1950? "Jean de La Fontaine" champagne label. "Cuvee Champagne Jean de La fontaine, 1621-1695." $5 from Bertrand Cocq, Calonne Ricouart, France, Sept., '18.
A seal in the center of this label depicts an open book and a feather used for writing. Golden lines emerge from the book. I think Jean would have enjoyed both the recognitiion and the champagne!
2024? "Jean de La Fontaine Looking at Characters of His Fables." Alessandro Lonati. Image Size: 8" x 5½". Total Size: 10" x 7½". Archival Matte Paper. $25.88 from Fine Art America through Etsy, Nov., '24.
La Fontaine, dapper as ever, looks at rabbit, grasshopper, stork, and tortoise, while a fox or dog emerges from the printed page as though out of the earth or a hidden well. Do I read this image wrongly, or are those characters a bit unhappy with the writer?
"Inside San Francisco and the Bay Area." Guide to the Bay Area from The Gray Line. This copy is stamped as "Your Complimentary Copy, Fable Restaurant, Cameo Cocktail Lounge, Drake Wilshire." San Francisco: Howard A. Young & Leonard Ralston, Publishers. Lithography by Schwabacher-Frey Co.
2000? "Hospital Emergency." V. Gene Myers. Unknown source.
A lion with a thorn in his paw is at the admitting desk of a hospital emergency room. A nurse, seated behind the desk, asks the all-too-common question, "Do you have medical insurance?" V. Gene Myers is known for his gag cartoons, which have appeared in publications such as Playboy and Good Housekeeping.
1950? "Hollywood: Dessins animés tirés des Fables de La Fontaine et Sujets divers." Animated cinema toy. F.M. Paris. €30 from entrepot*d through Ebay, Nov., '23.
This is a most unusual toy. There are two key elements: a viewing implement and 38 cardboard strips, about 11⅜" x 1½". The implement is a sliding wooden frame with a channel perfectly matching the width of the cardboard strips. Above this channel are perhaps forty plastic or glass rods that refract the images passing below them. The hoped-for result is that the images, otherwise hard to decipher, become movie loops, showing a repeated action. Though the package mentions La Fontaine fables, I can find only two that I recognize: GA and LM. Other strips that take on a life for me are a tightrope walker; a train; and a dog chasing a man. It is quite possible that I have not mastered the right speed for moving the strips underneath the frame. I would say that this is a very creative idea that did not quite get worked out fully.
1985 "Hare and Tortoise" game. Author: David Parlett. Otto Maier-Verlag, Ravensburg, Germany.
Here is an earlier -- but not the earliest -- version of a game listed below under "2000." This game was in 1979 the first "Spiel des Jahres" winner. Versions of the game have made these claims on their packaging: "The most Ingenious Race Game ever devised. Find out why when you play it! Designed to delight children! Guaranteed to baffle adults!"
1994 "USOPS Fables" First Day of Issue envelope featuring The "G" Stamp. "7th in a series of postal raises." Postmarked Washington, DC, Dec. 13, 1994. Signed and numbered #34 of 145 by Doris Gold. Copyright 1995 by Doris Gold.
This envelope has been particularly revealing for me because of two things I have examined more closely. One is that each envelope is uniquely (?) numbered by the artist. Was there really only one #34 of 145? The other is that the series celebrates the raising again of postal rates! Is this something to be celebrated? This time goldilocks is delivering porridge to three bears. Mama and papa are postal workers. Behind them is a postoffice building marked U.S.O.P.S. Is it true that the G stamp here is not enough to take care of this envelope, but needs an added stamp?
1989 "Fractured Fables for Fabulous Sons (Especially those having birthdays!" Hallmark Cards. $5.99 from Rubber Stamp Attic through Ebay, July, '18.
This birthday card for sons is really a twelve-page booklet offering parodies of nursery rhymes like "Jack and Jill" and "Simple Simon." The parodies regularly turn to routine parental advice, "family phrases that stick through the ages."
1990? “Fox and Grapes” tin. I. Krylov. 3.25” x 4.6”. Marx Street, Kyiv: Zhast Jar Workshop. Unknown source.
