2020 Heron and Snail Hard Enamel Pins. By Artsquach. Heron about 2½” x 2 ½”. $14 from ArtSquatch through Etsy, Dec., ’20. Smaller snail purchased from Artsquatch through Etsy for $8, July, ’21.
This is the most glorious fable heron I think I have seen! The heron is a very heavy pin! When I first ordered, I did not realize that the snail was a separate pin. Now, as I was cataloguing, I noticed and circled back. Lovely work! I know the heron fable well from La Fontaine. Was there really an Aesopic version?
2020 Heron and Snail Hard Enamel Pins. By Artsquach. Heron about 2½” x 2 ½”. $14 from ArtSquatch through Etsy, Dec., ’20. Smaller snail purchased from Artsquatch through Etsy for $8, July, ’21.
This is the most glorious fable heron I think I have seen! The heron is a very heavy pin! When I first ordered, I did not realize that the snail was a separate pin. Now, as I was cataloguing, I noticed and circled back. Lovely work! I know the heron fable well from La Fontaine. Was there really an Aesopic version?
2020 Fox and Grapes Hard Enamel Pin. By Artsquach. About 2½” x 2 ½”. $14 from ArtSquatch through Etsy, July, ’21.
This is a beautiful pin that I missed when I first ordered a heron from ArtSquatch. This fox, like Caxton’s, just looks at the out-of-reach grapes. Lovely work!
2020 Fox and Grapes Hard Enamel Pin. By Artsquach. About 2½” x 2 ½”. $14 from ArtSquatch through Etsy, July, ’21.
This is a beautiful pin that I missed when I first ordered a heron from ArtSquatch. This fox, like Caxton’s, just looks at the out-of-reach grapes. Lovely work!
1886 Article presenting the La Fontaine opera "Les Deux Pigeons." Pages 4-5 of "Journal Amusant," October 30, 1886. €10 at Clignancourt, July, '19.
"Les Deux Pigeons" is a touching story of two friends. One feels the need to travel but experiences nothing but trouble along the way. The other waits patiently at home. They are reunited. Apparently this fable inspired and provided lyrics for this opera, highly praised by the journal as it presents key characters and scenes.
1980? Arthur Rackham TH greeting card. 5" x 7". La Jolla, CA: Green Tiger Press. Gift of Ann Findley at Meandaur, June, '93.
Here is the delightful scene showing not only the tortoise and hare but others who witnessed the bet. There is no message inside the card. The publishing information on the back indicates that the same illustration is available as a postcard. Here the image is pasted onto the front of a simple card.
2000? Four refrigerator magnets made from monochrome illustrations by Arthur Rackham. 2" x 3". Clear acrylic. Unknown source.
Most refrigerator magnets that I have found so far in the world of fables are flexible slabs of magnetic material. These are clear cases formed around a copy of a Rackham illustration with a piece of that magnetic material on the back of the ensemble. The choice of subjects here is quite unusual! Maybe the artist was a lover of wolves!
1990? Arthur Court FG Wine and Champagne Ice Bucket with Lid. Aluminum. $60 from Melindatzsip through Ebay, August, ’25.
We have long had a lid, and I have wondered if it is from Arthur Court; I have even wondered “For what is this is a lid?” By luck today on Ebay, I found my answer. I was willing to settle future questions by buying a whole new bucket and lid. So now we have two Arthur Court lids! I still wonder if the fable here is more FG or FWT.
1984 Arthur Court Aesop's Fables tray featuring FWT. Heavy aluminum serving tray measuring approximately 24¼" x 15⅝ at the widest points.
The verso actually reads "Aesops fables by Arthur Court copyrighted 1984." The tray depicts foxes with a tailless fox at the center. There is a grape and leaf border design. A curiosity of this tray is that its obverse underneath the tray depicts the scene as exactly as the top of the tray does. The same tray seems to be selling on eBay these days for several hundred dollars. Click on either picture to see an enlarged picture.
2010? Pack of 8 postcards, a photo of oil on canvas depicting Aesop as painted b9y Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez. 6" x 4". $8 from Art247, Suffolk, England, Oct., '12.
The quality of photograph is extremely high. As the studio says, "Highest quality." I agree!
