" series here, I generally tell a bit of company history, but a brief search is all it took to learn there are too many variations of the "Tex" name in companies.  This one was based in Newark, New Jersey and has probably morphed into some other company by now.  The history is as murky as the waters around Newark.  You know, as you drive towards the big apple you go through a dead zone of swamp before hitting the tunnel?  That murky chemical blend THING?

Search for "Rubberized Paint"  and that goofy "Flex Seal" product is what you'll find first.  You know, the guy who paints the bottom of his boat and scoots over the alligators without springing a leak!  I love when he dips his tools into it and makes a hand-grip like magic!

Now I suspect this product was invented for the parents of the baby boomers.  They all got  tired of rubbing crayon off the walls, so they sealed it off with this magic covering.  I've run my fingers over the paint chips here, and it does feel a bit different.  Oddly, the patter here claims you can wash off lipstick too!  Who kisses a wall?

Surfa-Tone Wall Finish by Tex Products.  No Date (c. 1960?)  Mid-Century Modern Wall Covering pamphlet. Collection Jim Linderman

Schoolgirl Handmade Sewing Instruction Book Antique Vintage Old




I haven't quite figured out the date on this remarkable handmade sewing instruction book, but she received a 95.  What was the teacher looking for?  The cover alone is a 100.  You women out there could date the work inside by the fashions...there are tons of designs, color wheels, mini-pattern projects and all done with beautiful folky precision.  I'll post more one day.  Yes, the cover is 3-D!  The little pattern book on the table has pages!  A great reminder of what a school student was required to do before computers.

Mid-20th Century Sewing handmade sewing class book.  Mixed-media.  Collection Jim Linderman

Vintage Gem Duplicator Grainy Pinup Girls on Colored Paper








Likely created by a Gem duplicator which was sold out of St. Louis.  A crappy little machine no larger than a hankie box.  It was marketed as a way of "making your own postcards" in the 1940s, I believe.  These could have been run off on a competing product.  It isn't too hard to find the mechanical duplicator in a box on the web, but actual prints are less common.  These are good examples of cheap home technology meeting the gals and gams of post-war folly. They have a nice "etching" like shading.

Group of home duplicator pinup girls on paper Collection Jim Linderman
Books and Ebooks by the author available HERE

Trio of Handmade Folk Art Marble Game Boards made by the same hand circa 1955



A trio of folk art game boards by the same hand.  Odd to see three like this together now… but they  collectively make up a "mid-century modern graphic" oddity for the wall.  Cabin decor class!   Circa 1955?  Each just over 16" x 16.

A commercial version of the game was manufactured in 1960, but I am going to guess guys had been making this marble game for decades in the basement.  Hobbyist and woodworking magazines were full of this kind of thing around the 1950s.  But how were three boards by the same hand re-assembled into one collection 50+ years later?

I speculate each was eventually given BACK to the maker long after they were gifted. Maybe Pop made a set for each of his kids?  All found and assembled into a collection by a picker?  All three have bread board ends, which were hand built, and all drilled with the same precision.  Each shows different use and wear, each has age and all three were found together at an antique shop.  One has a taped "rules" sheet affixed still.


Trio of Handmade Folk Art Marble Game Boards circa 1955 Collection Jim Linderman

Mysterious and Thrilling Atomic Energy Circus with Dancing Static Girl




Well, it's not really Atomic Energy which makes the little guys twirl, it's static.  Still, static seems to be a powerful force!  It's ripped the panties right from the paper-thin dancing woman!  Thrilling! "Mysterious"  Sorta like Fukishima!
BOOKS AND EBOOKS BY THE AUTHOR OF DULL TOOL DIM BULB ARE AVAILABLE HERE

Big Blly Cox and his Football Friends Art from the Sports Trades






Billy Cox and a few of his locker buds from 1950.  Source material for Billy, but the other two are, as yet (or as forever) anonymous.  If I liked football, I might take the time to ID them. Football, for all the gizmos and flying cameras and million dollar talking heads, is probably no better than it was in 1950.  I didn't watch then either, of course.  The last game I saw had Tom Brady, supermodel dater and super deflategate cheater.  He makes around 10 million bucks a year shilling products and the team pays him 20 million a year.  He used to support Trump until someone in the upper office told him to shut up.

Anonymous crayon drawings of football players, circa 1950 Collection Jim Linderman

Sounds from the AIR new book by Jim Linderman Preview




Vintage photographs of mystery and science. In SOUNDS FROM THE AIR one will find pictures of the invisible. The presence of audible waves as captured by anonymous photographers. Mysterious and beautiful visions in sepia. The language of ether. Collected and curated, the pictures generate the buzz of static without making a noise. 78 pages. Available in paperback and instant PDF download. Jim Linderman has produced numerous art and photography books on the obscure.  ORDER SOUNDS FROM THE AIR HERE

Vintage Shoe Design by Lucien Guilbert Circa 1940 - 1950 original drawings Spring forward in Style!