This little tin in its artistry is very much like candy wrappers from Russia. Might the box have been used as candy packaging?
2012? "Four fabric quilt squares of fables from ZigZag Fables." Originally pictured about 1897 by J.A. Shepherd and published by Gardner Darton, London, and F.A. Stokes, NY.
A quiet treasure in the collection! Here are four good stories, beautifully illustrated in Shepherd’s turn-of-the-century book. They are rendered here on the thinnest of fabrics. A quick check on Charlene Dodson reveals that she was a prominent American Native, known extensively for her quilting. I believe I ordered one story and was so impressed that I ordered the others, and she offered a special price. Each story starts with a cover picture (and twice a second title panel) and a closing panel. “The Ostrich and the Birds” uses ten story-panels to show the ostriches rejected first by the birds and then the animals. “The Cock and the Jewels” is the shortest, with only two story-panels well used to tell the tale. A cock happened on some jewels….and answered his wives “nothing bug jewels – let us go and find some barley.” “The Result of Going to Law” uses seven story-panels to show the wolf accusing the fox of stealing a chicken. After hearing the case, the monkey-judge condemns the wolf to pay costs for bring a false charge, informs the fox that he is lucky not to be hanged, and takes the chicken as his fee. “The Hermit and the Bear” uses seven panels to have the bear wound his dear friend. It adds a panel on which the hermit boots the bear out of his house!
2010? "Fishing for Fables." Card game after the pattern of "Go-Fish." 13 quartets of identical fables. 3½" x 4½". Anonymous student creative work.
Three features impress me with this student's work. First, it's a great idea. Secondly, the cards are well made. Thirdly, the designs for the individual cards are well chosen. They seem to be stickers applied to card stock before it was encased in double layers of covering. Three samples and the universal verso are pictured above.
1998 "Fables." Reading Words Flip-Overs. Four flip-over pages using TH, GGE, GA, and FG. Bryan House Publishers, Inc. Printed in the USA. $1.75 from Kim Douglas, Baytown, TX, through Ebay, August, '00.
I had not known of the existence of this learning tool. Each of the four stiff pages has a full-color cartoon image of its fable in the upper half with fifteen numbered items. The lower half of the page consists of the names of these fifteen items with an open rectangle beneath each name for the insertion of the correct number. When the page is flipped over, the young reader can check her or his numbers against the correct numbers below each word. Sentences at the top of this page use some of the emphasized words.
Invitation from The Pierpont Morgan Library to the opening of an exhibition "Fables from Aesop to Thurber." January 13, 1965. The invitation's front features WC from Pierre Sala, about 1520. The invitation is accompanied by a New York Times review of the exhibition by Sanka Knox, January 14, 1965.
1980? Large (11¾" diameter) single plate with a banner on its face "Fables de La Fontaine." Brown, blue, and green. €15 from "MK" at St. Ouen, June, '19.
This encounter at the St. Ouen flea market was unusual. I asked about fable books and cards. As they presented me with a simple book, which I bought, they also alerted each other, reached in the back and, as I recall, cleaned up a plate that they had: this plate! I can find no other identifying marks. The most popular characters from La Fontaine are here: fox, crow, cicada, tortoise, town and country mice, hare, bear, frog, and heron. The interplay of the three colors in the bodies and dress of the characters, as well as in the sky and the tree, is pleasing. A pretty plate!
2022 "Fables de La Fontaine: Memory." Dessins André Hellé. Memory game: "Reconstituez les Fables de La Fontaine." Made in France. Lily poule: Bibliothèque nationale de France. €12.95 from Little Marmaille, August, '22.
Each of 16 fables has a brown-backed and a green-backed paper disc. In each case, half of a moral is on one and the other half on the other. The Hellé illustrations are such wonderful old friends! One starts by laying out all the cards face down. Then you start making matches as in any memory game. However it happens, this is fun!
1991 One "USOPS Fables" First Day of Issue envelope featuring The "F" Stamp. Postmarked Washington D.C. Jan. 22, 1991. Handpainted and signed by Doris Gold as #92 of 200. $12.52 from Dave Fletcher, Dallas, TX, through Ebay, Sept., '99.