2010? Pack of 8 postcards, a photo of oil on canvas depicting CP by Lizzie Riches. 6" x 4". $8 from Art247, Suffolk, England, Oct., '12.
The quality of both painting and photograph are extremely high. As the studio says, "Highest quality." I agree!
1923 Argosy of Fables: Kroma-Paket. Kroma Paket No. 3. Pictures to Color--A New Kind of Outline Reproduction. Sandusky, OH/NY: The American Crayon Company. $3 from John Pacheco, Wallingford, CT, through Ebay, Feb., '01.
The pictures are acknowledged as coming from An Argosy of Fables by Frederick Tabor Cooper, with pictures by Paul Bransom. The cover shows the bear with its tail down a fishing hole. The package includes two colored illustrations, "If the ducks can swim there, why can't I?" and "They amused themselves by ringing it all the time." On top of each the following is written: "This serves to illustrate the effect a child can obtain after a few days' practice following the Kroma Paket instructions sheets." (Is this truth in advertising?!) The set includes eleven uncolored sheets and three sheets of specific color instructions for each. The set may be lacking the yet-to-be-colored page for the monkeys and their bell. Fables show up in the strangest places!
2017 "Arama" card of three stamps (2 of each) with a cover "Parables of the Sages." ID 026724. "The Fox in the Vineyard," "The Reed and the Cedar," and "The Lion and the Heron." $21 from Joshua Jacobovits, Shiloh, Israel, through eBay, July, '17.
The card is a booklet, perhaps meant for stamp collectors. The three stamps – FG, OR, and WS, with some slightly different names and animals – are worth 4.10 each. A curious feature is that the script on the stamps is 90 degrees different from the orientation of the image.
1905?? Four numbered (hand?-) colored photographic postcards of babies in scenes of La Fontaine fables. Paris: Aqua Photo: L.V. & Cie. $48 from Bertrand Cocq, Calonne Ricouart, France, Sept., '18.
These cards are among the most unusual things I have found illustrating fables. About the taste displayed here, I can only say that there must be something special about French sensibilities. The approach here is to have two children act out a scene from a well-known fable. That occurs regularly enough in both painted and photographed postcard portrayals of fables. The special, surprising addition here is to people the scene with maniy baby pictures. I honestly do not "get it"! But I am delighted to include these displays of it in this collection. Might these four constitute the whole series? In "Two Doves," at least two of them fly. In GA, the "ant" section wears pink and the "cicada" sectin wears light blue. In FC, many of the babies are winged. In WL, one wears a lambskin and another a wolf's pelt. Might part of the fun of these cards be an early experience of placing cropped photographs within larger photographs?
1900? Antique Victorian Die Cut Paper Art Fable Set of 12. $100 from Chickadeepick through Ebay, March, '23.
These fragile papers are exquisite! Many seem to work out to a standard rectangular size. Numbers mark them as part of a series with at least 45 members, but there is a chance that the set includes only these twelve cuts of fables. With the exception of one (#38?) that is lacking its number, the set is complete from #34 through #45. I will present them here in numerical order. The delicacy and exactness of the printing, coloring, and cutting are remarkable!
2000? 3D Aesop’s Fables Posters. 1” x 11” x 15”. $19.26 from Daniel Laury, Dec,, 2005.
Three advertisements for the drug Antiminth which is used to treat pinworm infections. The advertisements are pop up posters meant to be hung on a wall. Each features one of 3 different fables. The fables featured are the Boy and the Lion, the Ant and the Grasshopper, and the Boy Who Cried Wolf. The images accompanying each fable appear to have originally been created with pieces of felt, then photographed and reprinted on cardboard. Captions below the images tell the story of the respective fable. Behind each pop-up folder is an advertisement for the medication. Each advertisement came with a letter from the company addressed to the doctor. The letters give a witty description that leads into the selling of the drug, and how the moral of the story relates to health.
“Dear Doctor: We are pleased to send you the fifth 3-dimensional wall unit in our six-part series, Aesop’s fables. It is based on the famous story of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”, which teaches us that nobody believes a liar, even when he is telling the truth. Those who are philosophically minded might say that there is more to the story than meets the eye. Was the boy who cried wolf merely playful…”
2001 Anthologie des Fables de La Fontaine. Choisies et lues par Michel Leeb. Illustrées par Philippe de Kemmeter. Hardbound. Paris: Éditions du Layeur.
