1920? Cloth card quoting La Fontaine and advertising Zira cigarettes. "Help thyself and God will help thee." 2½" x 3". Factory No. 7, 5th Dist., NJ. $5 from Hide and Seek Antiques, Wells, ME, through Ebay, Jan., '02.
Here is a first for me! I did not know that there were cloth tobacco cards! The quotation appears to be drawn from 6.18, "Hercules and the Carter" or, to be more true to La Fontaine, "The Carter in a Rut." La Fontaine's French there is "Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera." For once, the card is quite accurate! Besides that, it is quite pretty.
1900? Five 6" square tiles of fable scenes from Walter Crane's Baby's Own Aesop. Manufactured by the Mosaic Tile Company in Zanesville, Ohio. $130 for MSA from Blue Boar Antiques at Baltimore Antiquarian Fair, Aug., '91. "Peacock's Complaint" for $98 from Eauctionz, Ontario, NY, through Ebay, Oct., '99. The other three for $49.99 each from Eauctionz at the same time.
1995? Yugoslavian set of 5 dolls including, on the outside doll, a representation of FS. $20.50 from Diane Woodword, Glen Ann, MD, through eBay, July, '05.
The elaborate development of the characters' clothing on the outside presentation of FS suggests the folktale that FS is in Eastern Europe. We see the moment in which the stork presents food in a tall vase to the fox. The artist chooses great local clothing for these animals! The stories represented on the other four dolls are presumably folktales. The smallest seems to represent a mustached man about to strike a dragon. The second smallest features a goat and a lobster. The third has a fox holding afish riding on a wolf, and the fourth pictures a woman holding a staff and a fisherman in a boat. In each case, there is a concern to fill the "empty" side of the doll with engaging landscape consistent with the scene on the front.