The seller's description of this item on Ebay identifies it as "Doris Gold's Hand-painted First Day Cover for Scott #2517 'F' Nondenominated Sheet Single show by Doris as part of the ongoing 'USOPS Fables', 200 made." Is USOPS the United States Office of Postal Service? The picture is of a golden and red flower enclosing a number of fairies. A butterfly looks on. The stamp itself presents a rose and seems to offer "Flower" as its word for the "F" designation.
2018 Long-sleeved t-shirt featuring "Everyone wants to steal your cheese" with images of a fox and crow.
The crow in this fable does not really ride the back of the fox, but it is nonetheless wonderful to see the fable's wise lesson take hold broadly in our present culture. Well, maybe not everyone does!
1988 One "USOPS Fables" First Day of Issue envelope featuring The "E" Stamp. Postmarked Washington D.C. Jan. 22, 1988. Handpainted (?) and signed by Doris Gold. $6.02 from Oceanic Stamps, Coins & Artifacts Pty Ltd, Sydney, Australia, through Ebay, Feb., '01.
The seller's description of this item on Ebay identifies it as handpainted, but I am less sure of that. Likelier is that the Doris Gold's signature is original. Apparently, the "E" stamp was originally worth $.25. The picture here shows an eagle holding a cube aloft against the background of a blue sky. I have not been able to find Scott particulars for this stamp.
1989 "Deutsche Tierfabeln: Quartettspiel für Kinder von 10 Jahren an." Auswahl und Text: Karlheinz Rahn. Gestaltung: Sigrid Geisler. Pössneck: Verlag für Lehrmittel.
There are eight "quartets," each presenting the fables of one animal family: fox, wolf, lion, bear, hare, horse, ass, and birds. There are also two cards listing the eight quartets and each card within the quartet. There is also a booklet of the texts that accompany the thirty-two fable pictures here. I imagine the game could be played like our "Authors." The colored illustrations are naïve and lively. My favorites include "Der Tanzbär," "Die mutlosen Hasen," and "Das Kutschpferd." This gift is especially treasured because it comes from the old German Democratic Republic.
1985 One "D Stamp" First Day of Issue envelope. Postmarked Los Angeles, Feb. 1, '1985. Signed by James B. Paslay. $12 from gumball99 through Ebay, Oct., '22.
I have come to believe that this envelope does not belong in this collection. I had long sought the "USOPS Fables" envelope announcing the "D" stamp, since we have all in the series, from "A" through "H" except for "D." When I saw a "D" envelope offered, I thought it was that missing member of the series. I see now no indication that it belongs to the series. It seems to be rather an envelope announcing the "D" stamp with Number 72 of 80 hand-painted illustrations by James B. Paslay. There is surely some irony in picturing a US rocket and commenting "Rates Going Up!" "Rates going up" is of course the dynamic behind having ever new alphabetical stamps with successive higher values. So far I have failed in my efforts to find out whether there may not be an official "USOPS Fables" "D Stamp" envelope from the Post Office.
1981 One "USOPS Fables" First Day of Issue envelope featuring The "C" Stamp. Postmarked Memphis, TN, Oct. 11, 1981. Doris Gold Cachets. $5 from RKA Covers, Lafayette, IN, through eBay, August, '04.
"Doris Gold Cachets" here will become simply "Doris Gold" in the next FDC I have, namely from 1988 for the "E" stamp. Apparently, the "C" stamp was originally worth $.20. The picture here suggests that the "A" stamp was worth $.15 and the "B" worth $.18. Consumers may not be happy to read that "Raising postal rates is as easy as...ABC"! How many envelopes and stamps might there be in all?
1950? "Buvard a Conserver" ("a blotter to keep") from Joannic Fabrics, featuring a crow holding a piece of cloth over an expectant fox. 5¼" x 8¼". $5 from Dany Wolfs, Roeselare, Belgium, Nov., '01.
This very large cream-colored blotter with a black-and-white design of FC advertises a fabrics store "that impresses through its prices." It seems to sell all sorts of cloth. Might the telephone number with only three digits be a clue to its date?