Vintage SHOE FASHION ILLUSTRATION SKETCHES BY LUCIEN E GUILBERT. Prolific Shoe Designer of the 1940's and 1950's.  The designer worked out of St. Louis during the 1940s and 1950s. Monseuir Guilbert designed shoes for high-end stores including some in New York City such as Nordstroms, Lazarus, Lord & Taylors and similar department stores as well as small specialty shops.  Some 150 drawings were sold in a lot several years ago.   Collection Jim Linderman 


CLICK HERE TO ORDER BOOKS AND EBOOKS BY THE AUTHOR OF DULL TOOL DIM BULB

Long lost childhood craft? Antique Folk Art paper cut colorful whatever!



Folk Art paper cutting colorful whatever!  I don't know a name for the technique.  Paper cutting for sure, as the top portion was folded and cut...then glued atop a second piece of paper which seems to have been painted first.  Paper stained glass!  If there is someone out there with a name for this (or these) let me know. Maybe a school teacher who was working around the turn of the century? 

Collection Jim Linderman

Woman with Trombone Folk Art Carving Anonymous




Woman with Trombone Folk Art Carving highly reminiscent of the pieces carved by Earl Eyman.  Just over 6 inches tall.  No Date.

Collection Jim Linderman

Mexican VEA Magazine for Pinups 1950s. Rare South of the Border Pulp Magazine.







 
Can anyone make a blog post which isn't political these days?  To think a day would come (again…) when showing the Mexican people are just like us is necessary?  Look. They had pin-ups just like we did!  I am not surprised after the election, as we were given every indication the new choice of the Republican party was a horrid man.  Still a whole lot of people voted against humanity, civil rights and equality. Still we should seriously work on fixing that. I don't pray much, but pray for the midterms.  It might be our last chance. 
I first wrote about and scanned some issues of Vea five years ago and have continued to pick them up when I can.  So I am running the piece again below.  Enjoy it.  By the way, learn to get along with and appreciate everyone, will you?  Jeez!  Read these words and think about it this time.  The United States is a nation of immigrants and what makes us special is that we care about everyone.  Our culture, which is the greatest export we HAVE, wouldn't be what it is if we were not a melting pot.  

VEA is a pretty hard magazine to find copies of these days.   Vea ran in the 1940s and 1950s, and when you figure in acid-based paper, climate and censorship, you’ll know why they don’t turn up often. Do not confuse it with Vea the Puerto Rican gossip magazine, or Vea which came from Chile.  Search hard and you will see a few issues on Fred Seibert’s flickr stream, but that’s about it.  I found a handful  to purchase recently, and I wish I had them all. 
VEA was a weekly pulp periodical which ran for years but was apparently often in trouble with the law, largely due to Niuglo’s spicy muchachas.  The magazine was a menudo of news, bullfighting reports, pulp fiction (with illustrations that look like Charles Burns on peyote) and breasts, which is where Nuiglo comes in.  There is really nothing to compare the magazine to in the states then or now, but it was similar to the Folies De Paris et de Holllywood magazine from France which was running the same time.  Some of the Harrison mags like Whisper maybe.  Large format, large on style and striking today.
Flipping through them makes me think it is time for a 1950s Mexican revival.  The best reason to find some VEA is the pioneer Mexican fashion and glamour photographer known only (but not known WELL) as NIUGLO.  Niuglo’s photos were so good they often graced front and back cover simultaneous in vibrant candy colors, but the ones inside were printed in burnt sienna brown.  There was frontal nudity, a considerable amount…but nothing below the waist.

Scarce and forgotten, but someone is paying attention.  These are worthy of saving.

Bright scholar Ageeth Sluis recently wrote “Projecting Pornography and Mapping Modernity in Mexico City” for the Journal of Urban History which drew upon the images in VEA.   A portion of the abstract reads:  By analyzing depictions of female nudity as conversant with urban landscapes in the banned magazine Vea, the author argues that pornography connected Mexico City to transnational ideas of the early twentieth century that held that sexually liberated women were part and parcel of cosmopolitan modernity. Vea exemplified and fueled concerns over “public women” and helps scholars understand larger debates on the gendered effects of revolution, urbanization, and transnational currents of global modernity.  NICE!
I’ve put in a note to Ms Sluis, and if additional information results I’ll be glad to add it.
Even better,  an outstanding set of original negatives of erotic images which have been attributed to Niuglo were discovered in 1996 and recently exhibited (in 2002) by photographer Merrick Morton at the Fototeka Gallery in Los Angeles.  Attributed might be too strong a word, as it was speculation, and there were several other “house” photographers doing the pinup photography for VEA.  Selected images of this cache were printed in editions and sold.  The certainly have the look, and they look wonderful.
Jim Linderman Books and Affordable Ebooks are available HERE

Antique Folk Art Fish Noisemaker Toy



Antique Folk Art Fish Noisemaker Toy.  A clicker-clacker!  
BOOKS AND EBOOKS BY THE AUTHOR HERE