This is a curious book, with a fine CD. The unusualness starts with the book's thin, tall format: 5¾" x 9½". The unusualness continues with the twelve full-page colored illustrations. Their style is lively, primitive, spirited, creative. The French keep using their imaginations on La Fontaine, and the results are delightful for the rest of us! There is a strange thing here: many of the illustrations are separated from their texts. Since there is no table of the illustrations, I will list them here with their pages and, if they are separate, the pages of their texts. They are "The Weasel in the Granary" (17, 15); "The Stag Admiring Himself" (21, 18); UP (33, 35); "The Bulls and the Frogs" (41); TH (49, 51); "The Old Lion" (53); "The Lion and the Mosquito" (57); WC (69, 66); "The Wounded Eagle" (77); "The Angler and the Small Fish" (81, 78); and "The Fox and the Goat" (85). Let me suggest something engaging about each of three of the best among these. The weasel in the granary has eaten books, not grain! In the illustration for "The Bulls and the Frogs," one can see the frogs underwater as well as the bovine love triangle that caused their problems. In "The Wounded Eagle," colors help make clear that it is eagle feathers that have mortally wounded this eagle. FC shows up three times: on the cover, on the verso of the title-page, and on 37. The disc has little or no music but very good voices. I will keep the disc in its holder inside the end-paper at the back of the book.
1905? La Fourmi et la Cigale. 5 photographic postcards. Nancy: Rover. $35 for the set of five cards from Bertrand Cocq, Calonne-Ricouart, France, Sept., '20.
The narrative here deviates from La Fontaine, just as the title is reversed. Here the ant provides all that the grasshopper needs, but admonishes her to start working. I have not been able to find the sense of "Vous avez faites maigre chère."
GA has the ant carrying home canned beef. The grasshopper pleads, but the ant refuses: "None but the brave deserve the Fairbank Canning Company's Canned Meats"!
1934 Aesop's Fables. E.& W. Anstie, Ltd. Devizes. Series of 25. $76 at Murray Cards International, Cecil Court, London, July, '92.
This set redoes the Gallaher 1931 colored set using the same illustrations and texts but changing the print color of the verso from brown to black. The set also changes the design and content of the bottom portion on each verso. Here there is a simple rectangle with a black line border enclosing "E. & W. Anstie, Ltd., No. 1, Devizes." The numbering runs of course through the cards from "1" to "25." This same set was also done in black-and-white by Woods in 1937.
This pair of dust-jackets is unusual for not involving advertising. It also seems not to be signed by an artist. The quality of the images' color is, I believe, strong. The white surrounding the aging laborer is stark! The slight pink of his face only strengthens the effect. €8 each from Albert van den Bosch, Antwerp, June, '23.
1900? Ten (of 12) photographic postcard presentations of "La Cigale et la Fourmi." $120 from Bertrand Cocq, Calonne Ricouart, France, Sept., '18.
Various series of photographic postcard presentations of GA have flirted with the presentation of the grasshopper as a human pinup girl. This series may go furthest in the direction of conflating a set of fable cards with notorious French picture postcards of nude women. This series, rare and larger than the usual series of five or six cards, has an unusual feature of using a one-noun description of each of the phases of the story. Wanting to give a sense of the cards we have without giving scandal, I have slightly censored some of the cards. A trademark in the lower left corner of each photograph offers a clue – but a hard one to decipher – about the publisher of the cards. I show images of the two missing cards to help visitors to see the complete series, including the dire ending.
1995? Animated publicity still from Aesop's Fables: A Whodunit Musical: An Animated Special from the "Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child" Series. HBO. July 18, 7:30-8 p.m., ET.
I presume from the information that I can find that this particular episode was in 1995, since that it when the show debuted. Angie Dickenson and Diahann Carroll were among the voices in the special. I think I can make out a tortoise and a fox on the left of this black-and-white still. If Aesop could only know all the things that are laid at his doorstep!
